Not motoring
Not impressed
Gavin Stamp
Now I suppose I ought not to air person- al complaints in this column, but if I describe my recent experience at the hands of Virgin Trains after a small accident, I may well be speaking for thousands of oth- ers who have suffered at the hands of this Complacent and careless company which has been granted a monopoly under the last government's ill-thought-through pri- vatisation of the railways. Besides, the story is instructive.
One late afternoon back in October, I had to travel from Glasgow to Carlisle, that is, down the West Coast main line on which, alas, Virgin has its monopoly. Unfortunately, I chose the day a military aeroplane on low-flying manoeuvres crashed at the Pennine summit at Shap, damaging a railway bridge and closing the line. This, of course, caused major disrup- tion for trains coming north and I later heard from friends about the chaos created by the inefficiency and indecisiveness of both Railtrack and Virgin, with passengers being turned out at Preston and not told what was going on, before trains were diverted onto the Settle & Carlisle line (as always, as useful as it is spectacular) to bypass the damaged bridge.
But Shap is south of Carlisle and I was to the north, so there was no reason why I should have been seriously delayed. Indeed, our train rattled comfortably along until it was somewhere near Gretna Green when it came to a sudden stop. It then moved on again before coming to a com- plete halt a few miles north of Carlisle, where we waited, and waited ... Announcements from the 'train manager' were infrequent and misleading. Eventually it transpired that our engine had brought down the overhead power lines. Mean- while, the buffet ran out of phonecards (and everything else) so I could not tele- phone to explain my non-arrival in Carlisle (wretched mobile phones are now essential when travelling by rail), then the power failed and we were plunged into darkness, unable even to read to alleviate the bore- dom and frustration. Some young men began to sing songs, and almost everybody displayed that tiresome Dunkirk spirit which inhibits complaint and action while the train manager, completely out of her depth, retreated and hid at the back of the train.
Eventually, a relief engine arrived and, after couplings and reversings conducted with painful slowness, we were hauled into Carlisle where I alighted — almost four hours late. I was, I suppose, lucky: goodness knows when other passengers reached their destinations further south. It was, without • doubt, the worst journey I have ever experi- enced in decades of railway travel. I was not impressed by the response to the mishap, so I wrote to customer relations of Virgin Trains to complain, in the hope of receiving an apology and some compensation.
A month later I received a standard letter, informing me that the disruption was caused by the air crash at Shap and that 'in such tragic circumstances we have to fully comply with police instructions while emergency personnel attend. This resulted in a signifi- cant wait until access to the affected area was granted.' That may have been so, but it h4c1 virtually nothing to do with my train stopping for over three hours near Carlisle. And all I was offered as compensation was an insulting f15 worth of travel vouchers. So I wrote back, demanding a proper explana- tion and apology. I am still waiting.
I contrast this grudging and mendacious response with that of the Great North East- ern Railway on the occasion when, a month later, my train to London arrived three hours late as the overhead wires had blown down in the severe November gales. The staff on that train had been admirable, telling us exactly what was going on and try- ing to help passengers with plans to reach their destinations. And, in the letter from their customer relations office, a full expla- nation was given and an apology offered — even though the delay was not the fault of the company — as well as offering me sur- prisingly generous compensation.
So when I read that Virgin has the temerity to express an interest in acquiring the franchise for the East Coast route now held by GNER, I can only assume it is a joke. Virgin may have taken on the most run-down main line in Britain and the worst habits of old British Rail, but that cannot excuse such massive incompetence, nor the attempt to fob me off with lies — nor, indeed, the company's apparent inabil- ity to understand that, if you tell passengers the truth about what is going on, and wrong, they are much more likely to put up with the delay and inconvenience. In fact, Virgin Trains are not fit to run any rail- ways, anywhere.
'Turns out you're not talking to yourself after all, Mrs Alansky. The battery of tests determined that you have a husband.'
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