47271
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- 28 Apr 2015
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Look at my lovely full meal dinner service earlier this week!
Look at my lovely full meal dinner service earlier this week!
The sausage roll - I keep thinking it's getting smaller, but some early photos I have seem to confirm it's always been that size.
They seem to have a bad week. One of the days (I think it was Wednesday), I saw tweets from customers saying no hot food on the 1730, 1819, 1833 and 1900 out of KGX and also on two southbound services.
Those were on trains where people bothered to tweet and that I happened to notice.
For me, it's making rail travel less attractive. Last year I only used domestic flights occasionally (and came to the conclusion train beats plane), this year has been different. As BA rewards loyalty, I have lounge access even on the cheapest tickets which means I get something to eat and drink. It's not as nice as the chef prepared VTEC evening meals, but the danger of getting only a sausage roll or a sandwich in a box seems to be increasing.
Ah, but this sausage roll is better because it was designed by a celebrity chef.Is that what passes for First Class nowadays?
I've had more high brow fare from Casey Jones in the 1980s.
What's in the small brown bowl?
Were they ill due to eating the staff sausage roll mealFew services cancelled or have made an additional stop today due to on board staff taking ill
The 16.33 King's Cross service to Leeds and 19:45 Leeds to London Kings Cross both cancelled due to the train manager taking ill
The 16:30 London Kings Cross to Edinburgh called additionally at Grantham due to a member of on-train staff taking ill during the journey
Not seen anything from VTEC now they've been running a couple of years to suggest they are better than the likes of East Coast or GNER.
I'd have to agree really. Lots of fanfare and nonsense, little by way of a good service.
Agreed, cost-cutting and watering down of the service level at every opportunity.
I am pleased I am not travelling on the 1500hrs London to Sterling this afternoon:
''Facilities on the 15:00 London Kings Cross to Stirling due 20:15.
Catering is not available throughout''.
https://www.virgintrainseastcoast.com/travel-information/travel-alerts/
As others have said, service is definitely slipping on VTEC.
Outside the severest of disruption, a London-Stirling journey with no catering at all would be really very poor indeed!
Those pre-set types of messages can be a bit generic, though, and don't always give the full picture. Hopefully there was some sort of supply of something at some point!
If it was the case, I'm guessing (but only guessing, as I've heard no different!) that there was some sort of technical failure which was wiping out the food storage and preparation facilities. Limiting things to cold drinks and non-perishable items wouldn't have left much choice, but I guess could have been started up mid-journey, with the couple of hours of forward planning which could have been possible. If crew issues were the cause - I'd be concerned at any TOC which wants to maintain any sort of reputation if they managed to run out of catering crew entirely, on such a long journey with many major stations en route.
I'd have to agree really. Lots of fanfare and nonsense, little by way of a good service.
My opinion of the ECML service started to slump when GNER ended. They IMO took a lot of beating.