Today I travelled to Birmingham for a meeting of Railfuture’s Branches and Group’s Day (the following day) on which I had been invited to talk briefly on SENRUG’s Community Engagement. My journey to Birmingham was difficult. CrossCountry seemed to be having what I could only call a “bad hair” day. Alternate trains south from Newcastle were cancelled – I never found out why. Some northbound trains were cancelled too – one being because the Conductor had been taken ill on the train. That’s just rotten bad luck, and outside CrossCountry’s control. But the train was very crowded, passengers standing all the way and little squabbles breaking out about people sitting in other’s people’s seats. Astonishingly, our own Conductor didn’t make any appearance whatsoever on the entire journey between Newcastle and Birmingham. The old argument about the train being too crowded to pass through doesn’t wash since the trolley attendant (no doubt on commission) made it. So, whilst the prime cause of the cancellations and resultant overcrowdings may be beyond their control, little things such as staff being around when needed most is definitely within their control and CrossCountry must do better. Our own train was terminated prematurely at Birmingham – reason given was failures of both engines – hard to understand since we had not slowed at all en route and had arrived on time. The announcement was clear; passengers being advised to alert fellow travellers who were wearing ear-phones etc, so that was good, but no announcement re onward connections and validity of advance “booked train only” tickets on other services. Just the usual cop-out of “consult station staff”. Personally I didn’t see any until I got to the final barrier gate on the concourse level.
Incidentally, travelling with an “open” ticket, and not on the train first selected when my ticket was booked, gave me my first experience of my seat, unreserved when I joined at Newcastle, becoming reserved en route – thanks to CrossCountry’s “Advance on the Day” initiative which in principle I support . But the system does need tweaking. Once seated, it’s impossible to see the reservation display window. Perhaps a little “ping” or something is needed if it changes so passengers become aware. Even better, change the system so that a seat can only become reserved from a station say an hour away. If the display had read “this seat is free at present but may become reserved after Sheffield” at least I would have known when to get up and look at the display again.My return journey on Saturday 26th October was without incident, despite the atrocious weather outside and dangerous driving conditions. I was pleased I was on the train and I thought this journey showed the railways at their best.
