Nom (or lack of it) de Plume
Well, the trip to Ireland for my father's 80th birthday party was a bust; no flights and an abortive attempt to get to Holyhead overland and take the ferry only served to reinforce my dislike for the town of Crewe ( Read more... )
Not true - how could they?
I've been on EC trains that have been loaded to the gunwhales before, in fact this happened quite regularly on Friday nights off KGX as far as DON until the peak time restrictions were shaken up a year or so ago. The 1900 (first post-peak shoulder) train can still get pretty unpleasant. They can't "not let you on", but they have mitigated the problem by heavily advertising alternative services, and yield managing advance tickets so that it's not quite Indian levels of crowding. Not having compulsory reservations on our crack express trains can be both a blessing and a curse. You get large passenger flows causing absolute misery on DB's IC and ICE trains, too.
Anyway, I took the 1800 from London to Edinburgh last Thursday; it loaded well, much more heavily than is usual for a Thursday and more like a Six Nations Rugby weekend Friday.
London-Edinburgh was replacing just one plane route, not several like the Holyhead run.
And London-Newcastle, plus with connections London-Aberdeen and London-Inverness. There are also the BMIbaby flights from Nick Clegg's front room to a corner shop in Lochaber to bear in mind.
Finally, EC are running additional trains; in many cases it's a case of taking up paths for trains that normally terminate at Newcastle and extending them to Edinburgh. They are also running an extra red-eye tomorrow (Monday) morning by stepping up a set and running a train that normally begins at Newcastle from Edinburgh.
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