Sleeper Trains to Scotland

[Bahnhof Strasse]

I'm still furious at Virgin taking over Eastcoast. How did that happen?

Now then quimmy, you really must pay attention; neo-liberal capitalist bullshit dictates that private=good / public=bad. So when private fails and public has to step in and makes it good, neo-liberal capitalist bullshitters have to step in and give it to cunts like Richard Branston to cream off a load of public cash to his tax-free island whilst providing an inferior service to the travelling public at higher cost and less profit. As scams go, it's a belter.

 

[davesgcr]

Now then quimmy, you really must pay attention; neo-liberal capitalist bullshit dictates that private=good / public=bad. So when private fails and public has to step in and makes it good, neo-liberal capitalist bullshitters have to step in and give it to cunts like Richard Branston to cream off a load of public cash to his tax-free island whilst providing an inferior service to the travelling public at higher cost and less profit. As scams go, it's a belter.

No comment - but the "power of the brand" (apparently research shows that the public don't care re trains - they just want simple things like punctuality / seats / cleanliness / "reasonable value for money" / no graffiti / security - really , really hard things for "marketeers" to comprehend)

 

[teuchter]

The approach that's been applied to the Scotrail franchise - the name stays the same, and so do the train liveries etc when the franchisee changes - is really sensible (essentially what also happens with London bus franchises). So, no pointless repainting of stations, trains and so on each time. Should be adopted nationwide. Maybe even bring back the Intercity "brand", and make each operator comply to some universal common standards so people know what they're getting!

 

[paolo]

Was in France recently and this awful multi brand thing is creeping in there too.

Stations with different ticket machines but no way of understanding why, or what the difference is.

(And it might be easy to think 'bring back SNCF', but I can safely say their machines are *appalling*; even slower than our old ones, which seem to run like glue compared with what TFL installs)

Actually; let's take everything TFL does, and use that as a national model. Everything from smart cards, and consistent branding, to tight contracts and a (generally) great service.

 

[teuchter]

Germany too...DB still run most stuff but there are various private operators as well now, and it's becoming increasingly less obvious what tickets are or aren't valid on what.

 

[editor]

Lovely description here:

Reading the book in my early teens, I relished the idea of a remote station that had no road to it, embattled, windswept, with a coal fire glowing in the waiting room, waiting for travellers who never arrived. I had never heard of a roman à clef, but like many readers I liked to think that novels drew on a specific reality outside themselves, that a little detective work might find “the real thing”. Eventually, I came across an old Bartholomew’s map and found what had to be the very place: Loch Skerrow Halt, high on the moor above Gatehouse of Fleet and next to a little loch, no sign of other human habitation, roadless and apparently pointless. (In fact, the halt served a loop where two trains could pass each other.) I wanted to go there, perhaps with a picnic and the girlfriend I had yet to find, but the station closed before I could; two years later, in 1965, the last trains ran through it when the entire Galloway line from Dumfries to Stranraer was abandoned, all 70-odd miles of it worked till the end by steam locomotives.

In most ways it was a quintessential rural railway: slow, meandering, inconvenient (Gatehouse of Fleet station was seven miles from the village of Gatehouse of Fleet), with infrequent passenger trains and the freight mainly cattle and milk. Unseen, unheard, too, except by signalmen and insomniacs, a different kind of train came through at dead of night.

In another setting – Provence, say – it would be described as romantic. The Northern Irishman, a sleeping-car express, left London Euston at 7.30pm and Dumfries at 3am to reach Stranraer, the harbour station, soon after 5 in the morning.

The ferry for Larne left at 7. Sleeping-car passengers could stay in their berths for an hour, or board the ship early and take a bunk in a cabin for a six-shilling supplement, rising to £2 if you wanted to sleep grandly and alone. The crossing took two hours and a quarter. Another train at Larne got you to Belfast for a rather late breakfast at five past 10.

A tunnel linking Scotland and Northern Ireland? Fantasy has replaced British modesty | Ian Jack

The proposed route stirs memories of a lost, romantic train journey and is stoking the imaginations of politicians

www.theguardian.com