Nottingham to Coventry via Nuneaton this evening.

[Blinkbonny]

My son bought a ticket for the above journey yesterday. He knew it involved a replacement bus journey between Nuneaton and Bermuda Park (a small industrial park on the outskirts of Nuneaton) but its timings and slightly cheaper price suited him. Today he finds that the services between Bermuda Park and Coventry are all cancelled.

Surely it is not the case that passengers for the Coventry line from Nuneaton will be put on a coach and then dropped off at night-time at a small industrial estate in the middle of nowhere? And also - if they were all cancelled before 22.00 last night (though how would he know?) then no Delay Repay would be payable or onward travel provided?

Obviously, I have told him to excess his ticket to travel via Birmingham, but is that all that is due to him?

Actually common sense tells me, they won't bother running the Bermuda Park replacement bus, and passengers for Coventry will be told to stay on the train to Birmingham, and he shouldn't need an excess - but who knows?

 

[mangyiscute]

west midlands have said here: https://twitter.com/WestMidRailway/status/1585639729718235137 that the buses will run for the whole line, so hopefully he can get off at Nuneaton and get a replacement coach to Coventry from there

 

[Blinkbonny]

Thanks,mangy. He's taken the easiest option of paying an excess to travel via New Street. I'm of the opinion he shouldn't have to pay anything at all, but there you go...

Bloke at the ticket office tells him he "thinks" there's a coach going from Nuneaton to Rugby and then onto Coventry!

I often get exasperated when friends and family turn to me for advice on railway matters, but really I can sometimes hardly blame them.

On a wider note, the connections and service between three large Midland cities in a forty mile radius is appalling (mostly the 20 miles between Leicester and Coventry to be fair). The fun we've had overr the last few years bailing him out over what we've come to refer to as The Nuneaton Shuffle... !"

The joke of it is that when the Nuneaton/Coventry line reopened to passenger traffic about 20 or so years ago, it was possible to get on a train at Coventry and get off at Nottingham about eighty minutes later.

Local wisdom has it that Richard Branson put a stop to this for whatever reason. Who knows? Local wisdom isn't always the strongest.

 

[Nova1]

The train service on the Leamington-Coventry-Nuneaton line has been terrible for the past couple of years, when covid became an issue they cut all services and replaced it with buses, and it still feels like they never quite ran trains properly again. The first sight of train crew issues and they bin off that line.

 

[david1212]

I do not know what is actually happening / has happened all day.

The radio travel bulletins continually say all Nuneaton <> Leamington services are cancelled due to train crew shortage and there is bus substitution.