Not MMISoftware related (other than the fact that I travel by train a lot on business) but….

Looks like my post of the 26th November was close to the mark (post). It appears that GNER is failing and they have (or will) lose their franchise to run trains on the east-coast mainline in the UK in 18 months because they cannot meet their franchise payments to government. What will happen next? Surely things can only get better!

Full story is available at the BBC: GNER may lose its top train route

I have decided to keep a list of reasons for delays on trains:

30th November 2006
GNER – first train delayed due to ‘plastic bag on overhead lines’
GNER – second train delayed (a different train from the one above) due to ‘weather in the Aviemore area’ – if there wasn’t ‘weather in the Aviemore area’ I would be even more concerned

26th November 2006
First Trains – going to London – signals struck by lightening, missed our arrival time in to London (as we were delayed), therefore no platform free.

Update (1st December ): Interesting piece in todays Guardian (UK). A train in the southeast of the UK was delayed because it ran out of sand, yes sand… (The sand is used to help the trains get a grip on slippery rails) – Full story in the Guardian: A new train of thought in rail excuses (great (or awful) pun – depending on your taste in humour).

Why keep a list? Well, I do a lot of business travel for MMISoftware and over the years I have personally heard (or read about) a number excuses, my favourite is ‘leaves on the line’ and the best two I have read about are ‘wrong sort of rain’ (an excuse given for delays in Manchester a few years ago) and ‘wrong sort of pollen’ (last summer (or the one before), pollen released from Rape (a yellow flowering plant grown for oil) fields clogged air filters on trains causing the engines to overheat).

Not really MMISoftware related but I travel a lot on business and when I can, I travel by train. Over the years I have personally heard (or read about) a number excuses, my favourite is ‘leaves on the line’ and the best two I have read about are ‘wrong sort of rain’ (an excuse given for delays in Manchester a few years ago) and ‘wrong sort of pollen’ (last summer (or the one before), pollen released from Rape (a yellow flowering plant grown for oil) fields clogged air filters on trains causing the engines to overheat) . I have therefore decided to keep my own list of reasons for delays on trains, and the first one is:

26th November 2006:
First Trains – going to London – signals struck by lightening, missed our arrival time in to London (as we were delayed), therefore no platform free.

I travel a lot by train in the UK, and I have recently noticed a lack of food on GNER trains. You go to the buffet and there is nothing. A few pieces of cake, a couple of rounds of tired old sandwiches, and that is it.

There has also been a significant change in the menu (and I don’t just mean not having the items) as it seems to offer less choice. Why is this?

Food is something that tends to be bought as and when needed. Could it be that GNER is unable to purchase sufficient food for the trains? Is this a knock-on event of the GNER parent company, Sea Containers, filing for chapter 11 protection in the US back in October (Sea Containers Story) and therefore GNER being considered as ‘not-credit-worthy’?

Good news! They have found a cheese and ham toastie sandwich which I can have….

I travel a lot by train in the UK. And I spend a lot of time on GNER trains.

GNER is an odd company. When things work well, they work well, but at the first sign of a problem such as the wrong sort of rain, the train time table is the first thing thrown out of the window. One major problem they have is their parent company, Sea Containers, filled for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection the other week – full story. I am now wonder if Sea Containers financial troubles explain the price hikes we have seen in GNER train tickets in recent years.

One thing GNER has been doing is introducing WiFi on its trains and this week I tried it for the first time, and was pleasantly surprised.

The connection procedure is fairly straight forward. In second class when you try to connect to the internet via your browser the window defaults to the GNER home-page where you can buy internet time at £2.95 for 30 minutes, 2 hours for £7.95, or 24 hours at £9.95. It is not cheap! And one major catch is you have to use the alloted time in one go (you can re-connect multiple times during the time slot), you cannot ‘save’ time between trips. i.e. you can’t buy 24 hours and use it over a week of business trips. (I can’t see why anyone would buy 24 hours. Who would want it? Who would need it? Who would spend 24 hours on a train in the UK? – actually I once had a trip from London that was supposed to take 3 hours and took 11… so I guess it is possible). In first class the connection is free (I have tried to ‘gate crash’ the first class ‘hotspot’ by sitting in the buffet carriage (the coach closest to first), but I can’t get a connection. I guess they must be using a series of multiple low-power transmitters per coach.).

Anyway, the system works very well, however, I do find it weird to be speeding across the UK countryside at 100+ mph whilst surfing the net and posting to a blog….

What is even more weird is the connection on the train seems to go via Sweden and the IP address is registered in Amsterdam. Funny old world…!

If you need to travel by train in Europe or the UK and are booking tickets in the UK the trainline is a good site to try. Trains to Europe from the UK are available from Eurostar. If you live outside the UK then you might like to try International Rail, Rail Europe or Railpass.com.