I need to travel from Liverpool Lime Street to Heathrow on 9th July and would appreciate some advice please.
Given the reduction in on board services, is 1st class worth the premium fare currently?
How busy are services at the moment, I will be leaving Liverpool at about noon.
Thanks.
Can't speak for west coast but I have had to make some Inter City trips on EMR - it's busier now than it was at height of lock down but last week Friday towards London there were about 10 people in my carriage, northbound 2 people - these were off peak trips in morning and eve respectively.
Face mask wearing was broadly observed (whereas on my Thameslink part of the journey as many as 40% of people ignoring rules).
Not sure how you are supposed to eat a picnic etc whilst wearing a face mask without breaking the spirit of the rules.
It's not uncommon to encounter passengers too daft (I assume) to sit near the window which they repeatedly ask you to do so over the PA so you are further away from the aisle where people need to move about etc, and too daft to work out how to sit 2m away from someone else even when the train is relatively empty....
As per usual more people in the carriages nearer the buffers than up at the front of the train. Boarding at Liverpool you may be able to balance this.
Not sure if the software on AWC is up to doing it, but on EMR it can't allocate reservation to seats in a socially distanced manner it seems - so the reservation is just for the train and says 'sit in any unoccupied seat' on the ticket.
Seemed silly to me that advance 1st tickets were not really discounted very much (std were - when I booked I could pay £13.50 Std Class or £68 1st class) so the passenger load not spread over the full number of carriages (I'd have happily bought a good value Adv 1st). Only people I saw in 1st Class were thus staff.
Things will have charged a bit by 7th of july no doubt, with more people about.
I would advocate taking your own hand sanitizer as inevitable that you must touch lots of surfaces, tho of course you can use your elbow for door buttons etc.
Hope this helps.