Your experience the last time you travelled by train

[bramling]

To try to get an idea of what rail travel is like in the UK these days, what was good or bad about the last train journey you made?

My last trip was on 14 July on the 2014 from Swansea to Pembrey and Burry Port. The train was 16 minutes late, on a day where there was a lot of late running. The train was a pair of 153s which had worked from Wilmslow , with a 150 added at Swansea. The train was not crowded, and was fairly clean internally. Information systems were working but announcements were inaudible above the engine noise. There were some rowdy passengers nearby making quite a noise.

Overall mark around 6 out of 10.

Letchworth to London early morning a few weeks ago. Train turned up on time (8/387). Held for a few minutes at Stevenage due to “over running engineering work”. Then put to the back of the regulating queue which resulted in an excruciating journey reaching London over 20 minutes late. Not impressed.

Also did a shorter journey to Welwyn Garden City and back last week during weekday midday. 700/0. Filthy. Declassified first filled up with a whole batch of GTR staff at Hitchin which made the rest of the journey feel like being in a messroom. Delayed due to some kind of passenger incident at Stevenage. 7 late arriving. Return journey on 2x387 to be fair was fine.

We also used trains whilst on holiday in Wales and Newcastle. The less said about all that the better. Wales in particular was shambolic, with virtually every journey being affected by severe disruption.

I was looking to do a London journey this Friday. Then realised it’s a strike day, nothing running at the time I need to travel. Hopeless!

 

[william.martin]

My most recent was Porthmadog to Talybont, the train was busy however there were seats left, unluckily the local teenage gardening club(not joking!) where onboard making an absolute racket and just like the outward journey I made that morning the state of the art air conditioning named "class 158 window" was performing beautifully.

 

[peri]

Travelled from Hull to Nottingham 8/7/23 on Newspaper offer Northern only £10 day ranger ticket.
Journey there was no problem on busy trains and then stopped off at Chesterfield on the return. Noticed that the Leeds to Nottingham
was cancelled, making the next Nottingham to Leeds a bit questionable, so dashed round the town and ran back to catch the earlier train to Sheffield.

At Sheffield found the 1657 to Scarborough was cancelled so jumped on a Huddersfield train to Meadowhall for a cheap coffee.
Then on the full Adwick train to Doncaster to pick up the all stations to Hull.

Held up before Gilberdyke and in Paragon for 1923, 107 m down, so probably end up with just a single ticket delay repay.

Don't know if it was a "Saturday" thing, but lots of people vaping.

Travel on Northern is a bit fingers crossed at the moment, but at least they're better than TPE.