East Coast… British Rail reborn

Well it seems that British Rail are back, the train was late (albeit by a few minutes), and the WiFi on the train screwed up mid way into it’s use, also lazyness was apparent by the fact that the train was relivered by covering over the national express East Coast logos with new vinyl transfers, one with the logo used by East Coast, one with their web address, I enclose pictures of this

A Metro-Cammell built British Rail Mark 4 coach in a wacky mix of GNER (dark blue and orange) national express (white band), and East Coast (white text on purple background)

At Darlington, prior to the train arriving, I noticed this, apologies for quality issues, this was done in a hurry on my phone as there were some idiots trying to photograph me without consent at the time

it shows the train is running late, per normal of what was British Rail

The laziness of East Coast extended into the train on this map of East coast routes, all references to national express are covered up, the map was put up by national express more or less when they took over from GNER, but East Coast have just been lazy

This was also hurried as the idiots from prior had got on this train and they had actually succeeded in getting a picture of me without my consent, I could have challenged them but I though best keep my mouth shut, even more so seeing as York station was crawling with police and I don’t do being arrested when I’m having days out

Well I also managed to bid a fond farewell to one of the 3 last remaining Paxman 12RP200L “Valenta” powered InterCity 125 sets operated by Grand Central, a sad moment for me because all through my life that has what has been iconic to me with the InterCity 125, may I wish the 125 group every success in bringing this icon back to the rails one day

 

Happy journeys :)

A dawn of a new era for the East Coast Main Line

As reported in my post yesterday, the East Coast franchise is now back in state ownership, though this may be signs of a return of British Rail it then again may not.  The franchise was transferred at midnight from the previous operator, national express East Coast, to the government who operate the franchise as East Coast, a trading name for Directly Operated Railways Ltd. owned by the Department for Transport.  My last trip on the East Coast franchise was with national express East Coast a week ago, next time it will be with the “single line British Rail” as I have affectionately come to call East Coast, so I wonder if the service will be better or worse, well I’ll let you know how East Coast fair to their predecessors

 

Happy journeys on the new East Coast service (and any other train you happen to use)

The end has arrived for national express East Coast

Indeed it has, just before midnight tonight the government will be taking over operations due to national express not being able to afford to run the franchise.  As I said in an earlier post when this came to light I noticed that the franchise had been doomed for a number of years, firstly there was the demise of GNER a few years ago, now national express East Coast has failed, the government is not taking over for 18 months, this could also fail, though it could succeed and at the most even renationalise the railways, the rebirth of British Rail in a way, but for now it’s just one franchise, the East Coast Main Line is still maintained by Network Rail (who I now call Network Evil because of the maintenance work carried out between Huddersfield and Stalybridge in September) so it’s not fully a single-line British Rail but it’s as good as, maybe it’s time to renationalise the railways… but we’ll see what happens there

Well that’s it for now on the end of national express East Coast, but before you depart I found this link on BBC News to do with this whole thing: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8358100.stm

If I find out further information on this, I shall post with more

 

Happy Journeys on whatever runs the railways