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Caledonian Sleeper

(83 posts)
  • Started 9 years ago by Morningsider
  • Latest reply from chdot

  1. SRD
    Moderator

    I've had a number of minor bad experiences. none bad enough to make the papers. i do feel bad for the staff.

    mostly i notice that things that were always straightforward - checking in, breakfast, hot water, towels or soap or whatever - now are just hit and miss. sometimes it's done one way, sometimes another. sometimes there is a pencil for the menu, sometimes i've gotten someone else's leftover toiletries...none serious, but indicative of chaos behind the scenes?

    Bright lights coming on randomly in the night is probably the most annoying thing, and which has now happened to me several times.

    The worst single experience that I've had was whenapparently the mirror on the door of my berth had broken, and made the room unusable. so they didn't have a room for me until carstairs, when the glasgow carriages were added and told me to sit in the lounge. it didn't help that I was tired and just wanted to lie down. eventually i asked for some water to take a headache pill. at which point it occurred to them that they could actually have offered me a drink etc. by the time they found me a (non-ensuite) berth, i was so tired that when i tried to use the loo i couldn't work out how to lock it. i thought it was broken. only realised next trip that I had clearly just been incoherent with exhaustion. it would have all been better if when i 'checked in' they hadn't said 'But you're supposed to be joining us in Glasgow'. as if they had let me know?

    Posted 4 years ago #
  2. crowriver
    Member

    @SRD, doesn't sound great. I used to use the old sleeper service sometimes. It wasn't fancy, and sometimes you had to share a cabin with a total stranger, but it worked. If you couldn't sleep there was always the chance of a nightcap in the lounge car.

    Posted 4 years ago #
  3. SRD
    Moderator

    The old sleeper was the most reliable train service i'd ever used in the UK - you always knew when it would leave, it usually got in early, and everything else worked like clockwork. not fancy, but it worked.

    Posted 4 years ago #
  4. ejstubbs
    Member

    The old sleeper stock is currently still running on the Highlander service which regularly has to run with one or another of the coaches - most often one of the lounge cars - either left behind or included in the train but not available for passenger use, because the stock is so old and unreliable.

    There was an incident in June this year on the southbound Fort William portion of the Highlander when the locomotive failed between Corrour and Tulloch miles from any road access. The driver of the rescue loco didn't have the necessary route knowledge to take the rescue loco as far as the broken down train, so someone had to take a road-rail vehicle up the line to the fetch the driver of the failed train so he could pilot the driver of the rescue loco. The rescue loco then suffered a traction motor failure. The original train loco then started working again. The train was reported 11 hours late when it passed Arrochar and Tarbet. The on-board staff were by then approaching the limit of their working hours, so the passengers were disembarked at Dalmuir to get a daytime train to Glasgow and thence onwards to London.

    Posted 4 years ago #
  5. SRD
    Moderator

    I wasn't really trying to say it shouldn't have been upgraded, just that it's a shock to the system when a very reliable service suddenly becomes routinely unreliable.

    Posted 4 years ago #
  6. chdot
    Admin

    An RAIB preliminary investigation indicated that he had no control of the brakes on the coaches because a brake pipe isolating valve was in the closed position when the train left Carstairs station.

    https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/17831286.brake-issues-caledonian-sleeper-caused-emergency-edinburgh-waverley/

    Posted 4 years ago #
  7. LaidBack
    Member

    The weight of carriages downhill into Edinburgh would have meant that stopping from 70mph plus would have been impossible.
    Serious safety breach.
    Imagine brakes on loco were a bit worn out trying to knock off speed into town.

    Posted 4 years ago #
  8. chdot
    Admin

  9. SRD
    Moderator

    sounds pretty traumatic...

    Posted 4 years ago #
  10. acsimpson
    Member

    Gosh, I hope you they get coffee again soon.

    Posted 4 years ago #
  11. chdot
    Admin

  12. ARobComp
    Member

    Colleague who is 6'5'' and used to fit on the old beds (just - and a bit curled up) says that the new beds are shorter for sure than the old ones. This is sad news as a 6'3' (to the nearest '') I used to fit exactly on the beds lying flat on my back. Now this will not be feasible based on his feedback.

    Sad times for us tallies.

    Posted 4 years ago #
  13. crowriver
    Member

    Caledonian Sleeper to/from Aberdeen and Fort William suspended from Sunday. Single train will run Inverness and Glasgow-Edinburgh-London

    https://twitter.com/AlastairDalton/status/1241070763333111809

    Posted 4 years ago #
  14. crowriver
    Member

    Caledonian Sleeper to be "temporarily nationalised".

    ---

    ScotRail is to be temporarily nationalised, Transport Scotland has confirmed.

    The Scottish government has said Scotland’s railway franchise, along with the Caledonian Sleeper, will be “supported financially to be able to maintain necessary services for essential journeys”.

    The move comes as the Department for Transport has suspended the franchise agreements it is responsible for, transferring all revenue and cost risk to the UK government for six months.

    A Transport Scotland spokeswoman said it is working with ScotRail and Caledonian Sleeper to amend their contracts accordingly.

    ---

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-scotland-51998906

    Posted 4 years ago #
  15. ejstubbs
    Member

    @crowriver: There appears to be some confusion about the Lowlander (Euston to Glasgow & Edinburgh and vice versa). Some folks are reading the Caledonian Sleeper web site as saying that the service has been cancelled from 26th March to 30th May. This is not the case: the service will be running but (due to the ticketing system's inability to cope with the Lowlander and Inverness Highlander being merged) tickets already booked on the Lowlander between 26th March and 30th May have been cancelled (with refunds) and people need to re-book if they still want to travel. It was either that or someone in Serco/CS was going to have to cancel and re-book all the passengers manually, while making sure that said passengers understood why that was being done. It's probably simpler doing it the way they are and I suspect they're expecting that a number of folks who were booked on the Lowlander between those dates will choose not to travel after all.

    AIUI the Lowlander will start from Glasgow and proceed to Edinburgh via Motherwell and Carstairs, where it will be joined with the Inverness Highlander and thence proceed as a single train to Euston using the route that the Highlander currently takes (which means going from Edinburgh back to Carstairs to reach the WCML). Vice versa for the northbound services. There will be no separate Edinburgh and Glasgow Lowlander portions joining at Carstairs as happens at the moment.

    Posted 4 years ago #
  16. chdot
    Admin

  17. ejstubbs
    Member

    So, that took place on the night of Tuesday 19th, when huge swathes of the rail network had been disrupted due to the unprecedented high temperatures during the day (there was still a fair bit of service disruption on the Wednesday morning).

    The Glasgow-London Caledonian Sleeper is scheduled to depart Glasgow Central at 23:40 Mondays to Fridays. What it doesn't say in that article in The Guardian - but is reported elsewhere e.g. here - is that Mr Metcalfe boarded the train at 22:30 and was asleep by 23:00. The decision that the service would have to be cancelled after all was not taken until around midnight (Caledonian Sleeper's tweet announcing the cancellation was sent at 00:07). Given that most of the rail network, including the West Coast Main Line, was in major recovery mode overnight, such a late cancellation decision is probably best characterised as regrettable, but understandable in the circumstances.

    On the Caledonian Sleeper, if you have a berth, you are given a card on boarding on which you can indicate what you'd like for breakfast the following morning and whether or not you wish to be woken to be advised in the event of any disruption to the service. If Mr Metcalfe had indicated that he didn't want to be woken then, arguably, CS were simply following his wishes by leaving him to sleep. If they had woken him then one does rather wonder what he would have done, at midnight, to manage to get to London the next day (bearing in mind also that services continued to be disrupted on the Wednesday morning). As it was, he got to sleep through until early the next morning - when he might actually have been able to take the first day train to London, if it was running - and he got a full refund on his CS ticket.

    I doubt he was the only passenger booked to travel on that service, but he does appear to be the only one to have bothered to tell the world about it.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  18. Tulyar
    Member

    I believe that 1R20 might have run (04.28 arr Euston 09.12) and the TPE 04.22 (Manchester Airport) also ran

    Posted 1 year ago #
  19. Arellcat
    Moderator

    I believe that 1R20 might have run

    Well, did it, or didn't it? RTT timings aren't available now for that date.

    If I were in Mr Metcalfe's position, I might not have been aware that there was an alternative London-bound service so early in the morning - but personally I like to be sure a train is well on its way before falling asleep.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  20. steveo
    Member

    I guess the question is what would you do about it. If you were on holiday (or even on business) and on your way home then it wouldn't make much difference. At least this way you get a free bunk, not much chance of finding a hotel at 1 in the morning in Fort William and if the train isn't going anywhere you'd get a much better nights sleep than you might have done.

    Probably different if you were on the outward leg of your journey. Then you'd could spend all night being irritated and worrying about getting away in the morning.

    Actually not knowing is probably the best result...

    Posted 1 year ago #
  21. SRD
    Moderator

    I can’t believe someone can sleep so soundly that they wouldn’t realise the train wasn’t moving. If they did/do sleep that soundly, would they have responded to a knock at the door?

    Ejstubbs not sure those cards still in use after the new carriages came into use? But I could well be wrong. I actually don’t remember the ‘wake me up’ section, but do remember there was something else beyond coffee, juice… shower token.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  22. Arellcat
    Moderator

    That's a good point. As a veteran of the sleeper service, the likelihood is vanishingly small that he could have not noticed the train wasn't moving. He must've thought he was having the most amazing night's sleep.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  23. chdot
    Admin


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