XC Piccadilly - New Street

[xtradj]

due to engineering works between liverpool and crewe the other weekend i had to travel to manchester then onto new street!

anyway from manchester it was a direct XC service the 20.54 on a sat night!?

it was full, with people standing, but everyone was loud noisy, some ****ed etc! and i thought to myself it never used to be like this?

you'd get it on stopper local services, but not on express services on XC, i thought it'd be a comfortable quiet journey, but the train was dirty, and just didnt come close to what id remembered of voyagers when they first arrived!

the only service, thats ever clean, spacious and quiet is the VT lpool to euston in 1st class, unless thats the route im on, ill just drive! train services arnt the same as they used 2 be

 

[voyagerdude220]

I've noticed myself that XC Voyagers appear to have gone down a notch, cleanliness wise, since Arriva (in bold as they distinctively don't want anyone to realise they own the franchise) have taken over, but I don't understand why, as i've still come across the "litter patrols" onboard, so don't think they've been stepped down since AXC took over..

 

[djw1981]

More people using the services, a more intense passenger focci and shorter turnaround times meaning less time to clean (as opposed to collect litter) the train. More people making relatively short trips (as DfT allege??)

 

[mumrar]

but everyone was loud noisy, some ****ed etc! and i thought to myself it never used to be like this?

So some of the passengers were loud and possibly drunk too. Exactly what are the TOC meant to do about this? Are you suggesting a Boris style prohibition on all rail services (which won't work because they most likely drank BEFORE travelling on the train)? And when was this lovely time when people were neither loud nor drunk? I've been alive 30 years now and it has always been that these people exist.

the only service, thats ever clean, spacious and quiet is the VT lpool to euston in 1st class, unless thats the route im on, ill just drive!

Please don't let a budding Dr. Beeching hear you describe that service as spacious, because in business terms all of those empty spaces represent money that WASN'T earnt

train services arnt the same as they used 2 be

Quite correct, we have a large fleet of trains that are all less than 15 years old, long haul journeys are considerably quicker than they used to be and thanks to a pro-active drug alcohol policy in the workplace, we no longer have an endemic culture of some individuals drinking whilst on duty. Bring back the good old days, what with this being a chilly November, Joe Public would love to spend the evening in first class with a non-ETH loco on the front (enthusiast wise I actually WOULD) and a driver 3 sheets to the wind doing 110mph in the dark cos he got bored spending 2 hours in a goods loop earlier!

A lot of this is tongue in cheek but you have to realise that as well as the bad parts of the new generation railway there are a lot of vast improvements too. It's a shame most of them pass our rose tinted specs by too often.

 

[Mojo]

More people using the services, a more intense passenger focci and shorter turnaround times meaning less time to clean (as opposed to collect litter) the train. More people making relatively short trips (as DfT allege??)

We were standing between Bristol and Birmingham a few Sundays ago in the First Class vestibule at the front of the train (by where the TM sits). The cleaner got on at Cheltenham and said to us and the TM, with whom we were talking that he'd done 4 trips today where he couldn't do any cleaning as the train was too full.

This seems to be the norm for Sundays on XC.

 

[AlexS]

Oh yes.

It's not so bad on a Sunday at the minute with the Euston - Manchesters calling at West Midlands stations soaking up some of the passengers, but on normal Sundays it can be truly horrendous.

 

[djw1981]

We were standing between Bristol and Birmingham a few Sundays ago in the First Class vestibule at the front of the train (by where the TM sits). The cleaner got on at Cheltenham and said to us and the TM, with whom we were talking that he'd done 4 trips today where he couldn't do any cleaning as the train was too full.

This seems to be the norm for Sundays on XC.

Yeah. Cutting turnaround times is only good up to a point..... Equally high occupancy means harder to clean!