davidgillon | Entries tagged with trains

Thought I'd have to do a Tanny Grey-Thompson and drag myself off an LNER train at KX earlier after passenger assistance failed to show. And while TGT had it happen in the wee small hours this was twenty to three in the afternoon.

And it's not even as if I did turn up and go, the assistance has been booked for 10 days, and Darlington said they'd confirm I was on my way when they put me aboard, which would still have given KX two and a half hours notice.

I sent at least two different passengers and a cleaner looking for someone to sort it, but *crickets* *tumbleweed* *crickets*

(This is where the Azumas aren't as good as the 225s and the 125s, the wheelchair spaces on those were in the coaches either side of the buffet coach, so there was always people about with comms, while on the Azumas they're in the end coaches, which is fine for 1st Class with the guard and the driver stood there, but if you're in Standard class there's no train staff within a couple of hundred metres).

As there's a grab handle on either side of the doorway I was gradually leaning further and further out to try and see if anyone was coming. Until eventually there was a panicked message over the in-train tannoy saying not to do that and someone was on their way, really. They even had a cleaner come by and tell me the same thing.

Two Passenger Assistance staff eventually turned up after about 15 minutes. I asked the one who did the ramp what had happened and he said he didn't know, they'd just got the message to come and get me.

Halfway down the platform I met another PA guy, who said "Sorry about that, your train was early, that was why there was no one there."

My train was due in at 14:39, guess what time it arrived....

Current Mood: Grrr
Current Location: Rampless

Toddler opposite is watching cartoons

"Down, Down, Down, Down, Down, Down,

Down, Down, Down, Down, Down, Down ... </Cartoon singing voice>

My immediate thought was: This is going to be a particularly weird version of The Ballad of the Witches Road

London Bridge is Falling Down ...
</Cartoon singing voice>

Ah, not the Agatha All Along version ;)

Current Mood: Amused/Earwormed

Got my tickets for my next trip North in the post this morning, which was a relief as they should have gone in the post of Saturday, leading to delivery on Monday or Tuesday (my last set were ordered at 4:50PM on one day and arrived in the 11AM post the next) and I was starting to fret.

So I opened the end of the envelope to extract the folder they come in, and it wouldn't come out. I took another look, and that's when I went 'Eeek!', because the other end of the envelope had been resealed with sellotape, and was clearly less pristine than when it started - half open along the seal, slightly chewed around the actual end, and somewhat greasy.

A firmer tug got the folder out, and an anxious check confirmed all the tickets were there (two sets of three, plus a covering note). But they're all credit card-sized slips of thin card, easily lost if the end is open - now I understand why they come in that internal paper folder.

Best hypothesis I have is it got chewed up and potentially stuck inside the sorting machinery at the Royal Mail.

Current Mood: Eeek!

Hope everyone's Christmas/winter festivities are proceeding to plan. My post Christmas Day meal Facebook post was simply "F'lup", good job cooking by my sister.

My journey up to Durham last Tuesday was mostly smooth, though my heart sank when I arrived at King's Cross and it was 1) packed and 2) nothing was moving. Fortunately as soon as I reported to Passenger Assistance they whipped me aboard my train (well, after several minutes of "How did you spell that again?" and "Could it be booked under someone else's name?").

OTOH we did have the following announcement as we set off a couple of minutes late: "I'd like to welcome everyone aboard the 12:00 Highland Chieftain to Inverness. I'd also like to apologise for conditions aboard today as due to the earlier failure of a train near Grantham we're the first train out of King's Cross in two hours and we have four full train loads of passengers aboard. And unfortunately that means it's standing room only and some of you will be standing all the way to Inverness, in eight hours."

Fortunately that 'standing room only' didn't affect coach A where I was (and I bring my own seat anyway), the guard did announce there were a few spaces in A, but no one ever moved up to find them and it was actually a better journey than last year (no 2yo fretting all the way north).

Current Mood: Still f'lup
Current Location: Home is where they feed you

Seeing as my LNER account was giving shenanigans and the last time I used it the tickets by post didn't actually arrive, I decided to pop down to the local station (Southeastern, not LNER, but everyone covers travel on everyone else) and buy my train tickets the old-fashioned way.

So I roll up to the ticket desk and tell the guy I need to go from X to Y on the Zth and back a few days later, "And obviously I'll need the wheelchair space for that."

He pokes at his machine for several minutes and announces a price.

Me: "That's fine for the outbound, but I checked before I came out and the return leg should be £10 less".

Him: Grumble, poke. "Okay, yes, there's two options and one of them is cheaper." (So why didn't you/your system find them?)

So I swipe my card and he prints out the tickets.

And only then does he tell me: "I can't book the wheelchair space from my system, you need to ring our passenger assistance people, you'll know their number".

For godssakes, this is a major commuter station, the teeny little (Northern) station at my mother's can book the assistance, the wheelchair space and print me out a summary of everything, there's no excuse for Southeastern not having the same capabilities in place.

I'm all in favour of keeping ticket offices*, the idea of everyone booking online ignores the digital divide, but some stations are far better than others at handling assistance requests and there really is no excuse.

I didn't ring Southeastern's passenger assistance, because no, I don't know their number, I do however know LNER's who sorted it straight out.

* There's currently a train operating company** campaign to do away with all of them, and it's absolutely blatantly obvious that it will then be followed by making more stations completely unmanned.

** Clearly orchestrated by the government, who've already been told this will breach the Equality Act by their own access body.

Current Mood: Annoyed
Current Location: Booked

Trying to log into my LNER account to book a train ticket.

It uses your email address as your account name for login purposes, and when I first set mine up I accidentally typed gmail.co.uk, rather than gmail.com

Every attempt to change that over several years has been met with "That email address is already in use"

I had another try to change it, and it suddenly occurred to me that it's not objecting to the email address, it's telling me there's already an account using my correct email address, probably because that's the one I use for passenger assistance emails. So I can forget about changing the .co.uk email address and just log into the .com one.

Only I don't know the password for that - I don't even know if I've ever used it, rather than had emails sent to it.

But it's my email and my account, so just throw in a forgotten password request, wait for the email to my phone and update it from there.

So back to the PC, change the login to the .com address, enter the new password and

"Too many login failures, this account has been temporarily locked."

*Headdesk*

And I didn't get the password wrong, it had the option to show what you'd typed and I'd gotten it right.

*le sigh*

Current Mood: *headdesk*
Current Location: You can't get there from here

Finally back from Christmas/New Year with the folks, which wasn't quite intended to be this long a break, but ended up at four weeks.

When I turned up at St Pancras for the final leg of my trip home, the driver for the next train on the Kent Coast Line hadn't arrived yet, so I and the passenger assistance guy were stood waiting for about 10 minutes, and I couldn't help overhearing all the messages coming over his radio.

I particularly liked the one that went "We urgently need someone with a ramp for <some service>, the driver's refusing to take the train out until a disabled passenger is boarded".

I didn't catch which train company, never mind which train, but kudos to that driver!

Current Mood: Thumbs up
Current Location: Assisted

I've been putting off going down to the station to pick up my ticket to go see my folks over Christmas, given last Sunday's snow has shown no sign whatsoever of melting. I'd pinned my hopes on today given a forecast of a distinct upward tick in temperatures. What we got was 3C and sleety rain, which will get the job done, maybe, but not quickly.

But needs must. So off I toddled, once I'd found my most solid pair of crutches (they were in the car). The paths on my estate were completely treacherous, compressed snow and ice. The roads were a bit better, the cars have worn a couple of good ruts down to the tarmac, so once you were on that you were okay. Of course that option doesn't work on the main road, but the footpaths there were better. Not perfect, there were still places you had to pick your way around rutted ice, but better. Which is important considering how steep that road is.

Could have done without: walking under a bus shelter by the station, first corner, big drop of freezing water falls, clears my hat and glasses, lands in my left eye. Second corner, big drop of freezing water falls, clears my hat and glasses, lands in my right eye. *rolls eyes*

So I got into the station and you feed the machine the card you used to pay, then enter a booking reference onto the touch screen. So I'm trying to juggle wallet, phone with the emailed reference, and trying to look over my glasses to read the damned number because I wore my old glasses in case I fell over. And I get in entered and press confirm. And it asks me to press confirm. And it asks me to press confirm. etc. At which point the guy checking tickets comes over and rams the full width of his thumb across the confirm button. "That one's a bit tricky," he says as it starts to print out tickets. No shit, Sherlock!!

Walking back was much the same, except uphill. It does look like the rain is starting to make some progress on the hard-packed snow, but that didn't stop me slipping twice, though I saved myself both times. (Kudos to the Merc driver who waited for me to finish walking along in the ruts before pulling away).

If it doesn't freeze overnight, then I think this should finish the snow, if it does freeze overnight, it'll be an absolute ice-rink tomorrow!

And that's why I always order my train tickets delivered by mail. Except when I don't get the option.

Current Mood: Drizzled on
Current Location: The local ice-rink

I booked my train ticket to visit my folks over Christmas earlier. I knew there would be issues because I normally travel about the 17th to beat the rush, but that's slap bang in the middle of the scheduled national train strike (Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday out of the week after next, and each one messes up travel the day after as well, so basically the whole week is gone), so that's pushing a lot of people's travel into Christmas Week. I did mean to sort it out a week ago, but reasons. Anyway I started trying on Thursday, cheapest ticket £51. I could get in to LNER's website to book that, but every time I tried to reserve the wheelchair space, "Computer Says No!" - and I tried to book several different services over several different tries, so it wasn't just the one train having an issue. Primary (catastrophizing) hypothesis: everything's already booked, I'm going to end up having to travel next week and stay up there for a month!

So this afternoon I rang passenger assistance (which is the other thing you're told to try when the computer refuses the booking) and the guy on the other end says straight away "I can book you on the noon train out of London", which is a bit earlier than I'd prefer, but any wheelchair space in a storm. So we go through all the details and he transfers me to their ticket booking line. And I sit and wait. And wait. And wait. Now in their defence they did have some rather tasty Spanish guitar playing as elevator music, and they were offering a call back if you wanted it - "you won't lose your place in the queue" But they also kept telling me "You are number 1 in the queue", so the temptation to hang on was there, even if nothing was actually happening. I finally did go for the callback, and sat and waited. And waited. And waited.

I think it was probably the better part of 45 minutes before "You are number 1 in the queue" turned into "We're actually calling you." But that did go through relatively straightforward apart from "And you realise you'll have to pick up the ticket from the station?" The online booking system can mail your ticket out to you (for £1), the telephone booking system can't *facepalm*. Oh, and the cheapest ticket left was £81.

And at some point I have to go through it all again because that was only the ticket up, not the ticket back as they don't seem to have released the post-New Year tickets onto the booking platform yet. It was exactly the same last year. (And there's another strike scheduled for the first week of January).

I support the strikes, but they do make life complicated!

Current Location: Leaving, on a slow train

Sunday was not particularly productive, in the I don't think I was awake for longer than two hours at a time sense. And for most of the afternoon and evening, 10 minutes at a time. I seem to recall Saturday as similar, but not quite so bad. I'm not quite sure why, while I've not been sleeping great, there was no major sleep-fail preceding it. About the only positive was that sort of interrupted sleep seems to be good for me dreaming, or perhaps remembering that I was dreaming. OTOH not so good for actually remembering what the dream was about. About all I remember is waking up from one and thinking 'wow, that was complex,' before falling asleep again and having no idea what it was complex about when I woke up.

And all of this sleep wasn't great for sleeping through the night. I ended up noodling about on the computer until about 7AM, finally got to sleep at 8AM, slept soundly through my alarm and woke up at 1PM. Hopefully I can do slightly better tonight.

I was finally awake enough this afternoon to trust myself booking my ticket up to my folks for Christmas. Bizarrely (1), the fare was £13.50 (c25%) cheaper than when I checked 10 days ago and that was already lower than some fares I've been charged. Bizarrely (2) I couldn't book my return as the online booking system is claiming there are no fixed fares (specific train) available for the first week of next year. I could book a flexible fare for three times the price, but understandably I'd prefer not to. And bizarrely (3) I got three texted confirmations for my passenger assistance request within 5 minutes. It's normally two, 'we got your request' and 'we've actually looked at it', but this time there was an additional 'we've really definitely actually looked at it' as well. Not sure what was going on there

Current Mood: Somnotic
Current Location: Morpheus dropped me

Getting on the train on Tuesday:

I get to the top of the ramp, small partitions to either side and opposite, separating me from the three wheelchair/disabled spaces. In the one to the right, a woman with a guide dog, to the left a woman with a baby in her lap and a buggy, to the other left a standing bloke, not even bothering to use the fold down seating. (I initially thought they were a couple because of the way they glanced at each other). And mostly in the other entrance, but with its front wheel leaning across the partition on his side, a bike.

No one makes any move to, well, move. So I look at the two people on the left and say “One of you needs to move” (and obviously that’s you, mate).

To which he replies “You can’t come this way, the bike’s in the way.” (And at which point I spot he has a bike helmet in his hand).

Seriously? “You can’t come this way, the bike’s in the way”!?!

He might not have thought there was room to get past the bike, there was, if you didn’t mind pushing the wheel out of the way and scraping it in passing. And I didn’t.

And at that point he had to move.

Cyclists have a reputation for blocking wheelchair spaces, but I don’t think I’ve ever come across anyone quite that entitled.

In other news, I’m not going to go short of reading matter while I’m up here visiting my mother. I bought the current Humble Bundle on Monday, which has 50 Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying books for £22. Calling ‘some of them 'books' is pushing it, a bunch are 15 to 30 pages, but there’s a bunch in the 100 page plus range, and a few at 300+. OTOH I’m not completely certain I need the 1^st, 2^nd, and 4^th Edition rulebooks!

Current Mood: Obstructed
Current Location: Northern

... on (disabled) Passenger Assistance on the railways.

It keeps demanding to know if I had passenger assistance to get to "the wheelchair area". I have no idea what "the wheelchair area" is, I'd assume they meant the wheelchair space aboard train, but context seems to suggest it's something that comes before boarding. Someone suggested it might be the sort of wheelie cattle pen the less clued in airports use, but I can think of precisely one UK station which has one (Euston I think, or maybe Liverpool St?).

And why are they demanding to know how my booking worked at Chatham when Chatham is a turn-up and go station and would handle me even if the booking didn't work, to the point of not being able to tell if the booking worked or not.

And in any case I always turn up an hour early at Chatham, so I never use my booking.

Which made me realise that I turn up an hour early because LNER's online booking system, the one I use to book both my ticket and my passenger assistance on the same form, inevitably books me on a train getting into St Pancras at 12:06, or later, to catch a train leaving London KX at 12:30, and that gives me 24 minutes, or less to:

Wait for the ramp to turn up, get off the train and off the platform, c150m, through the ticket check and down the lift: 5 minutes, minimum, 12:11

Cross to Kings Cross and get to Passenger Assistance Desk: 180m, busy multi-lane road with traffic light controlled crossing, 5 minutes minimum, 12:16

Book in with KX Passenger Assistance 20 minutes before departure (ie 12:10): Um, not happening, but call it 5 minutes because it's also the inevitably busy passenger info desk: 12:21

Wait for assistance guy to turn up: varies from instant if there's one standing there, to ten minutes, call it 5 minutes on average: 12:26

Get to train: slightly dependent on which platform, but call it 350-400m (far end of a nine-carriage train), and 5 minutes: 12:31

Deploy onboard ramp, undoing three separate locks, get me aboard, check wheelchair space is free, evict anyone sitting in it or using it for their luggage, make sure I'm okay, put ramp back and relock all three locks: 5 minutes, minimum, 12:36

Which is a bit unfortunate when they closed and locked the doors at 12:28.

Some Passenger Assistance problems start with "Computer says ..."

Obviously the booking form is treating everyone as an ambulant passenger and there would be time for most people to make it, though with very little leeway. But that same form also includes my request for passenger assistance. You don't even need to parse the contents, there's no way even a world class sprinter is getting from a 12:06 arrival at St Pancras over to the passenger assistance desk at KX by their 12:10 check-in deadline*. If there's a passenger assistance request, that train combination is not viable.

* They don't enforce the deadline, Darlington regularly handle me with 8 minutes between trains, probably 5 by the time I've gotten to the assistance desk if they aren't waiting for me off the incoming train, but it's a useful marker of how long _they_ think is necessary.

Current Mood: Eye Rolling
Current Location: Making allowances

So I arrived home about 4:30PM on Thursday, having left my mother's about 11AM, by which time I was about ready to collapse in a heap. So I pull out my key fob and stick the first key into the keyhole.

Why doesn't my key fit?

Oh, that's the back door key, where's the front?

And that sinking feeling as you look at the empty loop on your key fob....

Aiiieeee!!!!

Fortunately it was in the bottom of my bag, but that was an intense 30s of panic!

And of course I had the backdoor key, and there's a cached front door key, and I hadn't even checked the bag, but still gut-punchingly intense!!!

Perhaps this was fate getting even for everything else working on the trip back - I usually expect the booked assistance to only cover the middle of three trains as the other two lines do assistance on the fly, but I was met off the first train to escort me onto the second (just as well as it's a tight connection), then they were waiting for me by name for the London to Kent train, which normally doesn't even know I'm coming - and in this case that was too efficient for their own good as I was getting off at Rochester, the stop before Chatham, which my ticket said I was going to.

(Rochester I can roll out straight to the taxi rank, Chatham is in a literal hole in the ground, so I need to push myself up a 10m high slope, then cross a busy road to get to the taxi rank, it's okay going as it's only 10 minutes from home, but a pain in the backside to come back to).

And apparently leaving again is when you realise just how much you've missed people in the past 18 months.

Current Mood: Almost calmed down
Current Location: The right side of the door

... you answer a knock on the door at 11PM to find a policeman on your doorstep! Apparently someone had reported a little old lady wandering around the estate, they were trying to find her to do a welfare check, and wanted to know if I'd seen her. I told him no, but I'd check my back garden. No idea what came of that, though they were wandering around shining torches into all the bushes for a while.

I picked up my tickets for my trip north earlier. Annoyingly my right shoulder* seems to be finding pushing the chair irritating at the minute, though fortunately I don't have a great deal of pushing to do en route. Particularly annoying is that it was fine when I was out on Friday. I mentioned it on twitter and someone noted that EDS is clearly evil and stores up these things for when we most need our bodies to work.

* AKA my good shoulder

I considered booking 1st Class for the trip, but the difference in price was over 50% and looking at the seat plans (I've not yet travelled standard class on the new Azumas) there's not much to choose in extra distancing from other people in the wheelchair spaces between 1st Class and Standard Class. But looking at my tickets, my reservation is definitely in coach A, which is 1st Class. All upgrades gratefully accepted!

Ongoing Bujold Re-read

Komarr Miles goes to Komarr to investigate a space disaster, which turns out to be political sabotage. This is the book that introduces Ekaterin, the future Lady Vorkosigan, and the book's portrayal of someone squeezed down by an abusive marriage is some of the best writing I think she's done.

A Civil Campaign More of a comedy of manners than Vorkosigan stories usually are as Miles tries to woo Ekaterin without actually letting her in on it, all complicated by Emperor Gregor's impending marriage and Vor shennanigans. I'm not happy that Illyan's short term memory loss is used to drive the fatal spike into Mile's initial stratagem, and I've belatedly realised that we should be looking at Mark's disabilities as perhaps even more serious than Miles', despite the colourful language used to describe them. And on top of that there's the disturbing Lady Donna/Lord Dono sub-plot - gender identity is not something you change for convenience. (I'm only halfway through, so perhaps more later).

I've yet to find my copies of Cryoburn and Captain Vorpatril's Alliance. I think I'm going to have to dig into Amazon to find out what format I bought them in. My Kindle denies all knowledge of them, but I'm not convinced.

Current Mood: Upgraded
Current Location: Imminently in transit

I'm planning to head up to see my mother and sister at the back end of next week. I'd initially said I would book the train ticket online tonight and pick it up from the station tomorrow when I planned to be in town anyway.

It suddenly struck me this evening I'd completely forgotten about needing to book assistance on and off the train. I could have done it still, I finally figured out how to book it at the same time as the ticket a couple of years ago, but have I forgotten anything else ... ?

Leaving it for a day or two while I think!

This travel thing is strangely unfamiliar.

Current Mood: Forgetful
Current Location: Who knows?

I've had several dreams in the last week, including at least one micro-dream in a micro-sleep, where I've been doing things like get on the train to head up to Durham for Christmas.

Sorry, dream-brain, but that ain't happening this year, get with the programme.

Current Mood: Dreamy
Current Location: Not on the train

I'd completely forgotten that right in the middle of the travel chaos that will be the five day Christmas travel window, Network Rail will be shutting down London Kings Cross for six days. That's never popular, but with all the added Covid chaos funnelling everyone who traveled up on the 23rd/24th to travel back home on the 27th (no services on the 26th), this year the complaints are going to be absolutely epic.

As far as I can tell, you're supposed to travel down to Peterborough, then switch to East Midlands Trains to go to St Pancras rather than KX, but those East Midlands Trains are already going to be full of the two days worth of people coming back from wherever they run from (just checked - Leicester, aka Covid central, Derby and Sheffield). Just reserving a seat is going to be a major problem. If anything goes wrong and services are delayed, forcing mandatory reservations to fall through, then Covid restrictions will mean they're going to look half empty to all the LNER passengers being told there's no room for them. In the immortal words of the Kaiser Chiefs (particularly appropriate for services from Leeds), "I Predict a Riot".

Chances of successfully booking a wheelchair space on both an LNER service trying to squeeze two days worth of people into one, and an EMR service already full of two days worth of Leicester and Sheffield types, are probably about zero, . Particularly as there are normally 12 services an hour into KX, but I think I'm right in saying EMR only run 5 into St Pancras, and those are smaller trains.

So glad I've already ruled out traveling!

And Boris has got his excuses in early by setting up, sorry, putting up Sir Peter Hendy, boss of Network Rail, as the Christmas Travel Tsar. So the buck will stop with the man who planned the Kings Cross shutdown, not with the man who then decided we'd all have to travel back during it.

I notice LNER are advising people to stay longer and travel back later - have they actually read the Covid regs?

Current Mood: Avoidant
Current Location: Not the East Coast Main Line, thank God
Current Music: I Predict A Riot, Kaiser Chiefs

Anyone monitoring my webfeed over the past few days is potentially going to be concerned.

I'm back to working on my WIP post US-election, I've finally got a model for the political landscape that should work with however things finally turn out. Well, at least as long as it's short of absolute coup. And a major plus point is that it's one that works simply by changing the President's pronoun to 'she' (though it's only the Veep who makes it on stage). I'm at the point in the plot, neatly dropping exactly on midway, where terrorist attacks are escalating. Which means I've spent hours over the weekend looking at major US airports in Google Earth and Google Street View, and particularly at where their fuel-storage tank farms are. What's scary is how many are set right up against the perimeter fences, often right on the roads past the airport. Is there such a thing as your scenario being too believable?

In other news, I've started discussing the potential I won't make it home for Christmas with my family. My sister raised it first, and then it just came up by accident when chatting with my mother. If I don't make it it'll be the first time ever. As things stand, we won't know if I'll even be able to travel until the end of lockdown, and any change in Tier-based restrictions that replace that. Particularly as Durham is a hot spot - currently infections are 518/100k where they are, vs 234 where I am (though this is only 37 cases/week in their MSOA* vs 23/week in mine). And then for the six days after the end of lockdown (Dec 3rd to 9th), the students are supposed to head home, and there is absolutely no way I'm travelling until that's over. So if I do get home it's likely to be done in a rush. Must start doing some more practise in the chair, not going anywhere for 10 months means my pushing muscles are totally shot given I don't use it in the house. I'll definitely be travelling by train, the advantage of needing the wheelchair space is social-distancing is pretty much built in.

And in other Covid-related news, my sister is currently self-isolating. They had a teaching assistant test positive on Saturday, and while she hasn't spent any time around her, Andrea has had a chest-infection, so she got herself a test at a local site yesterday, and got the result at lunchtime today. Which was negative, but in the meantime she'd started running a temperature, so she rang 119** for advice and they've told her to continue isolating until it drops to normal. I'm not sure if I'm amused or exasperated that they told her they don't define what 'normal' is. So her school has now got an entire class out again, and I think it's four teaching staff on top of that currently self-isolating, plus a dinner lady who tested positive in the middle of last week. I'm not surprised the normally so mild-mannered she's ineffective head has started snapping at people.

* Census version of a postcode, about 2500 households.

** The Covid specific version of 111, our NHS helpline/triage service.

Current Mood: pensive
Current Location: Is Future Indeterminate a tense?

Yesterday's trip home was trouble-free for once (just as well with mother in tow). We opted for first class seats on the main leg to give her the extra space and that was in one of LNER's shiny new Azuma's so very plush (they've only been running on the East Coast Main Line from Darlington since just before Christmas), but we were actually the only proper passengers in Coach K ('proper' as there were several LNER staff hopping a ride to work stuff, most of whom got of at Doncaster), which was a little strange. Coach K has the first class wheelchair spaces, but is also only a half-carriage as the front half is the kitchen and the driver's cabin, so even if full there would only have been 20 passengers in it. The wheelchair space wasn't quite as bad as I'd been led to expect from several online comments, there is a window view if you lean forward a little. You just can't look directly sideways (which would make me travel sick anyway). It might be worse for someone in a large powerchair, particularly a six-wheeler, who would be further back from the window. The reason for the lack of a window directly to the side is pretty obvious, they've created the wheelchair spaces by leaving out the floor to ceiling luggage racks in those coaches (there's a similar arrangement in Standard Class, and it gives a rather unfortunate message as to how we're seen). No standing luggage racks of course means if your case is too large for the overhead racks then there's no space for it anywhere. Except by boxing in the crips with it. And speaking of overhead racks, there aren't any for the wheelchair spaces, or the three passenger seats facing them. Clearly we aren't expected to bring luggage of our own.

My trip-up pre-Christmas was also in First (as it was cheap), though in one of the older 225s they're busy retiring. Service was much the same as the Azuma, being plied with free food and drink is nice, but I'm not sure it warrants the premium for First unless you can get it cheap. Interesting observation, you get one more round of hot and cold drinks travelling North to Darlington vs travelling South from Darlington (as southbound hits the end of the line at London and the staff have to prepare for the new passengers boarding). Still, two coffees, a coke and a glass of wine southbound was more than adequate.

Passenger Assistance on the way North was a fiasco, though. With three trains, that's six bits of assistance. Three of those can't go wrong, it's turn up and go on my first train, and there's always someone on the platform to get the ramp. The last train has the ramp aboard, so can't go wrong. All three other ramps failed to turn up where they were needed. Ironically I was just telling the guard on the train into St Pancras that the ramp had never failed to show up as we pulled in and it wasn't there. And I'd watched him phone St P 40 minutes earlier to say it was needed (and Chatham would have phoned as well). At Kings Cross and at Darlington, the ramp turned up, but at Standard Class, rather than First, which is exactly what I'd predicted given the way the Passenger Assistance had stuffed up the bookings and put it as Standard class in big bold letters, then added a note correcting themselves in the small print. I managed to intercept the ramp guy at Kings Cross (interesting that both he and the guard then demanded to examine my tickets, apparently convinced that I must be the one who got it wrong), but no way to do that at Darlington (and I'd warned the guard it would go wrong and she should phone ahead to tell them), which meant I had the guard standing next to me frantically blowing her whistle for a couple of minutes to try and attract the attention of the platform staff on a train that was already running late.

{Rolls eyes}

Current Mood: Home

Trouble free journey home.

Today I will mostly be sleeping....

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: Not Durham

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David Gillon

Flat Out

March 2025

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Page generated Jul. 26th, 2025 03:48 pm

David Gillon

Entries tagged with trains

Not heard that excuse before...

Also Heard On the Train (Different Train)

Eeek!

... all the way to Inverness

You should probably have told me that before I paid

Password Shenanigans

Well done that driver!

Tis the season (for sleety rain)

Well, that was a faff

I Sleep Therefore I Am

Bah, cyclists

Filling in a government survey ...

Don't do that too me!!!

It's a bit disconcerting when ...

Clearly I haven't travelled in too long.

Apparently Subconscious Me didn't get the message

I Predict A Riot

There's an honest explanation, honest.

Train notes....

Some mistake, surely...