Worst Post Privatisation operator?

[thenorthern]

I never travelled on Wales and West or Valley lines/Cardiff Railway Company but people have said they were bad. Northern Spirit and Merseyrail Electrics have been mentioned as bad as well, I travelled on Northern Spirit a few times and they seemed rather poor.

With the current Meresyrail I would say its neither good nor bad, its nothing special but it works all right so there is nothing wrong with it.

With First North Western I often felt it went down hill after the North Wales Coast trains were transferred to Wales and Border and the northern routes such as Furness and Blackpool were moved to First Transpennie leaving it with the older stock and not as busy routes.

 

[Blindtraveler]

1/Stansted Express/NXEA for me, made a very limmited number of trips with them, for good reason! The much extended journeytime of the coach was worth it to not be paying money for Nothing! NX Scotrail had there moments too, probs alrite for an occasional traveler buta nightmare esp towards the end for regular usage! Have never to this day understood how C2C can be so good at what they do?

 

[paulravuslante]

I never travelled on Wales and West or Valley lines/Cardiff Railway Company but people have said they were bad.

I was local to the Wales & West area at the time but can't remember anything too bad about them particularly.

Valley Lines I travelled on a few times and remember them swapping bearable 150s for 142s which seemed to be on their last legs.... Also I think they introduced an annoying afternoon peak fare meaning you couldn't return home until after 7pm.

 

[GrimsbyPacer]

EMT worst inter city operator.

Short formed trains, mainly 4 or 5 car Meridians on off peak services out of St Pancras, resulting in serious off peak overcrowding, esp on semi fast trains to Nottingham. Skeleton service only on Sunday with one train an hour to Nottingham and Sheffield calling virtually everywhere en route and, to add insult to injury, many of these once an hours trains only formed of 5 car Meridians. One train an hour between Derby and Crewe formed mainly of a single car 153 unit. Shocking overcrowding on this route.

Absolutely appalling rail company. No shortage of rolling stock in most cases. Just too mean spirited and penny pinching to get their stock out of the sidings. Absolutely scandalous waste of scarce trains paths on MML and platform capacity at St Pancras.

I agree that East Midlands handling of intercity services is bad.
The services they used to run included Barnsley, Burton and Matlock but the company instead made services to Corby taking trains away from the north end. Also the Norwich to Liverpool route has only 2 cars despite it's importance as a cross country route.

 

[Carlisle]

Connex is up there for sure. Probably the worst.

Although i do remember their relaunched Brighton Express service using refurbished 319s was widely praised as being of an excellent standard and the best internal revamp yet by a few of the railway magazine articles at the time

 

[ainsworth74]

Also the Norwich to Liverpool route has only 2 cars despite it's importance as a cross country route.

Erm Nottingham - Liverpool has four cars and has been like that for a while now...

 

[43074]

I agree that East Midlands handling of intercity services is bad.
The services they used to run included Barnsley, Burton and Matlock but the company instead made services to Corby taking trains away from the north end. Also the Norwich to Liverpool route has only 2 cars despite it's importance as a cross country route.

Matlock hasn't seen InterCity services since 2004 when the Meridians were introduced with Midland Mainline - there are a few bridges on the branch which make the use of Meridians unsuitable because they are so heavy. Burton-on-Trent is still well served by connections between XC and EMT services at Derby, and Barnsley was always an outpost that didn't really need IC services anyway, especially when Doncaster is so close. Corby was run using the ex Hull Trains 222/1s and those extensions only ran in peak hours only.

Liverpool to Norwich is 4 cars between Nottingham and Liverpool - the busy part of the route. More often than not 2 cars are enough between Norwich and Nottingham anyway.

 

[Doctor Fegg]

Burton-on-Trent is still well served by connections between XC and EMT services at Derby

And indeed XC and VT/LM at Tamworth, which is usually quickest. I caught the direct Burton-St Pancras services a couple of times when they were running (I worked in Burton for a while), always on low-priced Advances, and loadings from Burton were very poor.

 

[Qwerty133]

As a regular user of LM south of MK I disagree strongly. They had a bad spell soon after taking over from Silverlink but have got consistently quite reasonable, and they (together with Chiltern - the common element being David Whitley) were pioneers of Twitter being used for quality and up to date passenger information and communication.

There could be a whole thread on the reduction of standards of the LM Twitter feed, since said individual has ceased to be involved.

 

[ThePannier]

I would say CrossCountry, or CrossStinky as I've heard it called. Smelly trains, overcrowded coaches (a result of Voyagers being so short, no doubt, worst at peak times!)

 

[Qwerty133]

Matlock hasn't seen InterCity services since 2004 when the Meridians were introduced with Midland Mainline - there are a few bridges on the branch which make the use of Meridians unsuitable because they are so heavy. Burton-on-Trent is still well served by connections between XC and EMT services at Derby, and Barnsley was always an outpost that didn't really need IC services anyway, especially when Doncaster is so close. Corby was run using the ex Hull Trains 222/1s and those extensions only ran in peak hours only.

Liverpool to Norwich is 4 cars between Nottingham and Liverpool - the busy part of the route. More often than not 2 cars are enough between Norwich and Nottingham anyway.

222s I believe are now cleared to Matlock, and a service on a Saturday morning during summer using a double meridian splitting at Derby should be investigated, with a return on a Saturday afternoon. Corby does not stick to the 4 coach 222s, and even 4 coaches is 3 too many for some services, especially the 16:36 from Derby to London via Corby, which currently uses £1 megatrain tickets, and still runs empty, while services via leicester around this time are full and standing.

 

[thenorthern]

Although this was not an operator it did feature is the National Rail timetable as a company so it sort of counts, Railtrack PLC was awful at running the railways with numerous scandals and eventual bankruptcy as well as the major incidents many of which were said to be preventable such as Potters bar and Hatfield as well as the belief that they were putting costs before safety.

I have had people mention Thames Trains particularly after the Ladbroke Grove Rail Crash and for generally not operating trains very well but I never got to use them.

Although when Virgin Cross Country lost their franchise in 2007 they had definitely improved Cross Country services but in the disastrous Operation Princess with almost half of all trains late and the reliability problems with the new stock and the cramped conditions that people had to get used to when the voyagers were introduced definitely was a bad time. I remember in 2002 my mum saying "I have never got on a train on time from Oxenholme Lake District" it was that bad.

 

[Bletchleyite]

There could be a whole thread on the reduction of standards of the LM Twitter feed, since said individual has ceased to be involved.

True. His commitment to it was massive - he was often single-handedly manning it every evening and weekend - and his seniority meant that things that were out of place could get fixed very quickly. I once got a stop order inserted that way after pointing out on behalf of a friend who was travelling that a series of cancellations had left a one hour gap in northbound services from Bletchley, for instance.

I believe he's now back in operations as a route director somewhere around Brum.

Neil
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Although when Virgin Cross Country lost their franchise in 2007 they had definitely improved Cross Country services but in the disastrous Operation Princess with almost half of all trains late and the reliability problems with the new stock and the cramped conditions that people had to get used to when the voyagers were introduced definitely was a bad time. I remember in 2002 my mum saying "I have never got on a train on time from Oxenholme Lake District" it was that bad.

For all I prefer Voyagers, they'd have been vastly better off with a far larger number of cheaper Class 170 vehicles. Would at least have avoided some of the major retrenchments.

Neil

 

[Hophead]

This, Connex have to take the life time achievement award for worst TOC ever. They make FCC looked like they did a half decent job, am I right in thinking they are still the only operator to be formally stripped of a franchise because of their performance?

No, you are not. They lost the franchise due to financial irregularities, although the poor performance undoubtedly made the decision easier for the Strategic Rail Authority.

I don't think that any franchise has been terminated due to poor performance (and the bar in this aspect has been set pretty low over the years, hasn't it?).

 

[317 forever]

I notice your remark above tbtc about wondering why Arriva did not get involved in early franchising. Until 1996 Arriva were still called Cowie and just owned buses in London, before expanding out with acquisitions of County Bus, North East Bus and the biggie, British Bus. They then acquired MTL in 2000 and finally made their debut in rail operations.

 

[HarleyDavidson]

EMT worst inter city operator.

Short formed trains, mainly 4 or 5 car Meridians on off peak services out of St Pancras, resulting in serious off peak overcrowding, esp on semi fast trains to Nottingham. Skeleton service only on Sunday with one train an hour to Nottingham and Sheffield calling virtually everywhere en route and, to add insult to injury, many of these once an hours trains only formed of 5 car Meridians. One train an hour between Derby and Crewe formed mainly of a single car 153 unit. Shocking overcrowding on this route.

Absolutely appalling rail company. No shortage of rolling stock in most cases. Just too mean spirited and penny pinching to get their stock out of the sidings. Absolutely scandalous waste of scarce trains paths on MML and platform capacity at St Pancras.

LM worst commuter/regional operator

Much the same as EMT. No shortage of rolling stock, just too mean to get it out of the sidings. Frequent off peak overcrowding on Northampton line off peak trains due to 4 coaches only policy. Serious overcrowding all day on Euston to Crewe via Trent Valley services due to 4 coaches only. Never ending string of excuses for not lengthening trains on this service. Scandalous waste of scarce train paths on WCML out of Euston when it is alleged that WCML is running out of capacity - not yet it isn't. Totally undermines the case for HS2 when existing operators waste paths in this manner.

I have a few colleagues who used to work for EMT as both drivers & managers. Note the words used to.

They chucked them in because of the appalling attitude from the hierarchy and have moved to different companies and I am pleased to say that they are now very happy driving for those companies too.
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South West Trains, upon taking up the South Western franchise, made a big mistake by making some drivers redundant, and not launching a recruitment drive to replace those who had left due to retirement or career change. This did mean cancellations were fairly common in the franchise's early days.

Interestingly enough, the Network SouthEast Story by Chris Green paints a more sympathetic picture of Connex SE.

Yep. And an awful lot of drivers made an absolute killing out of it too.

 

[satisnek]

Connex South Central's reputation has always intrigued me. My experience of Coastway East services during this time was of clean, well-maintained stock, friendly staff and everthing running like clockwork. The London suburban services must have been breathtakingly dire to drag their reputation down to the gutter level which the media portrayed. Indeed, it was only after the franchise changed when the CIG stock started to look very shabby.

Thames Trains is the one which sticks in my mind as starting off very good, with the advantage of having almost brand new rolling stock, but subsequently degenerating into a decrepit, unreliable shambles.

 

[Suraggu]

Surely this thread will involve more of a personal opinion due to travelling experiences, previous employers etc etc.

For me personally its NXEC, even before the recession hit they made drastic cuts to everything to pay for the franchise.

 

[thenorthern]

What companies have surrendered their franchises or terminated by the government?

National Express East Coast, GNER, Connex South Central and Connex South Eastern are the ones I can find that have done/have had that done.

Virgin Cross Country (I think) and National Express East Anglia have sort of had that done to them.

Have any others done that?

 

[fgwrich]

Are you all too young to remember the Prism franchises, or has history been kinder to them than I remember at the time?

They won franchises without any promise/requirement to improve things and ran them into the ground - I remember the state of Valley Lines before National Express bought/rescued them in 2000 - you'd think that modern day Northern were Operator Of The Year in comparison!

Since you mentioned them, and I'd just about forgotten about them, Then Wales & West / Wales & Borders / Wessex Trains. Rolling stock maintenance or presentation never really being high on the W&B/WT agenda, along with short formations being quite common too. And then towards the end of the Wessex Franchise, when spare 158s were released out of Central Trains we ended up with 150s working Brighton / Portsmouth / Southampton / Weymouth to Cardiff, Great Malvern etc along with the 158/9 hybrids, while 150s & 158s worked the Devon Metro. Of which, frequencies on the branch lines also had something to be desired for too - including that on the Barny Branch. Granted NX did give the 150s a refurbishment, but the quality remained rather poor for quite some time - and into the fringes of the FGW franchise before messors Haines & Hopwood arrived, but since FGWs takeover we've got more frequent services, better connections, refurbished fleet that feels like it belongs to one TOC.

As for Sliverlink, I remember my first and lasting impressions of them particularly on the London Lines as a company just thought to itself, Why Bother?

 

[306024]

What companies have surrendered their franchises or terminated by the government?

National Express East Coast, GNER, Connex South Central and Connex South Eastern are the ones I can find that have done/have had that done.

Virgin Cross Country (I think) and National Express East Anglia have sort of had that done to them.

Have any others done that?

First Great Eastern never got a chance when it was time to rebid, allegedly due to an 'administrative error' at First Group, the SRA disqualified them before coming under starters orders. So the incumbent of the GEML franchise has never had a chance to keep it. Will Abellio keep it in October 2016 one wonders.

 

[ainsworth74]

Virgin Cross Country (I think) and National Express East Anglia have sort of had that done to them.

NXEA didn't get an automatic extension of their franchise in late 2009 due to the NXEC fiasco which meant that the franchise came due for re-letting. They then didn't win the new franchise as it went to Abellio so I'm not sure it's quite in the same league as something like Connex or GNER or NXEC.

Virgin XC ceased to exist during a normal franchise re-letting. I'm not aware of anything other than the franchise simply coming due for renewal causing this change and Virgin were the losers to Arriva so is nothing like the others.

 

[thenorthern]

Virgin XC ceased to exist during a normal franchise re-letting. I'm not aware of anything other than the franchise simply coming due for renewal causing this change and Virgin were the losers to Arriva so is nothing like the others.

Wasn't it meant to run until 2012 but it was cut short because of new franchises or something like that.

 

[Holmbridge]

Provided you live in Scotland, Merseyside and the Southwest of England this franchising lark seems to work then

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Wasn't it meant to run until 2012 but it was cut short because of new franchises or something like that.

Not quite.
Both Virgin West Coast and Virgin Cross Country (run pretty much as one franchise) were destroyed by the Railtrack/WCRM failure in 2001.
Virgin then ran both franchises for a while on a management contract ("Letter Agreement").
When it came to renegotiating the franchises (as Direct Awards, essentially, for the remaining term of the 15-year franchises), Virgin could not agree terms for XC so the SRA detached it and the rebid was won by Arriva in 2007.
Virgin did a new deal for West Coast, and the Birmingham-Preston-Scotland leg was moved from XC to WC during wider franchise remapping to satisfy all the egos.

Virgin West Coast went back onto a management contract after the rebid fiasco in 2012, and this has only recently been converted to a full (short) franchise contract under the direct award scheme.

 

[paddy1]

I have a few colleagues who used to work for EMT as both drivers & managers. Note the words used to.

They chucked them in because of the appalling attitude from the hierarchy and have moved to different companies and I am pleased to say that they are now very happy driving for those companies too.
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Yep. And an awful lot of drivers made an absolute killing out of it too.

I can't comment on their attitude to drivers and staff, but their contempt and disdain for passengers is all too evident by their getting rid of HST's and replacing them with 4/5 car Meridians, as well as the terrible Sunday service on the MML.

 

[306024]

NXEA didn't get an automatic extension of their franchise in late 2009 due to the NXEC fiasco which meant that the franchise came due for re-letting. They then didn't win the new franchise as it went to Abellio so I'm not sure it's quite in the same league as something like Connex or GNER or NXEC.

The extension of the NXEA franchise was not 'automatic' as such, it was subject to them achieving a number of pre-determined criteria which, hard as it might be to believe, they actually achieved. Then we had the NXEC fiasco which prevented NX from bidding for Greater Anglia, so rather than 'didn't win' they didn't even participate.

Abellio come riding over the horizon some six months before the Olympics to take on the remainder of the duration of the original NXEA franchise extension period, which itself is then extended to October 2016 following the WCML fiasco.

Simples

 

[paddy1]

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Erm Nottingham - Liverpool has four cars and has been like that for a while now...

It only got increased to 4 car because of the 'sardine can' protest several years ago where EMT were publicly shamed into having to do something to alleviate overcrowding on this route.
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[Bletchleyite]

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It only got increased to 4 car because of the 'sardine can' protest several years ago where EMT were publicly shamed into having to do something to alleviate overcrowding on this route.
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...which had existed right back into BR days. The 0749 Liverpool-Norwich, as well as having atrocious punctuality and reliability, was seriously overcrowded when I used it regularly for 3 months in 1997, as was the 1740 (Oxford Road) on the way back. CT used 3-car 170s on it for a bit which helped, but only the coming of 4-car 158s has provided anything resembling a proper solution, and with much more growth 6 will be needed soon.

Neil

 

[paddy1]

222s I believe are now cleared to Matlock, and a service on a Saturday morning during summer using a double meridian splitting at Derby should be investigated, with a return on a Saturday afternoon. Corby does not stick to the 4 coach 222s, and even 4 coaches is 3 too many for some services, especially the 16:36 from Derby to London via Corby, which currently uses £1 megatrain tickets, and still runs empty, while services via leicester around this time are full and standing.

The 4 car trains should be dedicated to the Corby route where loadings are much lower, and I believe that was the original intention, and the longer, 5 car, trains used on the Nottingham stoppers which are much busier. This is not how it has worked out, however, as all too often the Nottinghm stopper is worked by 4 car Meridians, which are generally always full and standing north and south of Leicester for much of the day.