My partner and I travelled from St Pancras International to Manchester Oxford Road (via Sheffield) recently for an overnight stay in Manchester.

We joined an ageing Intercity 125 at St Pancras for the journey north in the early morning and found the train to be very clean and well presented despite just bringing commuters in for the startof their day. The staff were polite and the announcements prior to departure helpful, including for one fellow passenger who had purchased an invalid off-peak ticket! The buffet service on the service offered a full range of stock throughout the journey, the staff must have thought I was mad asking for a whiskey at 9am (to go in my coffee - of course) but were professional and polite regardless.

The ticket check was carried out properly with each railcard and season ticket requiring the relevent documents and it was good to see the staff dealing with those without tickets appropiately.

We changed trains at Sheffield and joined a 4 coach train, or rather 2 trains couple together. Something suggested we might have taken a wrong turning with our train quite clearly being branded as South West Trains, something I would be accustomed to on my commute to work in the south!

Again the staff were polite and this time there was a trolley service being offered.

I could not really fault East Midlands on our journey, they offered all we needed without going overboard and certainly worth what we paid for the service.