What a journey!

[P156KWJ]

On Saturday 17th November 2007, me and my dad set off for walking in the peak district and arrived at Nottingham station ready for the journey ahead. We bought our tickets and discussed the new train opeartors now at Nottingham, (East Midlands trains and CrossCountry). We decided that EMT was definately not up to the job after realising that the Liverpool-Norwich route has gone severely downhill since stagecoach bought it, and we were travelling on this route today. The 09:38 service from Ely-Liverpool turned up 4 mins late at platform 4. We boarded the 2 coach 158/8 unit and sat near the very back of the unit. Seats quickly filled up, and we realised we'd made a bad mistake of sitting where we were! The vestibule doors had a problem with the air pressure and were just consantly opening and closing making a hissing sound every 2 seconds. Then 4 people joined the train. One chap in particuar would not stop LOUDLY talking about how great he was and about how awful the railway is. We had this all the way to Sheffield, with a conductor who was no help at all on stopping the bleeding doors from hissing and there were many mothers with screaming kids.
We alighted at Sheffield for our connection. We always travel with Northern for the second part of our journey, and they are the best TOC that I travel with as of now. We got ourelves coffee, as the connection time is about 30mins and waited in the waiting room and I went to take photos. When we decided to take a slow walk to platform 2C when there was about 5 mins to go, we walked down to hear digital dorris announce that our 11:14 Northern service to Manchester piccadilly was delayed by about 10 mins, so we decided to continue on and just wait. However, no more than 1 minute later, digital dorris announced that it was delayed by 22 minutes!! We decided to go back into the station concourse and buy some sandwiches for later from M&S. We got to 2C about 3 mins before it came, and who was on the platform??? THAT ANNOYING BLOKE WHO WON'T STOP TALKING!!! A rather shabby looking 156420 rolled in, everyone piled on and the train was straight out again after the driver had switched ends. The bloke was sitting 3 seats behind us:mad: and we had to wait near Dore for a TPE 185 and an east midlands trains HST to overtake! When we reached Grindleford my seat died. It just randomly broke! We arrived at Edale 40 mins later than expected.
ironically, the journey back was like clockwork! Our MerseyRail pacer 142058 was not bad, 158777 was fairly comfy, and we got back to our nice warm house as expected :toothy7:

 

[Tom]

One thing - it's the same staff and you expect complete change within a few weeks of takeover? Also, EMT did take over ex-Central routes and they cover the greatest length of journey for a non-intercity TOC and hence interface with a lot of other train operators.

You say EMT are crap and all I can see is a 4 minute delay there - yet Northern who are "the best" delayed you by 22?

 

[AlexS]

I would suggest that they have a far, far less robust fleet structure now so it's quite possible that they're worse than Central were for certain routes.

 

[djw1981]

Also how can EMT be blamed for their Passengers?

 

[P156KWJ]

You say EMT are crap and all I can see is a 4 minute delay there - yet Northern who are "the best" delayed you by 22?

It was not northern's fault for the 22 minute delay. A class 66 with a cement train was fouling 2 sets of points at Bamford. EMT's delays are a lot worse sometimes! And it's ALWAYS THE CITYLINK ROUTE!! They need to split the service at Nottingham or make it more flexible. And also, 158s don't really suit that route, the 170s were much better

 

[Coxster]

They need to split the service at Nottingham

What would that achieve? Do you mean an Ely to Nottingham, and then a seperate Nottingham to Liverpool service? If so, then if the Ely to Nottingham service is very late then the connection from Nottingham to Liverpool will be missed, meaning passengers have to wait on a possibly cold and damp platform, where as at least if they are already on the train then there's no need to. Also having to add a connection time for passengers to get from one train to the other would increase journey times.

 

[djw1981]

And the stock changes are not entirely their fault - DfT have been meddling in stock allocations this franchise change period.

 

[P156KWJ]

I am not blaming stagecoach for the fleet, it is the DfT's fault, I agree. Personally, I think this whole franchising business is awful, it has gone far enough and we need a proper nationalised transport network. I mean, look at the netherlands, they have a combined national transort network that includes buses, trams, trains and taxis, and it all runs like clockwork, I never had a single problem in the few days I spent travelling around there.

 

[Tom]

SWT are very good (EMT's cousin) and have even given EMT a long term sub lease of a few class 158 units in order to sort out the capacity issues - and I'm told the 158 fleet that EMT have will go directly onto the refurb programme for SWTs 158s and 159s at Doncaster Wabtec.