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TFW 1W91 17:16 Cardiff to Holyhead service.

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voyagerdude220

Established Member
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13 Oct 2005
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3,264
Hi all,

Just a quick report about this train, which I used between Cardiff Central and Chester on Wednesday 5th February.

I have always been a big fan of this service, although haven't found the time to use it for a year or two, so I was very much looking forward to going on it again.

One thing which really surprised me, was how busy the train was in First Class. Every table was taken upon departure of Cardiff. I didn't hold a reservation (using a cheap Priv single and upgraded onboard the train) excellent value, none of the seats had reservations on them.

Unfortunately a group of three people who had reserved seats together had to sit apart.

I had the prawn salad to start, followed by the steak for my main course and the rice pudding for my dessert.

As always, all of the food was of superb quality. I couldn't fault any of the food and the lady in charge of serving us in First Class was extremely efficient, friendly and polite.

As I said earlier, I hadn't used the service for quite a long time, but I did seem to recognise the catering staff and I feel they deserve alot of credit, given the long hours they work and how efficiently they do.

I'm happy the service was so popular in First Class, as I'm assuming this makes it more likely to continue running in the future.

Is there a trend to how busy it is on any given day of the week, or is it usually very busy in First Class these days?

I think we arrived at Chester a few minutes late, we seemed to stop at Abergavenny and Wrexham General for several minutes.
 

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StarCrossing

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27 Jul 2015
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Some scattered thoughts:
  • In my experience, mostly on Fridays, numbers in 1st class can very from only about half a dozen to every seat being taken. Sometimes there's no obvious reason for the differences.
  • Even when reservation slips have been laid out, passengers seem to ignore them, and the staff seem fine with this. If you have a reservation you'll get a seat, but like you I've seen groups split up despite having seat reservations together. As you say, the staff are very good, but it would be good if they could manage this better. It's a bit difficult to evict someone from your reserved seat after boarding at Newport if the offender is eating a bowl of soup!
  • The train is always late when I use it (usually Newport to Wrexham), though usually only by 5-15 minutes.
  • Whilst a full carriage certainly won't harm the future of the service, I'm sure it will still be running at a loss when full, so its future depends on the subsidy continuing. Others will be closer to this than I am though.
 

voyagerdude220

Established Member
Joined
13 Oct 2005
Messages
3,264
Some scattered thoughts:
  • In my experience, mostly on Fridays, numbers in 1st class can very from only about half a dozen to every seat being taken. Sometimes there's no obvious reason for the differences.
  • Even when reservation slips have been laid out, passengers seem to ignore them, and the staff seem fine with this. If you have a reservation you'll get a seat, but like you I've seen groups split up despite having seat reservations together. As you say, the staff are very good, but it would be good if they could manage this better. It's a bit difficult to evict someone from your reserved seat after boarding at Newport if the offender is eating a bowl of soup!
  • The train is always late when I use it (usually Newport to Wrexham), though usually only by 5-15 minutes.
  • Whilst a full carriage certainly won't harm the future of the service, I'm sure it will still be running at a loss when full, so its future depends on the subsidy continuing. Others will be closer to this than I am though.

Thank you for your post Star Crossing.

Like you said yourself, it would have been rather impractical to ask others to move when the group who had reserved seats joined the train at Newport.

I felt very sorry for them, particularly given they had booked in advance and reserved seats together.

In my opinion, if the reservations have been correctly placed on the seats, they should be observed as such, to prevent groups being unable to occupy their booked seats together.
 
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