Good in my experience - Updated 18/7/01 (Central Trains)

Member Name: CyrixDes

Product:	Central Trains
Date:	19/09/00 (136 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: decent punctuality, good refurbished and brand new rolling stock, economically viable alternative

Disadvantages: trains dirty sometimes, occasional service a little crowded

I would class myself as a regular train user and I must say that I cant fault Central trains too badly at all. They have one of the most interesting franchises in that it spiders right the way across the Midlands and into Wales with services as far east as Norwich, south as Shrewsbury, east as the west coast of Wales and north as far as Sheffield and Liverpool.

On the whole I have some good experiences of travelling by Central Trains and certainly on the regular journeys that I make, Central are a decent advert for rail privatisation. They currently have good punctuality rates of around 95% and excellent reliability rates of above 99%. Also we have been lucky enough to reap the rewards of the extra investment brought about by privatisation in the Midlands, as Central have refurbished all of there older British Rail rolling stock as well as the purchase of a large amount of new air conditioned Turbostar diesel trains which are an absolute pleasure to travel on.

The route that I use the most often is between Burton-On-Trent and Nottingham. I travel on this route everyday as I use it to commute to work in Nottingham. On the whole they are always pretty punctual on this route and defy the current very much anti-rail media stance.

I do however have the odd bad point about Central. Firstly is very much route specific on the 21:36 Nottingham to Birmingham train that I regularly travel home on. Unfortunately around 3 or 4 times out of every 10 this train is delayed by around 10 minutes awaiting the guard who comes in on a service which is usually late running. My other complaint is that on the same service it is quite a regular occurance that the guard doesn't bother coming round to check tickets which can be demoralising for passengers particularly women travelling on their own at night who would like to see the guard and also demoralising for fare paying passengers who sometimes see fare dodgers getting away with non-payment.

Th
e majority of staff that work on Central's services and stations are also helpful on the whole. The platform staff are on the whole helpful and the guards are normally helpful and cheerful with you on the train. Obviously there are exceptions but there'll be very few people who can honestly say that the don't have the occasional off day at work.

The good news is is that I believe the train companies when they say that the rail network is getting back to normal based on my own experiences and this is excellent news particularly with the price of petrol going up which is causing people to find other forms of transport. Financially Central are certainly cheap enough to attract people from the car, lets just hope the recent good improvements in Central's performance will continue and we'll see the railways get a better press than at present.

Summary: