Since the Mk5s were introduced, it was 5 coaches, however for the past 1-2 weeks, the Aberdeen portion has been 4 coaches, so you're wrong in that respect. I've seen it and travelled on it. Currently, it's 4.You're wrong. The Aberdeen consists of 5 coaches, A, Lounge, B, C and D.
You are so right in everything that you say. I certainly feel that the business plan has utterly failed in that it has alienated the staff and the regular users. This year has in fact seen the loss of a number of long-standing staff members, and I have a feeling that their dissatisfaction with what the service has become has played a part in their decision to resign (the incident in March aside). A number of the new staff that I’ve observed (a couple of whom were on duty that night I travelled) have no ’railway’ in their veins, and seem to me to be poorly trained and entirely at sea in a ’railway’ environment. I see very few other ’regulars’ now, and it looks like the number of regulars is only going to go one way in the light of the fare increases. I can’t imagine it’s much fun for the long-standing staff, to find that their working environment has increasingly been transformed from a public service train which happened to have beds and a lounge car into a (if I can be honest) slightly twee (and expensive) tourist attraction... a lot of the Scottish based crew that I’ve spoken to in particular are very unhappy about the brash, classless, touristy advertising and the cliched (to the point of being cringeworthy) decor and menus. The old train in Scotrail days, with its friendly staff, chatty regular travellers and warm, welcoming, intimate atmosphere in the lounge car was arguably much more emblematic of Scotland than this new train with its new marketing strategy ever could be (despite Transport Scotland’s claims to the contrary). I also wonder- do tourists actually want any of this tacky nonsense? A lot of tourists that I’ve spoken to in Scotland (and in many other countries) are after authentic experiences shared with ’real’ locals, not kitsch stereotypes.
I do feel that although it is busier than ever before, the lounge car has become somewhat soulless, both in the evenings and mornings; the decor contributes to this, but the loss of many of the regular travellers and of the mixture of travellers from all walks of life means that the good conversation and opportunities for socialising, for which the sleeper lounge car was famed in the past, have all but ended. What makes me particularly sad is that the sleeper service used to connect families and communities; now it just seems more like a theme park exhibit. No wonder, given the concomitant poor reliability, a lot of the staff are at their wits’ end.
You've honestly hit the nail on the head. I'm glad I'm not the only one who has found this to be the case on these forums. You echo my thoughts 100%. The atmosphere of the old lounge car in the ScotRail days was second to none, and absolute credit to what Scotland and ScotRail was all about - and I speak solely of Scottish culture in that regard. Now it is nothing but a steward being told to act the big lick tour guide watching over you until the very second you finish your macaroni cheese, because the lounge car is so dead they have nothing else to do. I remember the ScotRail days where the guard and all the staff would be in the lounge having the craic with many a regular user until the wee hours in the morning. Staff, regular commuters, businessmen, politicians, and tourists, under one roof in the same carriage all sharing the night together with a dram and a good old laugh. Now it's just soulless. A symbol of nothing but a vision for the service which does not suit it one bid. It's destroyed what it used to be, and as you say, that culture was more emblematic of Scotland than what anybody involved with running the current service is trying to do now. It'll never come as close to that. The sad thing is it was only roughly when ScotRail guards stopped working the service in ~2016/17 when the last spec of soul left that service.
To be fair it is well established that the oil buzz from the sleeper isn't what many think it is. Few oil workers used the service, if at all, given a fair amount of the airlifts to the rigs happen prior to the sleeper's arrival in Aberdeen. Indeed I hear the helicopters at 6am every weekday mornings, so to say that part of the Aberdeen portion's decline is due to oil worker patronage is stretching it I'd say. You're spot on about your second point though. Aberdeen isn't a tourist draw in respect to the rest of the cities, and most of the usage for the service used to come from commuters on bargain berths and staff travelers under ScotRail negotiated quotas. Since then, bargain berths have been discontinued and quotas were reduced significantly, and prices for the average passenger in a berth has increased to the extent where its usage is limited to tourists or those on the older age spectrum with higher incomes.Unfortunately, I put the failure of the Aberdeen portion to load well down to two reasons: 1) the changing fortunes of Aberdeen’s oil industry, 2) the fact that the Aberdeen portion (like the Glasgow portion of the Lowlander) is not a major tourist draw, so the obsessively tourist-orientated marketing strategy cannot help it in the same way that it can help boost the services to Inverness, Fort William and Edinburgh. The fact that ordinary commuters/non-tourist travellers have been all but alienated is pretty much the death knell for the Aberdeen portion.
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