One Saturday evening in August I happened to arrive at Euston at about 2250. On a nearby platform I found a single LNW class 350, the 2305 departure to Northampton, rammed to the gills (noting that leisure travellers will generally not crowd themselves on a train the way commuters will). Customers milling around on the platform, turtle gates deployed across the platform entrance, British Transport Police drafted in to keep the peace, and around a hundred customers turned away and told to come back for the next one.
London Midland (operated by Go-Via) and London Northwestern (operated by Abellio) are successive franchisees to run local services up the West Coast Main Line. Both are way too cheap to pay the lease/operating charge to run their late night services as 8-car trains, despite 8- or 12-car being commonplace throughout the day.
LNW should try to be a bit more customer focussed where LM clearly were not. Network Rail and the British Transport Police need to be a strong joint force for whichever bit of LNW thinks 4-car trains are adequate. On most of the railway, off peak is where the
capacity and
growth is. On LNW they don't appear to care about this segment of the market.
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| Ten minutes before departure and the single Class 350 is full. People on the platform who can't get on, |
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| Utterly ridiculous site of the platform being barriered off because LNW don't care about providing sufficient capacity. It's London - it's popular! It's sunny - it's even more popular! |
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| London Northwestern should ensure the police officers who have to deal with crap completely of the TOCs making are well compensated. The police are not here to deal with commercial issues and poor planning or cheapskate operations. |
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| And still more customers arrive, just to be turned away and told to try for the next one. |
