Booking Bikes on Virgin - Easy

On 27/7/04 3:06 pm, in article , "JohnB"
wrote:

David Martin wrote:

On 26/7/04 11:43 pm, in article ,
"Jon Senior" jon_AT_restlesslemon_DOTco_DOT_uk wrote:

When every long-haul train you catch over a five year period bar two is
delayed, you do start to wonder how infrequent these infrequent
incidents are. Also a number of the delays began as 5 minute delays but
rapidly escalate.

As I have rarely been delayed on a train, please could you post when you are
next planning to travel so I can avoid that train. Thanks.

You clearly never travel SWT or Virgin then.

I rarely travel Virgin but last time it was on time after an eight hour
cross country journey.

SWT have been on time when I have been using them. The only major hiccup was
a central train breaking down in Nottingham and causing a knock on that
meant a changed route and getting home at 6.30am instead of midnight. Kudos
to the staff who sorted that out. (Nottingham station is not a place to go
North from without many changes..

...d

David Martin wrote:

I rarely travel Virgin but last time it was on time after an eight hour
cross country journey.

SWT have been on time when I have been using them. The only major hiccup was
a central train breaking down in Nottingham and causing a knock on that
meant a changed route and getting home at 6.30am instead of midnight. Kudos
to the staff who sorted that out. (Nottingham station is not a place to go
North from without many changes..


Well if you count getting home six and a half hours late as on time with
a hiccup then I guess all the Virgin and SW trains I've taken were on
time with a hiccup too.

Tony

JohnB wrote:
David Martin wrote:

On 26/7/04 11:43 pm, in article
, "Jon Senior"
jon_AT_restlesslemon_DOTco_DOT_uk wrote:

When every long-haul train you catch over a five year period bar
two is delayed, you do start to wonder how infrequent these
infrequent
incidents are. Also a number of the delays began as 5 minute delays
but rapidly escalate.

As I have rarely been delayed on a train, please could you post when
you are next planning to travel so I can avoid that train. Thanks.

You clearly never travel SWT or Virgin then.

I'll second the other David's point - tell me when you're travelling as
well! I'm a very infrequent SWT user (although the few occasions I have
used them have been fine), but I regularly use Virgin services, and in the
last few dozen journeys I have made I can only think of two that have been
delayed by more than about five minutes - both around 20 - 30 minutes due to
infrastructure problems. The vast majority have been on time or early.
That's not to say that delays throughout the scale don't occur - just that I
haven't been subjected to those that do on most of my recent journeys.

--
David


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David Martin opined the following...
On 26/7/04 11:43 pm, in article ,
"Jon Senior" jon_AT_restlesslemon_DOTco_DOT_uk wrote:

When every long-haul train you catch over a five year period bar two is
delayed, you do start to wonder how infrequent these infrequent
incidents are. Also a number of the delays began as 5 minute delays but
rapidly escalate.

As I have rarely been delayed on a train, please could you post when you are
next planning to travel so I can avoid that train. Thanks.

To their (GNER) credit, things seemed to have improved recently, but
it'll take a number of good journeys to fill the confidence gap I
currently have. My "normal" journey these days is Edinburgh-
Peterborough-Huntingdon. There is generally a 15 minute wait between
scheduled times for my connecting service at Peterborough. Excepting the
last six months (As I said, there has been an improvement) I think that
I only caught the scheduled connection once.

"Best" delays:

2 hours just south of Retford as there had been a failure on one of the
tracks so all east coast trains were down to one track. During that two
hours, 6 trains passed us in the opposite direction. The shortest gap
between trains was about 10 minutes. When we finally moved it took no
more than 5 minutes to reach Retford station where we were clearly off
the main track. Why?

Train arrives to Edinburgh not just on time, but early (5 mins). We then
sit outside Edinburgh for 10 minutes before arriving to the announcement
"We apologise for the late arrival of this service. This was due to our
early arrival causing problems with platform allocation".

Not every train I have caught has been delayed, and some delays have
been minor (5 mins) but I've had enough delayed / otherwise interrupted
journeys to have no faith in the railway system's ability to bring me in
on time.

My experience in the past has been that those who tend to use a single
train company operating one of the short-haul routes (Thames, SWT, WAGN)
consider the rail system to be good, while those who have less frequent
long-haul routes, often involving more than one operator, are more
cynical of the system.

Jon

JohnB opined the following...
Trains here are Sh*t.

Seconded. Two weeks of travelling in Northern Italy using train as
primary transport we had one incident which was between while attempting
to reach Nice (A bad plan!). This was due to the knock-on effects of a
power outage in Switzerland (IIRC) which removed the power to our train
and left us stranded for Several of Hours! Despite there being major
(read no rails) works on the track just inside Italy, SNCF managed to
arrange for coaches to move passengers in and out of France. GNER had
trouble connecting Retford and Doncaster the last time I was forced onto
a coach by the rail companies!

Jon

David Peters wrote:

JohnB wrote:
David Martin wrote:

On 26/7/04 11:43 pm, in article
, "Jon Senior"
jon_AT_restlesslemon_DOTco_DOT_uk wrote:

When every long-haul train you catch over a five year period bar
two is delayed, you do start to wonder how infrequent these
infrequent
incidents are. Also a number of the delays began as 5 minute delays
but rapidly escalate.

As I have rarely been delayed on a train, please could you post when
you are next planning to travel so I can avoid that train. Thanks.

You clearly never travel SWT or Virgin then.

I'll second the other David's point - tell me when you're travelling as
well!

Tomorrow morning Andover to Fleet, changing at Basingstoke.

Over the last week the journeys I've undertaken we

Tues 20th - Winchester - Basingstoke, no trains after 10pm, buses laid on.
Bus was 20 minutes late so missed a following connection and arrived
home 80 mins later than expected.

Wed 21st - Home - Andover, train on time, return journey about 15
minutes late.

Sat 24th - caught bus to Andover. On time.
Return by train. Last train home 1059 cancelled. NRE said a coach was on
its way.
SWT at 12midnight said they did not even know their train had been cancelled.
Many many phone calls later a taxi was arranged and I crawled into bed
at 2am instead of 11.30.

Mon 26th - Home to Fleet. Trains on time but platform change at
Basingstoke at last minute caught me out as their was no announcement.
Return was 10 minutes late from Fleet, but this simply meant I had 10
minutes less to wait for connection at Basingstoke, so no real problem.

Today - Home to Fleet and return. All trains ran to time.

All these were SWT and the experiences were typical.
I do try and cover potential problems by often travelling on an earlier
train than absolutely necessary.
I've not had on-board travel experience of Virgin recently but regularly
see them 40 minutes late or more at Basingstoke.
The last time I tried to use them I gave up after three visits to the
station to book bike tickets proved fruitless, so I went another route.

Trains here are Sh*t.

John B

JohnB wrote:


Tomorrow morning Andover to Fleet, changing at Basingstoke.


snip tales of woe


Trains here are Sh*t.


Look on the bright side. At least you didn't have a bike with you. If
you have a bike and they replace a train with a bus or taxi, you're
b******d because the buses won't take bikes, nor will most of the taxis.

Tony

Tony Raven wrote:

JohnB wrote:


Tomorrow morning Andover to Fleet, changing at Basingstoke.


snip tales of woe


Trains here are Sh*t.


Look on the bright side. At least you didn't have a bike with you.

I nearly always have a bike with me and did on all my journeys last
week. luckily it was the Brommie when the train was a bus.

If you have a bike and they replace a train with a bus or taxi, you're
b******d because the buses won't take bikes, nor will most of the taxis.

Today's journey to Fleet went OK.
The train was just two minutes late on the return.
but for those here who seem to like to stick up for Virgin, I see their
punctuality has dropped to a disgraceful 75% ie arrive within 10 minutes.

They blame part of their failure to deliver a service on "increased
network congestion due to extra trains run for the Motor Show.

Meanwhile while changing at Basingstoke, I saw the Bournemouth Voyager
train which was announced as 31 minutes late, leave 39mins late.

Oh well, I've decided not to go by train to Winchester tomorrow, I'll cycle.

John B