LNER – Let’s Never Ever Repeat

I normally enjoy travelling by train, it usually offers a stress free, relaxing way to travel and takes you from city centre to city centre. However, London North Eastern Railways made me think twice about rail travel in the UK and made me realise just how awful it can be.

Keep reading to find out what happened and why I think you should take care when booking with LNER in the future.

Date of journey – 08/06/21

Origin – Edinburgh

Destination – York

Operated by – LNER

The state owned rail operator, LNER, offer regular train services between Edinburgh Waverley and London King’s Cross on their new Azuma trains. When these were introduced the company promised faster, more comfortable journeys than ever before, yet many people, including me feel these trains offer a noticeable downgrade in service offered.

I’ll start with the seats onboard these trains. They are alright if you are doing a short journey, however these trains run on journeys up to 8 hours long, and I found them uncomfortable after just 2.5 hours. The reason people find them more uncomfortable is for 2 main reasons, firstly they have less padding than the old seats, and secondly they are a different shape than the old seats. These seats are much flatter than previous seats, meaning you have to sit upright and have to be short, neither of these apply to me.

Furthermore, the position of my seat, well, left a lot to be desired (I have included a photograph below so you can judge for yourself.)

Apart from the obvious lack of a window, these particular seats have 2 other major drawbacks that are not photographed.

• The luggage rack directly across from these seats – meaning one person who flings their bag off their back might get a direct hit on the person in the aisle seat.
• The onboard cafe is located directly behind and has a door separating you from it, meaning that in order for people in this carriage, and the other 3 beyond to access it, they have to walk past you.

Also be prepared to feel beneath the seats whilst trying to find the plug socket, this isn’t just an issue faced on these trains but rather all Hitachi built trains.

Lets talk about the onboard crew, they were, for a lack of a better term, not great. It is as simple as this, I could have boarded that service in Edinburgh and have travelled all the way to Durham before interacting with the crew (that’s a distance of 103 miles.) Even when they appeared to check tickets I would say at most 6 words were exchanged before they disappeared until I left the train.

I can excuse the lack of conversation whilst checking tickets, however, the rail industry is unique amongst UK industries, they love to moan about losing money to fair evasion, and yet onboard crew simply do nothing to combat it. Only in the UK could somebody do a 103 mile journey and potentially not have a ticket.

Why is this a big issue?

The reason this is particularly frustrating is that this isn’t the first poor journey I have had with LNER since they were created.

I travelled on the inaugural Azuma service from Glasgow Central to Newcastle when they were introduced on the service in September 2019, and if I am honest it was a pretty bland experience.

Sub par service and crew who didn’t say much until we left Edinburgh gave the impression that the journey between Glasgow and Edinburgh was only being done because it had to be, not because the company wanted to do it.

What I thought when I arrived in York!

When I arrived in York, I thought to myself that the return journey would be better and this was just a one off experience, spoiler the return managed to be just as chaotic as this.

The Chaotic Return!

Again, this will need some context, so I will try my best to explain here.

LNER have 2 different types of Azuma, 5 carriage sets and 9 carriage sets.

My return train to Edinburgh should have been formed of a 9 carriage set, but “at the last minute” was changed to a 5 carriage set. This is important for a 2 reasons;

• Seat reservations were suspended on the service – LNER currently run all services with mandatory reservations, this meant that it is up to passengers to socially distance.
• There are less seats in each carriage on a 5 carriage set, carriage B has 72 seats in a 5 coach train, compared to 84 in carriage B on a 9 car set.

LNER claim that the decision to run 5 coaches rather than 9 was made at the last minute, however, it is truly remarkable that the public could find out from other sources as early as 10AM.

So, when the news was made public by LNER, they also announced that all reservations were cancelled onboard, leaving me with a dilemma. Do I gamble on being able to find a seat on this train, or do I re-book on the next service.

I settled on the latter option and rebooked from the 1535 to the 1556 service, which admittedly had a good price on 1st class tickets so that is what I chose.

Whilst sitting on the platform for my new train, the short formed original train to Edinburgh pulled into York, all I will say was I am glad I did not wait for it.

The train was at capacity, ironic really considering the Information screens showed the train as less than 1/4 full, and still said reservations were mandatory, this was also announced for the whole station to hear.

The journey was uneventful, however, the staff we really good, I was served before we even left York!

It was though surprising that when we arrived in Edinburgh absolutely nobody had asked for our tickets. No ticket barrier in York, nobody checking them on the train, and the platform we used at Edinburgh did not have any ticket barriers. It made me wonder why I had bothered paying for the new ticket.

My final thoughts on LNER!

From my last 4 experiences I personally would use CrossCountry between Glasgow and York, or use Avanti West Coast to travel to London.

It’s a shame really, the company they replaced were really good and the staff were always friendly, but so far LNER haven’t delivered an improvement in my opinion.

Who knows, only time will tell if they improve or not. I really wanted to say that this trip would redeem them in my eyes, but I was left disappointed, and a bit ripped off.

I would maybe give them 1/5 as they at least got me from A to B, but anything more than that would be unrealistic from what I have experienced.