Caledonian Sleeper

[swaldman]

Indeed. Also traincrew - no need to have dedicated drivers and guards for north of Edinburgh, for instance - in ScotRail days they were just crewed by ScotRail crews.

I'd assumed that the sleepers' drivers were hired in with the locos? Or does it not work that way?
Fair point about guards, I guess.

 

[InOban]

Indeed. Also traincrew - no need to have dedicated drivers and guards for north of Edinburgh, for instance - in ScotRail days they were just crewed by ScotRail crews.

Guards possibly but no Scotrail drivers are trained on locos.

 

[Scotrail84]

Yes, there are.
So, is the OP referring to a "duplicate of informations screens"?

Those screens were a franchise requirement under Serco I believe.

 

[scotraildriver]

Guards possibly but no Scotrail drivers are trained on locos.

They did used to be though. The Fort William portion was crewed by ScotRail drivers.

 

[Scotrail84]

No ScotRail staff are trained on any Sleeper stock or Locos now unless Inverness and Aberdeen fitters do very light maintenance during the lie over time (unable to confirm this). All drivers are GBRF staff, and all Guards and on train crew are SCS staff. Shuntersat outlying stations are all GBRF staff except at Edinburgh where SCS employ a pool of dedicated shunters.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 31 Jul 2024 ==

They did used to be though. The Fort William portion was crewed by ScotRail drivers.

QST drivers worked them as well. So did the guards.

 

[BlueLeanie]

Guards possibly but no Scotrail drivers are trained on locos.

Are all the HST drivers hired in?

 

[Scotrail84]

Are all the HST drivers hired in?

No, all ScotRail trains are crewed by ScotRail staff.

 

[GLC]

Made a return journey on the sleeper last week to London and both ways lots of rattling from the berth doors and interconnecting doors. Seems like this problem is getting worse. Once upon a time you could jam a sock in the door and it would supress the vibration but not even that works anymore.

You can peel the rubber trim off the side of the door and jam it in the gap to quell the rattling. That was the only thing that cured it for me

 

[WF4HA5HE]

Made a return journey on the sleeper last week to London and both ways lots of rattling from the berth doors and interconnecting doors. Seems like this problem is getting worse. Once upon a time you could jam a sock in the door and it would supress the vibration but not even that works anymore.

I wonder if this is something that will ever get fixed or has it just been accepted that it goes with the territory of the Mk5s these days?

I once was moved from a classic room to a classic double accessible room with the electric sliding door and through the night it was rattling so much the door had opened about a quarter despite the buttons on the inside still showing the door as locked. It was a bit of a shock at 2am in the morning I must say.

 

[ajrm]

Indeed. Also traincrew - no need to have dedicated drivers and guards for north of Edinburgh, for instance - in ScotRail days they were just crewed by ScotRail crews.

Only FW used ScotRail drivers as far as I can remember. But as GBRF have a long term contract for traction provision, including the supply of drivers presumably, a change in ownership would have no effect there.

And in any case, you'd have different traction knowledge and operating procedures so the chances are that ScotRail guards and drivers would be on a separate link anyway.

 

[fgwrich]

Certainly for GBRf the present arrangement probably works out quite well I'd imagine, the same crews working either the sleeper or the Alcan. And likewise for the locos which, if they were to stop driving the CS Services, would then have to be hired to ScotRail with crews trained up on at least 73 and 66s if not 92s as well.

 

[godfreycomplex]

Only FW used ScotRail drivers as far as I can remember. But as GBRF have a long term contract for traction provision, including the supply of drivers presumably, a change in ownership would have no effect there.

And in any case, you'd have different traction knowledge and operating procedures so the chances are that ScotRail guards and drivers would be on a separate link anyway.

FW was indeed the only route that used Scotrail drivers back before CS got spun off, a Scotrail Queen Street driver took over from another Scotrail Queen Street driver at Dalmuir, then took the set up to Rannoch, where they were relieved by a Scotrail Fort William driver. Vice versa in the evening (except the swap was at Bridge of Orchy Sunday nights). When the sleeper driving transferred to GBRF, locos (and the Crianlarich - Rannoch route in the case of Queen Street) came off the requisite crews' cards

 

[Scotrail84]

FW was indeed the only route that used Scotrail drivers back before CS got spun off, a Scotrail Queen Street driver took over from another Scotrail Queen Street driver at Dalmuir, then took the set up to Rannoch, where they were relieved by a Scotrail Fort William driver. Vice versa in the evening (except the swap was at Bridge of Orchy Sunday nights). When the sleeper driving transferred to GBRF, locos (and the Crianlarich - Rannoch route in the case of Queen Street) came off the requisite crews' cards

Was it not Westerton they done the driver/guard change over as it never used to run via Airdrie back in the day obviously.

 

[godfreycomplex]

Was it not Westerton they done the driver/guard change over as it never used to run via Airdrie back in the day obviously.

Very true, it was certainly Dalmuir towards the end but it did vary between various stations. Some more official than others...

 

[Tayway]

I was looking to book a ticket on Caledonian Sleeper's website, and manually choose one of the single seats as I would be travelling alone. Once you've chosen your journey date and filled in your details, it allows you to change the automatically allocated seat.

However for every journey I have tried (including some next week) it seems like every seat is available apart from 2A and 2B. I'm suspicious that there is such high availability, particularly when it says "only one seat left" or similar. It seems to accept changing your allocated seat to any other, and as far as I can tell you can proceed to payment with that selection.

Has anyone encountered this issue before?

 

[BRX]

I was looking to book a ticket on Caledonian Sleeper's website, and manually choose one of the single seats as I would be travelling alone. Once you've chosen your journey date and filled in your details, it allows you to change the automatically allocated seat.

However for every journey I have tried (including some next week) it seems like every seat is available apart from 2A and 2B. I'm suspicious that there is such high availability, particularly when it says "only one seat left" or similar. It seems to accept changing your allocated seat to any other, and as far as I can tell you can proceed to payment with that selection.

Has anyone encountered this issue before?

Travelling from where to where?

 

[Tayway]

Travelling from where to where?

Dundee to London, although I tried a few others (Edinburgh, Glasgow, Perth) and they were the same.

 

[Sealink]

I was looking to book a ticket on Caledonian Sleeper's website, and manually choose one of the single seats as I would be travelling alone. Once you've chosen your journey date and filled in your details, it allows you to change the automatically allocated seat.

However for every journey I have tried (including some next week) it seems like every seat is available apart from 2A and 2B. I'm suspicious that there is such high availability, particularly when it says "only one seat left" or similar. It seems to accept changing your allocated seat to any other, and as far as I can tell you can proceed to payment with that selection.

Has anyone encountered this issue before?

The "only one seat left" is referring to the fare not the space on board. They seem to have an algorithm as my train from Inverness to London increased by a tenner a week (I couldn't book at the time) even though seats to choose from on board hasn't changed.

 

[Tayway]

The "only one seat left" is referring to the fare not the space on board. They seem to have an algorithm as my train from Inverness to London increased by a tenner a week (I couldn't book at the time) even though seats to choose from on board hasn't changed.

Interesting, although I'm still not convinced that on every train out of sample of half a dozen the only two reserved seats are 2B and 2C especially during peak tourist season.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 7 Aug 2024 ==
EDIT

Had another look and the issue appears to have fixed itself – the booking interface is actually fairly simple and intuitive when it works properly!

 

[Scotrail84]

Interesting, although I'm still not convinced that on every train out of sample of half a dozen the only two reserved seats are 2B and 2C especially during peak tourist season.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 7 Aug 2024 ==
EDIT

Had another look and the issue appears to have fixed itself – the booking interface is actually fairly simple and intuitive when it works properly!

2B and 2C are accessible seats. 1W is the wheelchair area.

 

[norbitonflyer]

Sitting here in the lounge of the Royal Highland Hotel because once again the Caledonian lounge is overcrowded, short staffed and under provisioned (drinks but no food). Priority for club passengers it being honoured.

 

[Scotrail84]

Sitting here in the lounge of the Royal Highland Hotel because once again the Caledonian lounge is overcrowded, short staffed and under provisioned (drinks but no food). Priority for club passengers it being honoured.

Just get food on the train, not sure what you're expecting here, if it's overcrowded then would you really want to be in there anyway? Sounds like you've got the better deal here.

 

[norbitonflyer]

Because the deal is supposed to include free (not hotel price) drinks and snacks whilst waiting for boarding time.
Yes I can have a meal on the train, but not until after 8pm.
Anyway, the lounge car only seats 28.

 

[Scotrail84]

Because the deal is supposed to include free (not hotel price) drinks and snacks whilst waiting for boarding time.
Yes I can have a meal on the train, but not until after 8pm.
Anyway, the lounge car only seats 28.

If you're first class you have a point, if you're std class then you can't really complain.

 

[norbitonflyer]

If you're first class you have a point, if you're std class then you can't really complain.

club class

 

[diffarc]

So last night ended up with a blind that didn’t stay down, and no running water in the carriage. Staff were helpful as always, and provided some makeshift ways of securing the blind and provided free water, but can’t help feel they are being let down by poor maintenance!

A while back I had a room with the table completely missing, and staff left unaware until I informed them. Likewise another time with the heating control broken and stuck on highest heat!

 

[Davester50]

A while back I had a room with the table completely missing

I had that not too long after introduction.
I guess it's a result of putting heavy things on a flimsy MFI level table.

 

[Scotrail84]

So last night ended up with a blind that didn’t stay down, and no running water in the carriage. Staff were helpful as always, and provided some makeshift ways of securing the blind and provided free water, but can’t help feel they are being let down by poor maintenance!

A while back I had a room with the table completely missing, and staff left unaware until I informed them. Likewise another time with the heating control broken and stuck on highest heat!

These are issue that have plagued the fleet since introduction 6 years ago, it's likely they will never be able to resolve the issues because if they could, it would have happened by now. The whole fleet ends stripped bare and rebuilt properly.

 

[Blindtraveler]

Given the price being charged for every kind of accommodation on that train I don't think dismissing these issues as unfixable is acceptable and probably never has been apart from during the first introductory phase where things are bound to go wrong
Why it's even thought acceptable to send a train out in service with no running water to a carriage where passengers are supposedly paying mid to high-end market hotel prices for bed and board is really just not the done thing likewise climate control issue, given that there really aren't all that many to check would it be too difficult for someone's job specifically to be to check every compartment toilet and seat in the mornings to see if any of the bits and pieces within that area are in need of maintenance

 

[northscots]

Given the price being charged for every kind of accommodation on that train I don't think dismissing these issues as unfixable is acceptable and probably never has been apart from during the first introductory phase where things are bound to go wrong
Why it's even thought acceptable to send a train out in service with no running water to a carriage where passengers are supposedly paying mid to high-end market hotel prices for bed and board is really just not the done thing likewise climate control issue, given that there really aren't all that many to check would it be too difficult for someone's job specifically to be to check every compartment toilet and seat in the mornings to see if any of the bits and pieces within that area are in need of maintenance

Given the lack of rolling stocks, it's either send it out as it is, or cancel the bookings, leaving people stranded at the last minute. They can't just swap out a coach but they don't have spares.