Goodbye National Excuse

Railways, trams, buses, etc.
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cnosni
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Post by cnosni »

BLAKEY wrote: [quotenick="Uno HooOh, come on, Blakey! Where's your sense of culinary adventure? As one whose business takes me to Brussels three or four times a year, the highlights of such visits are eating at "Le Pre Sale" in Vlaanderstraat. Start with eels in green sauce, followed by a nice horse steak, cooked rare - that's Belgian rare, not British rare, with chips. Delicious, and by Brussels standards, not too expensive. For sale - no reasonable offer refused - one return Eurostar ticket St. Pancras to Brussels and back, and will throw in a "Big Mac plus large fries" voucher gratis as a sign of goodwill. Christ,no wonder they capitulated in 2 world wars!!
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cnosni
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BLAKEY wrote: Phew - what a good job I wasn't going to Belgium today on my specified compulsory Eurostar train. Seemingly there has been some sort of de-railment at Neville Hill Depot very early today, and the cancellations are unavoidably wicked, London , Selby and York trains and others all being affected. Hopefully al will be well tomorrow, and my "inside agent" tells me that the 1005 is a Kings Cross depot train so fingers crossed. No it wont be cleared up mate,job is up the spout tomorrow,sets everywhere.hope youre on line to get this message.Check very very early to see if you are going to be ok.Hopefully it should as it is made up from a set coming from London,but you mnever know.If not running then get in earlier if necessary,speak to the guard on 0940 or even 0905,explain that you have a connection.Ticket restrictions should be lifted ,but ring up to make sure.
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cnosni
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Post by cnosni »

Uno Hoo wrote: BLAKEY wrote: Came home by train this evening from Leeds, and the departure screens showed everything on time except for three trains - yes that's right, a couple a few minutes late and another over half an hour, and all "Cross Country" so Mr. Branson wasn't the only one seemingly unable to pull those services into shape. Possibly a deeper individual problem than we know about ??Off to Belgium Wednesday for a week, and I'm banking on "Downing Street Rail" to be spot on - the ECML is usually a very efficient and reliable service indeed. In fairness, ECML has far fewer opportunities for late running, as it isn't continually passing through major rail bottlenecks, whereas cross-country does. ISTR "The Devonian" used to be similarly affected in BR days.That said, I share the opinion about the cross-country trains being uncomfortable and cramped. If I have to travel further than Birmingham, I now use airlines. Flybe & Air Southwest have good services to Southampton, Bristol and Exeter from LBIA, and the fares are reasonable, particularly with early booking. Eastern Airways is good for Southampton too, but pricey - nice experience, though, with fast-track through security, and as much pampering as a short flight allows. ECML has better drivers on Inter City,thats why the best on Cross Country and West Coast apply to come to us,NEVER the other way round
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cnosni
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BLAKEY wrote: [quotenick="tyke bhoyOn my outbound journey on Sunday we pulled out if the station adjacent to a Kings Cross bound train. The Livery was the predominatly GNER blue and red, with the white stripe applied by NE and East Coast stickers strategically positioned on those white stripes. Yes, I for one will never forgive NEEC for daring to supercede the dignified and elegant GNER livery with their garish diagonal striped nonsense - a feature widespred nowadays throught the bus, coach and train scene thanks to the misguided "marketing" fraternity. Then there is the unjustified cost of early repainting also. Mercifully NEEC packed in before all the fleet was "cheapened."Th efleet wasnt finished because they dont like paying out.The HST's power cars were all reengined and MK3 coaches were due for internal refurb anyway,hence they have had the the tossers (i can say that now,YEEESSSSSSSSS) livery put on.Class 91s had a Major overhaul which ended 2002/2003,the MKIV coaches were refurbed(now called Mallard) not that long after.The tossers said they couldnt paint the MKIV fleet because the body work was corroded,thats [edited for content],its because they didnt want to pay (within a couple of months we knew something was wrong,no model train maker produced any NXEC models in their livery,they knew very early).They were notorious for not paying bills,bailiffs turned up at Bounds Green and confiscated equipment to pay off unpaid bills to suppliers.They sold off a wheel laithe and cancelled a parts contract (negotiated by GNER)with Unipart Rail,saying it was too expensive.They thought they could source parts from another supplier for the 91's.Well unfortunately for the money grabbing tossers there was only one company that made and supplied parts for 91,s,yes,it was Unipart.So National Excuse went back,cap in hand,asking if they could negotiate a new contract.Unipart agreed,but stated that as the old one had been terminated by NX then there would be new terms.Low and behold they were much higher than before,NX had no option but to sign up.PS,did i mention the £4m bill from HSBC to pay for the fleet to be returned to the standard that they recieved it in 2 years ago?
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Post by dogduke »

BLAKEY wrote: Phew - what a good job I wasn't going to Belgium today on my specified compulsory Eurostar train. Seemingly there has been some sort of de-railment at Neville Hill Depot very early today, and the cancellations are unavoidably wicked, London , Selby and York trains and others all being affected. Hopefully al will be well tomorrow, and my "inside agent" tells me that the 1005 is a Kings Cross depot train so fingers crossed. Did not have the radio on till late Tuesday morning.Have the staff from the Evening post transferred to Radio Leeds ??Their traffic and travel news were spouting out about a derailment atMICKLEFIELD and later MICKLEFIELD DEPOT.I used to advise the media,line of route and other TOC's of incidents affecting train running for a former large franchise and was VERY careful about how the info was worded.What was broadcast or displayed on Ceefax was not what I faxed outThe media do not understand any transport system and leave it to some plonker to broadcast it to the unsuspecting public..Confused - yes ?
Consciousness: That annoying time between naps.90% of being smart is knowing what you're dumb at.

BLAKEY
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Post by BLAKEY »

I would like a word right now with the baffoon who authorised the announcement yesterday teatime that all was well after the "Micklefield Depot" de-railment and that services were back to normal.My trip to Belgium this morning now looks like failing as it appears even more London trains (and many others) are cancelled today - wasn't it apparent surely yesterday that the overhead wiring would have to be out of use while repairs to the rails after yesterday's incident are repaired ??I am livid, and will undoubtedly be heavily out of pocket if I do get to Belgium at all on fresh Eurostar tickets at full "pay as you board" price. Off to Leeds early now to try my luck - see you all later folks.    
There's nothing like keeping the past alive - it makes us relieved to reflect that any bad times have gone, and happy to relive all the joyful and fascinating experiences of our own and other folks' earlier days.

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Post by Si »

Good luck, Blakey.

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Post by tyke bhoy »

NE wrote: As you may of heard, National Express will no longer be operating the East Coast mainline train service from 23:59 on Having been away at the weekend I have just been going through my mail and came across one from NE (because I bought tickets online from GNER about 10 years ago presumably). I have quoted its start exactly above. The grammar would not be criticised in an online forum but as a farewell to customers you would think they might have put "have heard" not "of heard"
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Post by Cardiarms »

innit.

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Post by Trojan »

tyke bhoy wrote: NE wrote: As you may of heard, National Express will no longer be operating the East Coast mainline train service from 23:59 on Having been away at the weekend I have just been going through my mail and came across one from NE (because I bought tickets online from GNER about 10 years ago presumably). I have quoted its start exactly above. The grammar would not be criticised in an online forum but as a farewell to customers you would think they might have put "have heard" not "of heard" "of" instead of "have" seems to be becoming more and more common, along with mangled vowel sounds on radio and TV (Georgy Spanswick on R Leeds is one of the worst offenders) e.g blee = blue. There was a traffic report the other day which had a car over on its "reef" (roof) This really winds me up.
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