The Ticket Collector

Fares ‘revision’ 18th May.

On the 18th May the new revised fares will be coming into effect on the National Network. Some companies have withdrawn some tickets and replaced them with more expensive tickets.

In January 2008 the overall allowable average increase for regulated fares Peak day and Season Tickets was 4.8%, with variations by flow and ticket type up to a maximum 9.8% increase.

Some Train Companies did not use the full yearly increase and therefore will be increasing the tickets to the yearly maximum this time around.

National Express East Coast (NXEC) will be increasing their already expensive tickets some more in May. We have also received reports (from an unnamed travel centre clerk) that they will charge everyone without an advance ticket a seat reservation charge of £1 for each seat reserved. Is this to stop the season ticket holders reserving seats, or is it to pay for for a new seat reservation printer so they can finally put out reservations 07:20 at Peterborough and late night services out of Kings Cross?

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New Rail Forum Launched.

A new rail forum for employees and enthusiasts working on and around the East Coast Mainline has recently been launched by our friends at Eastcoastchat.co.uk. Launched only in March the site has seen steady growth with a solid user base.

The forum has something for everyone whether you’re a steam enthusiast or working on a station platform. If your interested in anything to do with the East Coast Mainline we would strongly suggest you pay our friends at at Eastcoastchat.co.uk a visit.

NXEC - Communication Skills Lacking

As there is not much else to talk about this week, its time for another review of NXEC and their excuse of a Train Company!

It seems that NXEC have finally discovered the seat reservation printer!! Hooray! However they are still failing at putting the seat reservations out on the late night services from Kings Cross and also the last service out of Edinburgh.
The seat reservations which are put out at Peterborough on the 07:20 have been put out for the last two weeks! That’s a record, however what’s the odds that when the printer decides to pack it in again that they wont be put out again for months on end.

Another area which NXEC always fails on is communication. Whenever the trains are late, you never get any information at all, the staff have not got a foggiest and couldn’t give a rats backside about you the customer. They may pretend they care and put out scripted announcements on the public annoyance system, but that’s just it. The announcements are scripts.

Our friends over at NXEC Commuter have also been noticing the lack of communication from National Express to their customer facing staff. To quote them..

“Clearly NXEC HO still have serious problems communicating with customer facing staff. The thing is if they can’t communicate changes and/or the reasons behind them to staff, what chance have customers got of obtaining up to date and accurate information?”.

The “technical problems” with the trolley in standard seems to have been fixed as that excuse has not been used for a while to explain the absence of the trolley with rip off priced sandwiches.

Ticket names to change.

As if you were not already confused by the huge number of different ticket names, the powers that be have decided to change the names yet again.

So say goodbye to the SuperSaver, the Saver, the Cheap Day Return, the Standard Day Return and say hello to Super Off-Peak and Anytime.

The new ticket types are as follows.

Network Rail works commence on East Coast Mainline

Dont even think about trying to travel by rail this christmas!

The East Coast Mainline is completely closed betwen Hitchin, Stevenage and Knebworth. This is due to Network Rail replacing points at Stevenage.

NXEC trains will be terminating at Peterborough with a luxury coach transfer to and from London.
HullTrains mght be running between Hull and Retford with a coach transfer to and from London.
GrandCentral (haha) will not be running any trains until the 27th December (no surprise there then).

First Captial Connect services will berunning between London and Welwyn for bus connections for the North, and also between Peterborough/Cambridge and Hitchin.

Services should get back to normal on the 27th December 2007, that is if Network Rail dont overrun which is rumored to happen according to a member of Network Rail staff we spoke to today.

New Livery for East Coast (GNER)

So its finally been leaked/released. The new livery for the new operator of the East Coast Mainline - National Express East Coast. The picture below is a scan of a proposed livery from an internal staff magazine.

Sorry the photo has been taken down and made offline.

National Express are quoted as saying they want to have one brand for all of its operations, including bus, coach and rail. ‘One’ Railway is to be rebranded yet again as National Express East Anglia.It is reported that this rebrand will run into several hundred thousand pounds.