You had 100% control. If you wanted the cabin to yourself, you booked a solo cabin. If you were happy with sharing with a stranger, you booked a shared cabin for a lower price and sometimes you got lucky and had it to yourself. There was never any 'enforced sharing'.
Well, they could. But that's not a fair comparison as you can't roll up to London City five minutes before take off, and the Scottish airports are usually half an hour or so from the city centre. In any case the point of the sleeper is that you are multitasking - travelling and sleeping at the same time. If they get you to Edinburgh in an hour, or Inverness in 90 minutes, they will have to find you somewhere to spend the rest of the night.If they'd really wanted to splash out they could have hired an Embraer E 190. It could have flown to Glasgow (coach for those going to FW) across to Edinburgh up to Aberdeen and then over to Inverness. All that could have been achieved in half the time it takes the sleeper to make all the separate journeys.
Do people on here realise an Embraer could take off from London City as a Train is crossing the Border and beat it to either Edinburgh or Glasgow ? Inverness and Aberdeen don't even think about it
I knew people who were doing it quite regularly up until they stopped it.
My recollection also, going back some 40 years of intermittent sleeper travel! But it has changed since then, in various ways, some no doubt with the operator.
Yeah, it's the sort of thing a lot of people would probably be happy to pay out of their own money.
Yeah, Sleeper lounge cars were the very last of all. GNER was the last in terms of day trains.
Right, but the point is, you had the option. Whatever the ticket was called, you could choose between paying more for solo or paying less to share. Now you don't have that option. It remains the case that many can't afford the price to have a solo cabin. Removing the other option doesn't improve anything from a passenger point of view.
Well, it is. I can't afford a Rolls Royce, but I'm not going to deny those who can the choice of buying one...
I used the Sleeper once on a shared basis, aged 18 on the tail end of a rail rover. After that night, I vowed never to do it again; the compromise on personal space was far too much for my comfort.
Times change.
Yeah. I've never had a really bad experience as such, I just find being in such a small space with an unknown person to be intensely claustrophobic and very stressful. There came a point too where I wouldn't consider doing it again.
Now there is one option, which you might not afford. I'd call that even less of a choice.
That's fine if you have a car and don't mind abandoning it at FW. (Having tried on a previous trip, I could find no car hire firms which offered one-way hire beginning or ending at FW)
I shall keep any eye out for it... sure will be interesting.
Presumably 66747 is still at Dunkeld & Birnam. I can't see a record of it having been rescued. With 73966 back in Scotland, it was perhaps surprising to see 66738 and 66747 on top of 73s this morning on Fort William and Inverness, but maybe it isn't ready. However, the Aberdeen was a pair of 73s this morning, 73969+73971, so I guess they thought they were playing safe and then the 66 fails. 66746 had worked the southbound Inverness sleeper last night but went to Doncaster today.
Interesting, what train did they use?
They got GBRf to get a charter set together. I don't think it actually ran in the end.
Interesting, was it documented on here at all (or anywhere else), I'd like to read more about it if possible?
I used the "solo sleeper supplement" several times with a std class All Line Rover about 8-12 years ago on both the Euston to Aberdeen and Paddington to Penzance (PNZ) sleepers. The PNZ one was £50 and the Aberdeen one was slightly more but cannot remember the exact price £55/£60 ?.
