Best and Worst Train Companies Ever.

[Doomotron]

South Eastern must be pretty high up there with its financial irregularities that required near on immediate removal of the franchisee.

Assuming you're talking about the 2006-2021 franchise, the franchises wasn't removed, just not renewed (but spun as the former by the government to look proactive). But in practical terms, Govia improved greatly over their time in power and especially the mainline operation, which is very reliable. Overall, SE at the end was a far cry from Connex. It generally has improved under the OLR, although I do blame them solely for making me have to wake up at 5am for work. Plus, the OLR haven't implemented many (if not all) of the changes suggested in the cancelled franchise competition, so no fast trains to Charing Cross and Deal has a service so minimal Ikea would try to sell it.

This is a fair summary. Generally my experience of using Connex was the trains generally did run and did tend to be generally on time, and to be fair their stations were reasonably well kept, but that’s as far as it went. Staff morale was abysmal and the trains were in poor condition. My experience was it was more the inner suburban trains which were in terrible condition, I don’t remember the south eastern’s slam door trains being that bad, though they were all essentially kept in ex NSE condition.

Evidently very little was done in terms of security on the inner suburban routes, however they were by no means the only operator whose inner suburban fleet got into a state around that time.

One thing Connex *did* get right, the 375 Electrostars were very well specified indeed. It’s interesting Govia dumbed down the specification on the later Electrostar interiors. The luxurious interiors today of Kent’s Electrostar fleet is probably Connex’s best legacy.

Is it clear exactly why Connex' staff morale was so low?

 

[HamworthyGoods]

Assuming you're talking about the 2006-2021 franchise, the franchises wasn't removed, just not renewed (but spun as the former by the government to look proactive). But in practical terms, Govia improved greatly over their time in power and especially the mainline operation, which is very reliable. Overall, SE at the end was a far cry from Connex. It generally has improved under the OLR, although I do blame them solely for making me have to wake up at 5am for work. Plus, the OLR haven't implemented many (if not all) of the changes suggested in the cancelled franchise competition, so no fast trains to Charing Cross and Deal has a service so minimal Ikea would try to sell it.

Is it clear exactly why Connex' staff morale was so low?

Any franchise which ‘looses’ £25m of taxpayers money by default fits very well into the OP’s question of a ‘bad franchise’ - how many other franchises have ended after a serious fraud investigation?

 

[bramling]

Is it clear exactly why Connex' staff morale was so low?

The latter is a very interesting question. I don’t really know the answer, though the silly uniform probably didn’t help - though one could say it was simply ahead of its time given the garbage some operators like TFL have rolled out in recent years.

I can certainly remember staff were quite visibly miserable especially on the south central side of Connex.

 

[Doomotron]

Any franchise which ‘looses’ £25m of taxpayers money by default fits very well into the OP’s question of a ‘bad franchise’ - how many other franchises have ended after a serious fraud investigation?

That's why I said in practical terms - the fraud never affected passengers or even staff. The actual running of Southeastern trains improved significantly over the franchise and SE were responsible for the very good HS1 domestic service.

 

[yorksrob]

Indeed. At the time, travelling on South Eastern was a comparatively relaxing and stress free experience for me, due mainly to plenty of alternative routes, decent half hourly services, lengthy comfortable trains etc. This is still true on the longer distance services.