TRIVIA: Shortest-distance services with on-board catering, longest ones without

[DanTrain]

What about the Sheffield-Derby ECS Plus trains. Do they have catering?

 

[route101]

Glasgow to Edinburgh via Falkirk High surely in Scotland.

 

[JetStream]

I've been on a 153 with a trolley on the HoW...

Used to do Shrewsbury to Llandrindod Wells, but I believe this stopped last year.

 

[hexagon789]

Glasgow to Edinburgh via Falkirk High surely in Scotland.

These days, yes. There was once a Perth-Dundee early morning service in the 1990s with First and a trolley.

 

[rg177]

When East Coast ran Leeds-Doncaster services only during engineering works, the Food Bar was open as normal.

Nobody seemed to partake and the staff remarked to a dispatcher at Wakefield Westgate that "running this is f**** pointless!"

 

[185143]

Longest without could be the 15:50 Sundays Only Whitby-Carlisle in the new timetable, taking an impressive 4hr 37mins!

 

[Parallel]

Longest without could be the 15:50 Sundays Only Whitby-Carlisle in the new timetable, taking an impressive 4hr 37mins!

Not far behind, Great Malvern - Weymouth is 4hr 22 mins without catering.

 

[Bishopstone]

The trolley on Gatwick Express was only abolished in 2015.

If the formation was 2x442 and the perambulation started from the ‘wrong’ end, airport-bound First Class customers would be offered their complimentary lukewarm instant in the Salfords area...

Just as the GatEx trolley was demised, GWR put a trolley on some daytime North Downs (Gatwick-Reading) services, which I believe continues to this day. That’s a fairly short catered run.

 

[Michael.Y]

I had a trolley on the ATW Crewe-Chester shuttle once! Went through the train seeing if anyone wanted owt, think it was just a positioning move though.

That was me. Was doing my normal NWP-HHD-NWP 10-hour poke when there was a last minute set-swap at Chester. By the time I managed to detrain, toddle over to the waiting unit at departure time minus 10 seconds it was full and standing and no way I could get on. So I shrugged and pulled my trolley over to the depot, popped my sandwiches in the fridge and, having worked out I had the best part of 3 hours before my southbound train arrived back from North Wales and not wanting either for my coffee to go to waste or to sit around twiddling my thumbs, volunteered to go back and fore Chester-Crewe a couple of times. Managed to bemuse a couple of passengers and I think I sold one bottle of Coke in the entire time, but hey, that was £1.80 I wouldn't have earned otherwise.

We were on one of those ATW 150s that had the murals of Caerphilly Castle at either end on the vestibule walls, which one rather uppity and posh madam mistook for peeling paint and proceeded to berate me about the terrible condition of our trains.

 

[43055]

The 2x2 car 170 diagram on the Nottingham to Cardiff service does not have any catering which is a journey of around 3 and a half hours.

 

[mr williams]

There's an early Bristol Parkway to Penzance which comes in at a few minutes under five hours with no catering. At the low point of BR in the mid to late 70s there was no catering on the Cardiff to Portsmouth/Crewe/Manchester trains and in the early 80s I remember catching a Liverpool-Norwich through train with nothing on offer.

Edit: just looked at NRE and there's still nothing advertised on the Liverpool-Norwich trains at 5hr 31mins!

 

[D365]

Edit: just looked at NRE and there's still nothing advertised on the Liverpool-Norwich trains at 5hr 31mins!

Yep, no trolleys on that. Although if travelling Manchester-Peterborough it's almost always quicker to change at Sheffield and Doncaster.

 

[GarethC]

Edit: just looked at NRE and there's still nothing advertised on the Liverpool-Norwich trains at 5hr 31mins!

According to the printed timetable in have in front of me there is a trolley service between Peterborough and Liverpool, although only when indicated. I have seen and used the trolley on these services many times. Linked to this thread, there are some early morning journeys which indicate the trolley is only on between Nottingham and Peterbrough.

A few years ago the catering was only on between Sheffield and Stockport (the accompanying literature suggesting that was the busiest bit). Even if it was busy you could buy a drink on Platform 0 at Stockport.

More recently the trolley was doing well selling drinks in the waiting room at Peterborough whilst waiting to join a Liverpool bound service (lots of people didn't have the change for the vending machines).

Gareth

 

[Crossover]

Not quite the longest, but there will be some lengthy TPE services that have no catering. On the North East route, catering I think is only on the "core" (Manchester to Leeds/York) up to 20:00. That would mean the 20:22 Liverpool Lime St to Newcastle would have no catering service on its nearly 4 hour run

 

[infobleep]

The trolley on Gatwick Express was only abolished in 2015.

If the formation was 2x442 and the perambulation started from the ‘wrong’ end, airport-bound First Class customers would be offered their complimentary lukewarm instant in the Salfords area...

Just as the GatEx trolley was demised, GWR put a trolley on some daytime North Downs (Gatwick-Reading) services, which I believe continues to this day. That’s a fairly short catered run.

There was trolleys on the here service in the last too on the North Downs Line. I saw them more back then than I do now. I guess the tunes they appear now are when I'm not travelling.

Perhaps catering is more popular during the day.

 

[DarloRich]

I've never seen a trolley on any Tyne Valley service...

I am sure there was a trolley on the long distance Newcastle - Stranraer services in the distant past. Might have imagined it