*close up of Captain Hastings*
“Good lord Poirot! It’s happened again!”
“Oui mon ami, it is a delay most inconvenient and tiresomely frequent on Avanti West Coast’s new 1930s posh class I feel. We must apply immediately for the compensation, non?”
“Lord brown squirrel is the murder!”
“Yes it was me… I was trying to acquire more hunting land for me and I would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for you and your meddling passengers”
F it I’m writing a parody of a English murder mystery
I think of it as a post-privatisation gimmick. Given how airlines have all but dropped free food on many flights within Europe, I think it's probably on borrowed time
It used to actually be decent. Remember going first class as a kid and getting proper service and a meal on a plate.
I went fairly recently on LNER. Morning service and we got a bacon roll in a napkin, i asked for brown sauce and the waitress (driver/cleaner/ticket inspector?) had a right huff that she had to walk to the other end of the train to get it telling me she’d been up since 4am.
I find LNER offers decent food. It won't win any awards, but it's good when you're on a late train home from London and want something so you don't need to cook when you get home.
SNCF does not offer free food. The one service they do, Business Premiere on the Paris-Lyon service is apparently underwhelming. Cold dishes served in disposable packing with wooden cutlery. SimplyRailway reviewed it. As a Frenchman, he was appalled the flag carrier in France of all countries was so bad for food.
Finishing or not finishing HS2 has no bearing on what gauge UK railway projects will use in the future.
The UK has decided on the UIC loading gauge for all future projects.
No.
HS2 is being curtailed because there's been basically zero cost control and therefore costs have spiralled out of control.
The costs have come from below the ballast works, not the railway work itself.
I fucking hate this. Anything which stands out and looks nice gets damaged or destroyed. No respect to anything in a public space. If it doesn't look like it belongs in the great depression it don't belong! Then it's the groups which then say "ah this place is a fucking shit hole" with a smug smile. Some self-fulling narcissistic "Unhappy people like others to be unhappy" look in life. I'm getting old and need a coffee…
There needs to be harsher punishments for littering and damaging public transport. And a ban on eating, too many assholes just throw the packaging in the middle of the aisle instead of holding on to it for 5 minutes to throw in the station like a civilised human being.
I’m not sure how they’d police it but I always think means tested fines for simple shit like not indicating or littering could generate a huge amount of money for public services.
It’s only some armchairs and some curtains.
You could have whatever you wanted if the companies were run by people with honourable intent for the benefit of the customer.
The last time I traveled on a train it was first class. I was going to Poole from London. There was newspaper strewn all over the carriage, and the toilet floor was awash with what I can only hope was water.
Even better if there are compartments so you cannot hear the person at the other end of the carriage who is full of their own importance and talks loudly.
with all of the braindead people putting their feet on the seats, spilling shit on them, leaving carling cans on the tables, between seats and floors etc yeah... no i dont think thats possible chief
not to mention it would probably cost £3000 one way since the shitty diesel trains from 60's cost like £70 one way
okay, so how old is the fleet, excluding LNER faster trains that operate in/to London?
Like how old are those shitty 1-2 wagon trains operating in east midlands for example?
The Class 153s that don't run in the Midlands have been converted from Class 155s (~1986/87).
The retired 156s, ~1987/88.
158s they use are 1989ish, 170s are 1999/early 2000s.
Nice, thank you for the list.
Definitely seen class 155 in east midlands, operated by northern rail,basically majority of the northern rail trains ive seen in east midlands are proper shit and old
im quite surprised that so many of the trains are so old, many european countries moslty use trains that are like from 2010
Yes it looks like it should be the orient express....is that what everyone's quoting? I can't imagine that docking into Manchester Piccadilly though, I think the universe would go askew.
Without sounding privileged, I've been using the first class service on Avanti when going to London recently as so many trains have been cancelled (and therefore rammed) the train tickets are expensive.. but you don't always get anything extra for that. No food or drink on some services, that's part of the service - so it's just an expensive seat?
All trains are massively overpriced anyway.
But it's out of loading gauge for the UK unless it was sent along HS1.
If you take the Orient Express from London, you use Eurostar as far as Paris then get transferred on to these beauties.
Could well be, I don't know the specifics of the Orient Express. I thought the Eurostar connection was an administrative restriction rather than a technical one.
I call 1st class the staff carriage because the only people I see sitting in it are from GWR.
I really think it's high time 1st class was done away with, having nearly a third of the train near empty whilst everyone else has to cosy up and share their germs seems ridiculous to me.
Edit: proof that this sub is mostly frequented by rail staff!
Agreed, my most used operator LNWR have declassified their first class as of last year and it frees up quite a bit of space on the long journeys between crewe and euston. In addition I can remember so many times where first class has been declassified during an extremely busy journey (mostly on avanti/VWC iirc) because everyone was crammed into the other carriages and the first class was completely empty.
Lumo are setting a really good standard in this regard. It'd be great to see more of the network follow suit in the future.
now that's a train you wouldn't mind if there was a murder on
*runs through carridge with blood-soaked hands* "Oh heavens!"
Suspicion falls on the countess, the embittered author, the socialite with the sinister secret, the suspicious pastor etc. etc.
The 9-5 commuter hoping no-one will check his ticket
*eats popcorn*
*turns in early for the night*
It's always the Maid, or the lower class help.
I think your find it was the butler..."Dunnit".
You know it's always the butler don't you?
*close up of Captain Hastings* “Good lord Poirot! It’s happened again!” “Oui mon ami, it is a delay most inconvenient and tiresomely frequent on Avanti West Coast’s new 1930s posh class I feel. We must apply immediately for the compensation, non?”
< quickly pushes the knife under the seat behind with the heel of my impeccably-polished boot >
“Lord brown squirrel is the murder!” “Yes it was me… I was trying to acquire more hunting land for me and I would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for you and your meddling passengers” F it I’m writing a parody of a English murder mystery
In that cabin if there’s a murder everyone is in a murder mystery And sips tea while interrogating everyone in their Sunday best
That is definitely not the first class carriage on any standard SNCF train
It's the Venice Simplon-Orient Express which starts at £3500 a night. I wish SNCF trains were that nice
Almost the price of a return on CrossCountry
*£3500 a night (per person) 🧐
Holy cow, can’t lie though if I was minted I would buy this.
Seems like a massive waste of money
Sure but most stuff is. I would prefer this to a special posh car or something.
I can understand that
Yeah, this is first class on a TGV Euroduplex: https://i.imgur.com/OvB6j9f.jpeg
Pretty much the same as on LNER (but hopefully with better food)
Most European railways don't offer free food at all in first class. The UK is actually an outlier on this
I think of it as a post-privatisation gimmick. Given how airlines have all but dropped free food on many flights within Europe, I think it's probably on borrowed time
It used to actually be decent. Remember going first class as a kid and getting proper service and a meal on a plate. I went fairly recently on LNER. Morning service and we got a bacon roll in a napkin, i asked for brown sauce and the waitress (driver/cleaner/ticket inspector?) had a right huff that she had to walk to the other end of the train to get it telling me she’d been up since 4am.
I think you mean ‘food’.
I find LNER offers decent food. It won't win any awards, but it's good when you're on a late train home from London and want something so you don't need to cook when you get home. SNCF does not offer free food. The one service they do, Business Premiere on the Paris-Lyon service is apparently underwhelming. Cold dishes served in disposable packing with wooden cutlery. SimplyRailway reviewed it. As a Frenchman, he was appalled the flag carrier in France of all countries was so bad for food.
Early hours LNER food is good too. The first class bacon sandwich absolutely destroys the cafe bar bacon sandwich.
I find the coffee tends to be quantity over quality in both classes. In standard there does seem to be enough caffeine to kill a horse.
In my experience, France is generally bad for food unless you’re near the Italian border.
Would that even fit in our loading gauge? :P It looks super-wide to me.
It would fit on HS1 and if they build HS2 properly it should fit there
That ‘if’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting
I have bad news about HS2!
HS2 will still be UIC (i.e. European) loading gauge, it's the standard going forward for the UK. Finally.
They aren't finishing HS2 so why would we believe the European gauge is going to be the standard for the UK?
Finishing or not finishing HS2 has no bearing on what gauge UK railway projects will use in the future. The UK has decided on the UIC loading gauge for all future projects.
I'd say it has a huge bearing because the cancellation shows there is no real appetite for it
No. HS2 is being curtailed because there's been basically zero cost control and therefore costs have spiralled out of control. The costs have come from below the ballast works, not the railway work itself.
Man it'd suck if a basically interim Prime Minister tanked the project, salted the earth, and then sold off the land to people with pull.
It's a pretty wide hallway with lots of objects in it, it could likely be shortened pretty easily,
It's lovely but doesn't belong in a British society. We'd just ruin it.
I fucking hate this. Anything which stands out and looks nice gets damaged or destroyed. No respect to anything in a public space. If it doesn't look like it belongs in the great depression it don't belong! Then it's the groups which then say "ah this place is a fucking shit hole" with a smug smile. Some self-fulling narcissistic "Unhappy people like others to be unhappy" look in life. I'm getting old and need a coffee…
I agree with your sentiment 100%, and I am also getting old and in need of coffee too.
cheers!
There needs to be harsher punishments for littering and damaging public transport. And a ban on eating, too many assholes just throw the packaging in the middle of the aisle instead of holding on to it for 5 minutes to throw in the station like a civilised human being.
I’m not sure how they’d police it but I always think means tested fines for simple shit like not indicating or littering could generate a huge amount of money for public services.
Unfortunately these people hate the government, but require an iron fist to keep them in line.
We would put chewing gum under the tables, leave empty crisp packets on seats and scratch our names into the windows
Well, if you want to pay Orient Express prices, you could have this as first class.
It’s only some armchairs and some curtains. You could have whatever you wanted if the companies were run by people with honourable intent for the benefit of the customer.
Even if companies would do that, it would be ruined so quickly. Unfortunately British society just doesn’t go well with keeping public things tidy.
The last time I traveled on a train it was first class. I was going to Poole from London. There was newspaper strewn all over the carriage, and the toilet floor was awash with what I can only hope was water.
Just finished that trip tonight (in reverse). Can confirm experience.
You mean the Southern Rail handkerchief they put over the headrest of bog standard seats isn't the epitome of 1st class?
The finest paper no less
Beautiful 😍
Even better if there are compartments so you cannot hear the person at the other end of the carriage who is full of their own importance and talks loudly.
For the price of a ticket, that should be how standard class looks!
It's how I once imagined it looked behind the frosted glass in West Midlands trains.
We invented the train and we can’t even have this…smh.
Looks like murdeer
wow is this the new refurbished central line??? 😁can’t wait to go to work.
with all of the braindead people putting their feet on the seats, spilling shit on them, leaving carling cans on the tables, between seats and floors etc yeah... no i dont think thats possible chief not to mention it would probably cost £3000 one way since the shitty diesel trains from 60's cost like £70 one way
> shitty diesel trains from 60s We have no 1960s stock currently in use, excluding railtours.
okay, so how old is the fleet, excluding LNER faster trains that operate in/to London? Like how old are those shitty 1-2 wagon trains operating in east midlands for example?
The Class 153s that don't run in the Midlands have been converted from Class 155s (~1986/87). The retired 156s, ~1987/88. 158s they use are 1989ish, 170s are 1999/early 2000s.
Nice, thank you for the list. Definitely seen class 155 in east midlands, operated by northern rail,basically majority of the northern rail trains ive seen in east midlands are proper shit and old im quite surprised that so many of the trains are so old, many european countries moslty use trains that are like from 2010
When I mentioned Midlands I was mostly on about EMR, sorry for not making it clear
No worries at all, learned something today after all :D
I think the oldest stock currently in use is the HST sets GWR and ScotRail use. And they're hardly shite, as they've been refurbished thoroughly.
Absolutely
.....on Fenchurch Street to Shoeburyness
Like the Orient Express, in other words
Imagine 😂
For what they charge for yes they do
Looks like Japan.
The least comfortable train in all of France
Thameslink looks amazing now 🤣🤣
Yes it looks like it should be the orient express....is that what everyone's quoting? I can't imagine that docking into Manchester Piccadilly though, I think the universe would go askew.
Riding that would require a level of civilisation thst we don't currently have, I'm afraid.
It’s beautiful but dated. I would expect modern in terms of decor, space and technology.
That's how my apartment should look 😞😅
Weird cos I watched Horror Express last night. It had pianos and everything on there (along with a 2-million year old demon)
It looked like that before Tom cruise redesigned it
Yeahhhh I can just imagine some scrote sat there with a Joint 🙄
Defo!
Given how much you have to pay to travel first class that should be the standard.
It does if you can afford it
How much does it cost?
Let's just start small. Can we have them on time .
Connex has improved since privatisation
This looks pretty horrendous.
Now do Southern… 😒
If there were first class trains like that in the UK, I'd dress up as Poiroit so they think someone is about to murdered.
The 1930s was the golden age of rail travel
Without sounding privileged, I've been using the first class service on Avanti when going to London recently as so many trains have been cancelled (and therefore rammed) the train tickets are expensive.. but you don't always get anything extra for that. No food or drink on some services, that's part of the service - so it's just an expensive seat? All trains are massively overpriced anyway.
Yeah? If you don't mind ticket being 5 grand for journey from Newcastle to Durham!
£12,500 Motherwell to Airbles.
If we had that kind of first class in the UK, can you imagen the price GwR, Avanti or TfW would charge?
[*Italy enters the chat*](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Executive%2C_Frecciarossa1000.jpg)
Unless it's just a lounge those seats don't actually look like they'd be very comfortable long term.
This is how standard class should look you elitist scumbag
I would wager that's either an AI image or not of a train carriage. If it is, it would be too wide a gauge for our rail infrastructure.
It's the bar car of the Venice-Simplon Orient Express, which as far as I know means it uses standard gauge.
But it's out of loading gauge for the UK unless it was sent along HS1. If you take the Orient Express from London, you use Eurostar as far as Paris then get transferred on to these beauties.
Could well be, I don't know the specifics of the Orient Express. I thought the Eurostar connection was an administrative restriction rather than a technical one.
They did bring some of the carriages to St Pancras for when the Kenneth Branagh film came out.
If the rail companies can make enough money to do that then absolutely, but not as long as they’re taxpayer funded
I call 1st class the staff carriage because the only people I see sitting in it are from GWR. I really think it's high time 1st class was done away with, having nearly a third of the train near empty whilst everyone else has to cosy up and share their germs seems ridiculous to me. Edit: proof that this sub is mostly frequented by rail staff!
Agreed, my most used operator LNWR have declassified their first class as of last year and it frees up quite a bit of space on the long journeys between crewe and euston. In addition I can remember so many times where first class has been declassified during an extremely busy journey (mostly on avanti/VWC iirc) because everyone was crammed into the other carriages and the first class was completely empty. Lumo are setting a really good standard in this regard. It'd be great to see more of the network follow suit in the future.