All aboard the daily cattle truck (East Midland Trains)

Member Name: darren55

Product:	East Midland Trains
Date:	23/09/09 (40 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Ontime mostly

Disadvantages: The overcroding, crumbling trains

This is my chance to get something of my chest, I travel on the laughably poor 7.35 East Midlands train from Sheffield to Manchester and catch the returning one at 4.42. Thats the bald facts for this shocking train service, now Sheffield and Manchester are if facts don't lie two of the biggest cities in England and many people might want to travel between the two of them? Yet the service offered by East Midlands on this train is little more than a sick and steadily less funny joke.

So whats my gripe? Well this is intrinsically the train from Norwich to Liverpool so travels through the East part of England before hitting Nottingham, Sheffield, Manchester and finally Liverpool. I'm sure you'd agree these are big cities with plenty of commuters, yet the trains are chronically underperforming. The normal service for the train between Sheffield and Manchester is a four carriage train, with space for bicycles and a food/drinks trolley - what do we get? Well two carriages is becoming a norm rather than a exception for the service to Manchester and so far in the two years of catching the train back yet to be anything else for the return.

Now these are trains at peak times, commuting times and whilst a lot of people get off at Sheffield and I normally get a seat but if your unfortunate to get on at Dore or Chinley which are between Sheffield and Manchester then the chances of a seat are very slim!!

The train then stops for some reason at Hazel GRove and we enter a whole new world of train experience, cramped yes unbelievably dangerously so, this is a journey no one wants to experience. There are people standing from this point on till we get to Manchester, thats twenty minutes minimum in close proximity to everyone else, people sometimes can't get to the exit when the train gets to Stockport and certainly getting on is near impossible.

Yet, we are told time and time again the old lie that the train failed to meet another train at Nottingham and is therefore a two carriage rather than a four. This is pathetic, and when I see the sleek modern East Midland trains doing the run from Sheffield down to London the reason for the companies lack of interest in the run from Norwich to Liverpool is obvious.

So please can East Midlands do something about the service? The only good thing is it runs on time but do we have to put up with being treated little better than cattle? The answer should be no and no again but the promises when they took over from Central appear nothing more than that promises and I havent even mentioned the state of the trains themselves, very decrepid but I can live with that if there was 4 carriages each way.

East midlands sort it out!!!

Summary: A very poor service