Stuart Ford I speak my mind involuntarily. It's both a blessing and a curse.

HST cab ride treat

A few weeks ago my friend John, who's been a train driver since he left school, took me for a ride in the cab of an HST (InterCity 125 type trains). I've always wanted a ride in the cab of a train and John's been promising to take me for years, so this was a real treat. We drove down from Manchester to Birmingham in a class 220 "Voyager" DMU, which was exciting enough, but those trains are cheap and nasty and really not a patch on the classic HST, which have been going for 30 years or so now. Nothing they make new these days even comes close to them, in my opinion. We drove back to Manchester in an HST set on loan from National Express East Coast (John works for CrossCountry).

Riding in the cab, as opposed to riding as a passenger, gives you a completely different perspective on rail travel. Obviously there's the unusual visual aspect of riding in the front, but you also get a very sincere understanding of how train driving works. John explained everything he was doing to me as he drove the trains, and you get to understand exactly why the train has to travel slowly sometimes, or why it has to stop; things that seem random, arbitrary and annoying when you're a passenger.

Indeed, John was so busy explaining the intricacies of train driving to me that he forgot to open the train doors when he pulled into a station on one occasion. A shout and a bang on the door from the staff soon jolted his memory though!

National Express HST power car

Inside the cab of the power car

It must be great living in Railway World

What is it with train companies? Like banks, they seem to live on a completely different planet to the rest of us. Last night Chris and I were booking transport from Heathrow to Manchester for when we return from Gran Canaria and, on failing to book a domestic flight because we get into Heathrow too late in the evening, we were left with no alternative other than a train. This is fine, trains from London to Manchester are fast and frequent and usually very well priced, not to mention the fact that they're way more environmentally friendly than domestic flights.

So I went onto thetrainline.com, which is apparently the only national rail booking service (so it's not like they have any competition to be price-conscious with), and searched for trains from Heathrow terminal 1 to Manchester on the evening of Monday 12th May. I specified standard class and two adults. The minimum price quoted was £159. First class tickets were in excess of £400.

This, as you will agree, is quite ridiculous. I know that trains to Manchester, off peak, in standard class and booked far enough in advance can be booked for as little as £13.00 per person. I also know that the Heathrow Express and the tube, which the quoted price included, cost £15.50 and £3.50 per person respectively. So I did another search, this time for the last train from London Euston to Manchester, and sure enough it came up as £26.00 for both of us (£13.00 each). This means that the previously quoted price included £133 for 2 adults to travel from Heathrow T1 to London Euston, when I know that the actual price will be £38, buying walk-up tickets.

Where the hell are they getting this extra £95.00 from? For the privilege of not having to buy separate tickets for the various legs of the journey? We could buy the walk-up tickets, throw them in the bin and take a cab to Euston and still have a decent number of notes in our pocket out of that £133 that they wanted me to pay to get 20 miles from the airport to Euston. What the fuck?

Incidentally, were we able to take a carbon-belching domestic flight from Heathrow to Manchester it would have been £88 for the two of us, including all the taxes. Go figure.

Railway robbery

My rail fare was increased by 5.3% yesterday along with above-inflation fare hikes from most train operating companies. This amounts to an extra £60 per year for me, assuming daily tickets and traveling 47 out of 52 weeks, which equates to about 12 days' worth of travel at the previous rates. This is quite annoying, and although it doesn't quite make rail travel unworkable for me, another price increase and I will have to seriously question it. This would be a shame, because I'm one of the few people in the country for whom rail travel is physically convenient.

The rail companies claim that they "need" this extra money in order to fund improvements in the railway system, which is the same excuse we've had for year upon year upon year with little return on the promises made. In fact, the only major railway infrastructure development that's taken place since privatisation is the electrification of the West Coast Mainline, which is currently the subject of another fiasco, which, thankfully, does not affect me. I'd be pretty fucking annoyed if it did though, especially considering the fare hikes.

However, what does rile me is when, on the day when the fare hikes came into effect, my train home was six minutes late, leaving me and my fellow passengers freezing our tits off on the platform. What provision in the Passenger Charter is made for this sort of delay? None. I'd have to freeze my tits off for an hour before Northern Rail would even think about giving a proportion of my extortionate fare back.

Then this morning, the guard on the 08:32 watched me buy my ticket from his colleague, then closed the doors of the train as I was approaching it. He just shrugged at me through the window, in the fully knowledge that I intended to board the train and that I was being held up by his incompetent ticket-vending mate. Fucking unacceptable, they're just taking the fucking piss.

Like I say, rail travel still just about suits me, but another fare increase and further examples of this sort of contempt for their customers will probably put me back in a car. That would definitely be a shame.

Pendolino Farraday cages

I'm writing this aboard the 22.05 Virgin Pendolino service from London Euston to Manchester Piccadilly, so I'll be actually publishing this when I get back to Manchester. The reason why I can't publish it straight away is ironically enough the subject of this post.

Virgin's marvelous new Class 390 "Pendolino" electric multiple units which they use for many of their inter-city services, replacing the HST and Mark 3 hauled stock trains which were perfectly good and had many years of service left in them given a refurbishment programme, have several annoying design flaws which directly affect passengers.

You would be forgiven for assuming that modern rail vehicles such as these would have been designed with the modern rail traveler in mind, given that they were designed since the turn of the century. The modern rail traveler likes to be able to use his mobile phone on the train and, if possible, their laptop connected to the Internet using a wireless Internet connection. But this is not to be.

In order to cut costs and enable them to install cheaper air conditioning systems, the manufacturers of the Pendolino opted to use a special metallic sunscreen on the windows in order to reduce the heat inside the train produced by the sun. However, a side-effect of this sunscreen is that it effectively turns each coach into a Farraday cage when combined with the metal shell of the coach itself, making it impossible for mobile phones inside each coach to connect to their respective networks in any useful way. Genius.

Signal can be obtained in the vestibules at each end of each coach, because the metallic sunscreen has not been applied to the train door windows. This is great, until the train applies its brakes. Then it all goes wrong again.

The Class 390 Pendolino has "regenerative braking", a technology widely publicised by Virgin, which, when applied, actually returns electricity back to the National Grid. Each Pendolino multiple unit apparently returns enough power each year to supply Birmingham with electricity for a day or something like that, the details aren't really relevant, but it's something along the lines of the claim that if everyone gave up toast the electricity saved each day would power Birmingham for a week. Of course, if we just unplugged Birmingham, the rest of us could all have as much fucking toast as we like, but I digress.

So yes, regenerative braking sounds like it's a good idea, returning power to the National Grid and helping to reduce the rail vehicle's carbon footprint, all very grand and noble. Except, when applied, these regenerative braking systems create an enormously powerful electromagnetic field which, you guessed it, knocks out your mobile signal, whether you're in the vestibule or not. Genius.

The same problem has been flummoxing Virgin boffins charged with the design and deployment of wireless Internet connections aboard Virgin trains as successfully implemented by other train operators, namely GNER, on their East Coast Mainline services which use different types of trains (namely HST sets and Class 90 plus Mark 4 stock trains, neither of which have regenerative braking).

So I can't publish this post right now. Not only is Virgin's onboard wireless Internet service doomed, but I can't even get a mobile signal to post it via GPRS. Were I on a train that was designed in the 1970s, as is the case with the HST, I might understand. But the irony is that it would actually work on the HST, in stark contrast to this soulless electric multiple unit designed thirty years later. The terrible locomotive irony.

Fictitious Liveries

Found a fascinating website the other day called Fictitious Liveries which is run by a very talented photoshopper who's into his trains and likes to imagine how certain rail vehicles might look in various parallel universes. Of particular note:

• If British Rail blue and grey had survived to the present day
• If Stagecoach owned 51% of Virgin Trains instead of 49% (Pendolino version)
• If the southern railway was never electrified
• If the Advanced Passenger Train was actually finished and then seconded to Eurostar duties
• If Virgin launched a double decker train like those seen in other countries
• First Great Western get desperate about their overcrowding problems and their new fleet of locomotives
• Westwood, Pimp my train!

Ironically enough, Stagecoach have won the franchise to run the former Midland Mainline and parts of the former Central Trains franchise from November, which they will operate under the brand East Midlands Trains, with branding very similar to that of their existing South West Trains franchise. Although they don't get any Pendolinos with that franchise, the Pendolino mockup is startling accurate when compared to their own mockup of how their Class 222s will look. They'll also get some HSTs, so it'll be interesting to see how similar they'll look to the HST mockup.

Confessions of a closet railway geek

I have many dirty little secrets, but one of the less (or more, depending on your point of view) embarassing is that I'm a bit of a railway geek. It's not something I'm proud of and I have it under control. I would never mug old ladies to feed my habit, nor would I leave related detritus around for some kid to find and hurt himself on. I'm a very responsible addict and in that regard I'm going to geek out about in on my blog just the once.

So let's get it over with. Here's a list of the types of train I use on a regular and not so regular basis, presented in order of class.

Class 43 HST

High Speed Train (HST), formerly Intercity 125, formed of two class 43 locomotives and a rake of Mark 3 coaches. This is what took me to Cardiff in June. Really excellent train, smooth and powerful and quite oldschool. Completely let down by the abomination of a train operating company that is First Great Western.

Class 142

Class 142: A horrible little two-coach diesel multiple unit (DMU) that's actually based on the Leyland Bus and uses a large number of bits out of its parts bin. As a result it's slow, uncomfortable and lurches about like a fat kid on a bouncy castle. I used to sometimes take these to Liverpool.

Class 166

Class 165/166 (class 166 is a 165 with carpets and air conditioning): I used to use these a lot when I lived in Langley as they serve commuter routes between London Paddington and Reading. Pretty standard three coach DMUs with passenger information displays that always seemed to be broken somehow. I also seem to remember them being particularly smelly (in a diesel exhaust way).

Class 185

Class 185: Brand new DMU, part of the Siemens Desiro family, operated by First Transpennine Express. Also used to take these to Liverpool, obviously in preference to the class 142. Each of the three coaches has its own engine which allows it to accelerate better than older units. Can limp home on just one engine in the unlikely event that the other two fail.

Class 323

Class 323: Three-coach AC electric multiple units (EMU) operated by Northern Rail that I take to work every day when I'm working in the office in Cheadle Hulme. Pretty basic but generally clean and reliable. They have a large number of gears and very whiny motors so they sound a bit like the trains on the Jubilee Line.

Class 390 Pendolino

Class 390: Everyone knows about these. It's the new Virgin Pendolino which is actually an EMU even though it looks like two locomotives plus coaches (like the HST which it largely replaced). This is the one that can do 140mph and tilt when it's going around corners. Supremely well appointed and comfortable.

Class 450

Class 450: South West Trains ordered a whole bunch of these to replace their old "slam-door" EMUs, which became illegal a few years ago. I use these to travel between Dad's house and London. Very fast, very clean and nicely airconditioned. They sometimes chain three of them up to form giant twelve coach trains. Makes a strange whistling noise when it sets off.

Class 444

Class 444: A five-coach version of the class 450 designed for longer-distance journeys. Has different door arrangements in order to maximise seating rather than making it eaiser to get on and off the train at more regular stops. Still has the whistling noise. This and the class 450 are in the Siemens Desiro family like the class 185.

Class 455

Class 455: South West Trains four-coach DC EMUs that used to serve under British Rail but that have now (mostly) all been refurbished and repainted, which is a good thing because the last of the un-refurbished ones are pretty shitty now. They still feel like the old "slam-door" trains because they use similar motors and much of the same running gear.

Class 412

Class 411, 412, 423 and similar: These aren't used any more because they've been made illegal by the Health and Safety Gestapo (who don't trust stupid people not to open the door of a train while it's in motion), but everyone remembers these. Old, slow, unreliable, smelly, dirty and with more character than all of the above trains put together. Everyone complained about them while they were in service but secretly misses them now.

There, I'm done. I'm going back to the rehab clinic now.

National Rail Passenger “Charter”

I've been reading the National Rail Conditions of Carriage, party animal that I am, in particular the section on compensation for passengers affected by delayed and/or cancelled services. It reads (emphasis added):

42. Compensation for delays

(a) Where delays, cancellations or poor service arise for reasons within the control of a Train Company or Rail Service Company, you are entitled to compensation in accordance with the arrangements set out in that Train Company's Passenger’s Charter. This can be obtained from the relevant Train Company’s ticket offices, customer relations office or internet site.

(b) The amount of compensation offered by each Train Company in its Passenger’s Charter varies from Train Company to Train Company. However, if you are more than one hour late at your destination station you will, as a minimum, be entitled to compensation in the form of travel vouchers in accordance with the table below:

The table below then goes on to list various ticket types and the amount of compensation due, most notably (emphasis added):

• Single ticket - 20% of the price paid
• Return ticket with delay on both the outward and return journey - 20% of the price paid

It then continues:

(c) This Condition 42 sets out the entire liability of the relevant Train Companies in relation to delays, cancellations and poor service. Except as shown in this Condition 42, the Train Companies do not accept liability for any loss (including consequential loss) caused by the delay and or cancellation of any train. However, they will consider additional claims in exceptional circumstances.

Now I realise that these figures are minimums and that train companies can at their discretion increase the compensation if they see fit, but really, how likely is this at the end of the day? It really isn't as if they're in competition with each other for passengers; they're each given a franchise, which in most cases represents a specific territory to run without significant competition from other companies. So their only obligations to passengers are at the end of the day just those set out in the conditions of carriage.

20% is bullshit, frankly. People aren't going to get out of their cars if they think that the only recourse they have for being delayed for over an hour is 20% of their ticket price, no matter how expensive their ticket was in the first place. Not good enough. The train companies should be made to compensate 100% and then some if they inflict such inconvenience and poor service upon their customers. Lack of accountability is a huge part of what makes the railway system in this country such a huge joke.

The next condition reads as follows, and I include it because it applied to me the other week after my train home went the wrong way:

43. Help from Train Companies: if you are stranded

If disruption caused by circumstances within the control of a Train Company or a Rail Service Company leaves you stranded before you have reached your destination and the Train Company whose trains you are entitled to use is unable to get you to that destination by other means, any Train Company which is in a position to help will, if it reasonably can, either arrange to get you to that
destination, or provide overnight accommodation for you.

This is fair enough. Ironically, in my case the other week, the replacement transport laid on (a coach) actually got me home quicker than the original train service was scheduled to have done. I'd find that a little embarassing if I ran a train company. Not that having trains going the wrong way isn't embarassing enough of course.