First ScotRail

I have used First Scotrail (Scotrail before First bought over) for the last 8 years so I should be able to give a decent review of their services! The train service I use is mainly for commuting, originally to school and now to university. My average journey time is around 20-25mins. The service has generally been very good with only the odd train having serious delays, this was improved vastly when First took over. Scotrail provides a very good train network that links up the majority of densely populated areas in Scotland. However, if travelling to some of the more remote areas then the train probably isn't a good economical decision. Some of their fares for ...  Read the complete review

First Scotrail is the rail company who currently have the franchise for all domestic passenger services for all of Scotland. The people who are the actual owners of the franchise are the First Group who also operate a large amount of the bus services within Scotland. I live in a town situated about 30 minutes by train from Glasgow and so I fairly regularly use the local train services for getting about with a large amount of train stations offering a good variety of destinations on a fairly regular service. The trains are all fairly well maintained and clean with plenty of comfortable seating on offer but on regular occassions you will find that you will not ...  Read the complete review

When Scot Rail was taken over by First travel, I, aswell as many others were hoping this would mean an end to service disruptions, cramped train carriages and overall a better service. I have been using First Scot Rail trains for well over 5 years now and I have travelled to different parts of Scotland using them. I have been somewhat satisfied with the service provided. One favourite line of the company seems to be using 'signal problems' as their excuse everytime there is a late train. The same message is read out, week after week, the same empty apology, nothing seems to be done about it. Whenever essential maintainence is carried ...  Read the complete review

To be honest I'm not convinced about Scotrail and the wider UK train network overall. The recent news that UK trains are the most expensive yet most overcrowded in Europe did NOT come as a surprise. Travelling on them can only by matched by those times that you find your head caught in a mincer! I have to get the train to Glasgow every morning but perhaps Scotrail think it would be better if I walked? Perhaps they make their trains slightly too small to fit all the passengers because they actually care about us; they love their customers and want them to be superhuman walking machines that can stride out the breadth of the country! The underlying problem is ...  Read the complete review

Although ScotRail operate hundreds of urban, suburban and rural passenger services throughout Scotland and a narrow slice of northern England every day, this review concentrates on what could be described as their flagship services: the Caledonian Sleepers. Since I moved to Glasgow, I've learnt to love the awesome convenience of sleeping my way to London and back: single day business trips in the capital aren't only possible, they're also enjoyable because there's no early morning or late evening airport stress. Britain has just six overnight sleeper routes, five of which are operated by Scotrail and the sixth being run by sister firm First Great Westen - the ...  Read the complete review