Your favourite and least favourite UK rail operators?

[Matt N]

Hi guys. Here in the UK, the railway network is often a source of a good moan from Brits. Whether it’s delays, cancellations or general rail-related grievances, people are often not very happy with our railway network, to say the least. However, I’ve noticed that some operators tend to draw more ire from people than others. So as I stand on Cardiff Central’s platform this evening waiting for the next train home after my prior one was cancelled, I’d be keen to know; which are your favourite and least favourite of the UK’s various rail operators? Which railway operator generally delivers the best service, in your view, and which one is to be avoided?

Personally, I’ve travelled on 4 different operators’ trains, to my memory.

My favourite is probably Great Western Railway. They have really nice trains, they normally have a good amount of carriages running, and I haven’t had any terrible cancellation or delay experiences with them either.

My least favourite is probably CrossCountry. I travel with them relatively often, and they often seem to run very few carriages relative to the number of people on the train, resulting in a very cramped train. They also seem to be the operator who seem most prone to random cancellations or long delays, in my experience (albeit admittedly not as bad as a couple of years ago), and I think their trains could maybe do with updating to spruce them up add newer features like plug sockets (the trains that run on the Cardiff-Nottingham route, anyway).

In terms of the other two I’ve travelled with:

• Transport for Wales is my other most frequent operator, and I find them a bit of a mixed bag. Their new trains are very nice, but it seems to be a bit of a lottery as to whether you get one of these or a screechy train from the 1980s. They generally run on time and rarely seem to randomly cancel, but I do find that like CrossCountry, they occasionally don’t run enough coaches for the amount of people on the train (not quite as habitually, but they still only ran 2 coaches to Cheltenham during Cheltenham Festival, for example, which was bedlam!).
• I also travelled on South Western Railway on a trip I did last year, and I didn’t have anything bad to say about them. Their trains were quite nice and smart and very well stocked in terms of coaches, and everything ran on time, so I can’t complain, really!

I haven’t been on any others. I’ve heard bad things about Avanti West Coast and Northern up in the North (I don’t know if any Northerners on here can corroborate this), but I haven’t personally travelled on them.

But I’d be interested to know; which UK rail operators are your favourites and least favourites?

 

[John_P]

Northern have always been pretty bad, though they finally got rid of those dreaded pacer trains. Was nothing worse than being stuck on one of them, especially in cold weather when you seemed to be running the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning when they had the heaters on.

Avanti are dreadful, somehow won the franchise from Virgin Trains who at least seemed competent. Promised 2 trains an hour from Liverpool to Euston which has never happened. Never seem to have decent priced tickets either unless your booking 6 months in advance.

London-Midland (or whatever it's called nowadays). Used to use these quite regularly going to Birmingham, and occasionally London, Watford, and Drayton Manor. Seems the most reliable of the inter city services I've regularly used.

Transpennine, seems OK when I've been to York or caught the service from Manchester back to Liverpool.

Merseyrail, my local service which I use all the time. Finally got new trains over the past year and they mostly work fine. Biggest issue for me is the reduction in services at off peak times, and on Sundays. Still feels like public transport in this country is operated like it's the 1950s and no one goes out after 6pm or on Sundays.

 

[Thameslink Rail]

Out of operators I've used recent-ish-ly
Southeastern (Javelins are underrated)
East Midlands Railway (Decent service but trains not best suited for London-Corby)
London Northwestern (Infrequent I've found)
Southern (Reliabilty not great and overcrowded on Sundays)
Thameslink (Awful reliability and even worse seats)

 

[Zeock]

From the last six months:
Southeastern
Thameslink
South Western Railway
Southern

 

[Martin]

London-Midland (or whatever it's called nowadays). Used to use these quite regularly going to Birmingham, and occasionally London, Watford, and Drayton Manor. Seems the most reliable of the inter city services I've regularly used.

Not experienced their regularly broken toilets yet then? Not uncommon to have only one or none working, even when running double consists these days

 

[pluk]

Around these parts Greater Anglia are known as Later Angrier. They aren't great, probably not the worst comfort or service wise, but they love a weekend bus replacement service and for their mediocrity they are crazy expensive.
We have two lines coming out of London to Southend, C2C and Greater Anglia, same distance, similar rolling stock and number of stations. Greater Anglia is about twice the ticket price. Infuriating.

 

[WillPS]

They're all shite, cynical, anti-passenger organisations run by accountants on behalf of DfT beancounters. Possibly excluding ScotRail and TfW.

The sooner the whole lot are properly nationalised the better.

 

[QTXAdsy]

They're all shite, cynical, anti-passenger organisations run by accountants on behalf of DfT beancounters. Possibly excluding ScotRail and TfW.

The sooner the whole lot are properly nationalised the better.

Speaking of ScotRail for my part, if you live in the Central Belt then all seems fine, anyway north or south of it like me in Fife can be quite a game of Russian Roulette regarding staff shortages and that and they are a Nationalised business which honestly you can't tell the difference to other companies.

Sooner we get the overhead wires and retirement of the reliable yet ancient 158's north of the Forth and Tay the better.

 

[Jonathan]

My local TOC is Northern. Erm...Yeah, they're usually fine, but they have an annoying penchant for cancelling Sunday services to my local station (Congleton), and have been doing this for quite some time. The local MP ain't happy, and she's been working hard to try and get things back to how they should be.

Long-distance, I have Avanti. They're...a thing, and are nowhere near as good as Virgin once were. My usual plan when using them to get down to London is as follows:

1. Get on board.
2. Find my seat while putting my luggage in the nearest available rack with space.
3. Start unloading my stuff.
4. As soon as the train moves, make a beeline for the shop in coach C.
5. Purchase wine.
6. Return to seat
7. Consume wine while either watching a film or reading and listening to music.

 

[QTXAdsy]

Wee question seeming how, IIRC, that SWR, Southeastern and C2C are the first to be nationalised and given they all fall under former Network South East territory, who wouldn't love to see NSE make a grand return with those three merging to be a clear sign of different times coming back?

Regarding Northern I feel for running such a large area means there is more chance for trouble in which a smaller area might be a little bit more manageable, can't be worse than now. I always felt that the Sector model from the 80s seemed to work and was only scunnered thanks to Privatisation and maybe Northern should be split into two or three zones like say making Network North West actually working out better and maybe say a pure Yorkshire Sector covering all the lines in Yorkshire into one unit and perhaps something similar for Tyne and Wear with all these sectors focusing on smaller yet in theory easier operations.

Much to think about for what might be.

 

[Matt.GC]

The best experience I had on a UK train was with Virgin when they ran the Cross Country route. When you're used to First Group turning up with a 2 carriage pink and purple livered Pacer with standing room only (or not even letting you in because it was full!) to trundle down the Severn Beach line, a brand new and clean Voyager turning up with friendly staff pouring you glasses of wine was a game changer back in the 2000's.

But then Arriva CrossCountry won the franchise and it's been crap ever since.

The cross country route was always the ugly step sister of the national rail lines, even in the British Rail days. By the time of the franchises privatisation in 1997, Virgin inherited a bunch of 1960's built class 47's and Mark 2 coaches from British Rail. But they replaced all of it within a few years with brand new Voyagers. May not seem like much today, but the Super Voyager tilted, there were dot-matrix displays on the side, and the doors could be opened automatically with a button and not a manual handle! It felt like you were in a modern country in Europe, not the backwards old UK. Some of the newest intercity trains on the entire network at the time.

Sadly, Arriva kept the Voyagers when they won the franchise and their flaws became apparent. As Diesel multiple units, there was an engine under your seat vibrating away and making a loud noise. The Voyagers didn't tilt, and the Super Voyagers had this function disabled, yet there was limited headroom in the saloon because it was designed to tilt. Virgin only bought 4 and 5 car sets. But the route became quite popular, and the capacity became quite pathetic with rampant overcrowding.

Last went on a CrossCountry Voyager a couple of years ago. It was awful. Outside they slapped a slightly darker livery on the old Virgin branding over a decade beforehand and called it a day. There were no staff on board, and the cabin still had the original Virgin furnishings from the early 2000's. Virgin colours and everything, only now with stains, broken stuff, ripped seat lining, and a stinking toilet. They coupled 2x4 car sets together to deal with the capacity issue. What a mess. To think, this operator with these exact trains, runs the longest rail service in the entire country (14 hours I believe?) between Aberdeen and Penzance.

Best train I've been on was GWR Castle Class when they were running local services. The HST was designed for the Great Western Mainline, and lasted so long compared to other mainlines that the government commissioned the creation of a new train to replace them whilst the rest of the country were riding around in far more modern trains. Even when they did replace them with an inferior train, these HST's were still regularly wheeled out to carry the load on major routes when the newer trains broke down.

But it refused to leave, and GWR relivered them and shortened them to 2+4 and used them for commuter services. Where else in the country could you say that happened? They were maintained in Plymouth, St Phillips Marsh, or Old Oak Common and the engineers knew them well. They had been a back bone of the line between the 1970's to the 2020's and still wouldn't go.

You had all the advantages of the very comfortable ride, refined cabin, and excellent layout of the Intercity HST, but without the drawbacks as they retrofitted them with automatic doors and septic tanks. So you could be standing in a single platform station in the middle of nowhere and a comfortable and high capacity Intercity 125 would pull up to take you a couple of stops down the line in complete comfort. But now, if you wanted a poo, you knew you could flush it without risking some poor Network Rail engineer getting his orange High-Vis dirty.

Of course our Scottish friends can still enjoy them, but back in use for more long distance routes, as they were leased to ScotRail last year having only been in service for a very short time. Apparently running a 50 year old high speed and long distance train for local stopping services used a lot of Diesel, which GWR were well aware of after the Ukraine war started. Come to think of it, using 2 x 2,250 horsepower power cars capable of 140mph did seem a little excessive to carry passengers a couple of miles between single platform stations. But it certainly sorted their single/2 coach Pacer capacity problem out, and for a short time we had the best damn commuter service experiences in the country.

Since fuel is so expensive, and the government cut back the line electricteication works numerous times, a nice and comfortable Super Sprinter, a hand-me-down Turbo that the South East doesn't want anymore, or the HST's replacement IET class 800 will turn up. Because the Castle Class HST's were intended to carry most of the workload before the price of fuel went through the roof, they had to hastily scrape around to find second hand Turbo's and make full use of the IET's.

The IET's are a poor replacement for HST's. Ironically, they're actually better at commuter services than they are long-distance. They accelerate fast, are quite quiet, and are high capacity. But I went to London on one last year, and the seats are awfully uncomfortable, it feels like it's shaking itself apart at 100mph, and Furious Baco at 125. The 8 car sets go back and forth between Temple Meads or Parkway to London Paddington all day, and during peak hours, 2 x 5 car sets are joined together for the long distance route in and out of London and split into two at Temple Meads or Parkway where they continue to work commuter routes into Wales, Devon, and Cornwall.

They really use these trains quite heavily. They're now the back bone of GWR's intercity and commenter routes. Many other train operators seem to be snapping them up as well as they're apparently easy to maintain and come in electric, diesel, or bi-mode (the fact that they need bi-mode trains in the first place speaks volumes about how crap this country is at infrastructure projects).

But they're not a patch on the comfort and refinement of the HST they replaced, which was like riding to London on a whisper quiet cloud. "Built with Bullet Train Technology" my ass. More like ordered from Hitachi's Value range catalogue.

 

[Leigh]

GWR? Favourite? I mean… sure, apart from having rolling stock that date back to the Middle Ages and a rather interesting approach to timetabling and resourcing (getting caught up at Paddington with 3x9 coach IET loads piled into a short formed 5 coach to the southwest on more than one occasion…)

Personally, my favourite TOC is probably West Midlands Trains (WMR and LNWR). A full complement of modern rolling stock, mostly all electrified routes and their trains generally run to time - plus their fares are generally pretty good relative to other TOCs.

And worst? XC. The number of short formed Voyagers full and standing by Exeter going north is downright diabolical. Also Voyagers are poop. Quite literally.

 

[Jonathan]

GWR? Favourite? I mean… sure, apart from having rolling stock that date back to the Middle Ages and a rather interesting approach to timetabling and resourcing (getting caught up at Paddington with 3x9 coach IET loads piled into a short formed 5 coach to the southwest on more than one occasion…)

Personally, my favourite TOC is probably West Midlands Trains (WMR and LNWR). A full complement of modern rolling stock, mostly all electrified routes and their trains generally run to time - plus their fares are generally pretty good relative to other TOCs.

And worst? XC. The number of short formed Voyagers full and standing by Exeter going north is downright diabolical. Also Voyagers are poop. Quite literally.

Mmm, sewer trains. How lovely. I was stuck on one from Reading to Macclesfield once, and had to sit by the toilet for the whole duration. Not pleasant.

 

[Leigh]

Best train I've been on was GWR Castle Class when they were running local services. The HST was designed for the Great Western Mainline, and lasted so long compared to other mainlines that the government commissioned the creation of a new train to replace them whilst the rest of the country were riding around in far more modern trains. Even when they did replace them with an inferior train, these HST's were still regularly wheeled out to carry the load on major routes when the newer trains broke down.

But it refused to leave, and GWR relivered them and shortened them to 2+4 and used them for commuter services. Where else in the country could you say that happened? They were maintained in Plymouth, St Phillips Marsh, or Old Oak Common and the engineers knew them well. They had been a back bone of the line between the 1970's to the 2020's and still wouldn't go.

You had all the advantages of the very comfortable ride, refined cabin, and excellent layout of the Intercity HST, but without the drawbacks as they retrofitted them with automatic doors and septic tanks. So you could be standing in a single platform station in the middle of nowhere and a comfortable and high capacity Intercity 125 would pull up to take you a couple of stops down the line in complete comfort. But now, if you wanted a poo, you knew you could flush it without risking some poor Network Rail engineer getting his orange High-Vis dirty.

Of course our Scottish friends can still enjoy them, but back in use for more long distance routes, as they were leased to ScotRail last year having only been in service for a very short time. Apparently running a 50 year old high speed and long distance train for local stopping services used a lot of Diesel, which GWR were well aware of after the Ukraine war started. Come to think of it, using 2 x 2,250 horsepower power cars capable of 140mph did seem a little excessive to carry passengers a couple of miles between single platform stations. But it certainly sorted their single/2 coach Pacer capacity problem out, and for a short time we had the best damn commuter service experiences in the country.

Since fuel is so expensive, and the government cut back the line electricteication works numerous times, a nice and comfortable Super Sprinter, a hand-me-down Turbo that the South East doesn't want anymore, or the HST's replacement IET class 800 will turn up. Because the Castle Class HST's were intended to carry most of the workload before the price of fuel went through the roof, they had to hastily scrape around to find second hand Turbo's and make full use of the IET's.

You’ll be very pleased to know they’re still going down here on the Cornish Mainline on Plymouth-Penzance runs only. It looks like they’re going to be getting a reprieve until the end of the year, after which time the entire fleet of ex-TfW 175s will be entering to replace them and some IETs running Cardiff-Penzance (which should allow them to be cascaded back onto the currently chronically short formed InterCity routes out of Paddington).

 

[Vik]

I find Merseyrail pretty decent and the new trains are a massive step up from the old ones which were pushing 47 years old. And they also have level boarding. Only gripe is the ticketing system is stuck in the 80s and we’ve been promised contactless for what seems like an eternity.

TransPennine seem much better these days compared to a few years ago. Transport for Wales are a bit of a miss with performance but the new trains are decent and they’ve banished the 150s to South Wales pending withdrawal.

Northern are and always have been a basket case and the 150s 156s are in dire need of replacement.

Used London Northwestern between Crewe and Euston and usually ok albeit pretty late, but never any quibble on getting delay repay.

C2C pretty good but been a while since I’ve had the pleasure.

Not used Avanti much. Nothing like the previous incarnation. Never had the misfortune of Cross Country.

And I’ve been on many a German train, and Northern are even worse than that.

 

[Matt.GC]

You’ll be very pleased to know they’re still going down here on the Cornish Mainline on Plymouth-Penzance runs only. It looks like they’re going to be getting a reprieve until the end of the year, after which time the entire fleet of ex-TfW 175s will be entering to replace them and some IETs running Cardiff-Penzance (which should allow them to be cascaded back onto the currently chronically short formed InterCity routes out of Paddington).

I heard the HST Castles were lingering on down that neck of the woods. Sent to Plymouth depot after being withdrawn up here and many sent to ScotRail.

GWR are seriously short of trains. The IET's seem to be carrying much of the weight but there isn't enough of them. They were made to replace the HST's on intercity routes (because rattling around sitting in a seat that feels like it's made of bricks is the future apparently), but they rocking in to local stations left right and centre. The money spent on the Castle class, before almost immediately ditching them and stretching their IET lineup to capacity seems bizarre to me.

 

[Leigh]

I heard the HST Castles were lingering on down that neck of the woods. Sent to Plymouth depot after being withdrawn up here and many sent to ScotRail.

GWR are seriously short of trains. The IET's seem to be carrying much of the weight but there isn't enough of them. They were made to replace the HST's on intercity routes (because rattling around sitting in a seat that feels like it's made of bricks is the future apparently), but they rocking in to local stations left right and centre. The money spent on the Castle class, before almost immediately ditching them and stretching their IET lineup to capacity seems bizarre to me.

In fairness I don’t think it was a GWR decision to get rid of them - the decision came from the DfT who wanted rid of them ASAP. Only reason the Laira ones have got this brief reprieve is because there’s genuinely no other stock available, and even then they’re banned in passenger service east of Plymouth. I think it took a lot of convincing for GWR to take on the 175s even considering they’ve been stung by Coradia family units before (remember the Adelante’s? You’ll be going nowhere…). Plus the fact they spent their last few years on TfW chronically on fire due to lack of maintenance.

I’ve came around more to IETs recently, but only because it’s a choice between them and a Voyager.

 

[QTXAdsy]

In fairness I don’t think it was a GWR decision to get rid of them - the decision came from the DfT who wanted rid of them ASAP.

Ironically, the Scottish Government want rid of them too though likely over driver's backlash from using them following the events of 2020 so lightning strikes twice for the HST sets.

More than likely they will be replaced by yet more IET Bi-mode trains which is perhaps not really a surprise but given how an order was supposed to replace the aging 158 and 156 sets from the network, this fast track order for new express units will have a knock on effect pushing things back further.

 

[MellowPasta]

Favourite - Chiltern
Least Favourite - Southern.

 

[Matt.GC]

The DfT iniated the Intercity Express programme to replace the HST's, with the government, Hitachi, and First Group heavily invested. It kind of makes sense that they're being used almost everywhere now with the amount of money that went into them. They have purpose built maintaince facilities, they're heavily versatile, high capacity, economic with diesel, fast accelerators, and apparently quite reliable when you exclude the cracking bogey problem in 2017.

Quite fitting when you consider that they were specifically designed and built to replace a workhorse train that is still used as the back up default nuclear button option when all else fails. This includes the IET itself. It didn't take long for GWR to bring the HST sets back out in to full mainline express service as soon as the IET was recalled in 2017, and most national operators keep some sets spare in case of emergency. XC and GWR have been known to wheel HST sets out when they're struggling with capacity and maintenance problems with their main fleets.

I don't have a big problem with the IET, I just find them uncomfortable on long journeys and at high speed. The seats are really hard, first class is poor, they rattle loudly at high speed, the sink in the toilets seems like it was specifically designed to give your clothes a hose down, and you never know when booking if you're going to be sat in a car above an engine or not. Although with XC expecting you to sit in what feels like actually being inside the engine compartment on a Voyager from the tip of Cornwall all the way up to the middle of Scotland, the IET is an improvement on that at least. The cabins and vestibules are also light and spacious, and they're reasonably quiet.

I understand the need to get rid of loud trains (although nowhere near as loud since they replaced the original Valentas with the MIT engines) that drink fuel, heavily pollute, look "old fashioned", can't run on electric, aren't fully accessible by design, originally made to dump sewage onto the tracks with slam doors, and are now nearing 50 years old. It's just that the IET's aren't a patch on an HST's comfort and refinement. I'd personally far prefer an HST to turn up to take me on 2 hours journey than an IET.

Kudos to Hitachi for designing a versatile train around all the disasters the DfT threw at them. They were originally intended to be light in weight and to run up and down fully electrified Great Western and East Coast Mainlines as the 801. Then GWML electrication got cut back massively so they needed the bi-mode 800 with Diesel engines to be fired up after Newbury unless they were heading down the South Wales mainline. Then they didn't work on the steep gradients into Devon and Cornwall and had to be able to sustain lashings of salt water at Dawlish, so the 802 had to be created. Now they're expected to carry the back bone of commuter services in some parts of the country as well.