National Express East Coast

...the franchise passed on to National Express in 2007 after GNER’s parent company filed for bankruptcy protection.

It was felt that National Express had paid way over the odds for the franchise and sure enough as the recession began to bite, they found themselves in a perilous financial predicament, and upon failing to renegotiate the terms of the franchise with the government, it was announced in June 2009 that the government would be ...
...I Go?==

National Express East Coast (NXEC) has it’s main route between Edinburgh and London Kings Cross. Branching off the mainline is the service to Bradford, Wakefield and Leeds, but travelling north from Kings Cross the line traverses Peterborough, Grantham, Newark, Doncaster, York, Darlington, Durham, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Berwick-upon-Tweed and Edinburgh, with several other minor stops. Several of the services into Edinburgh continue ... more

The east coast mainline is one of the major rail links in the UK, linking London with major cities in Yorkshire, Northumberland and Scotland. Previously operated by GNER, the franchise passed on to National Express in 2007 after GNER’s parent company filed for bankruptcy protection.

It was felt that National Express had paid way over the odds for the franchise and sure enough as the recession began to bite, they found themselves in a perilous financial predicament, and upon failing to renegotiate the terms of the franchise with the government, it was announced in June 2009 that the government would be taking the franchise back under state control, with the franchise going back out to tender sometime in 2010.

To all intents and purposes however nothing much has changed since the GNER days apart from train liveries and the fact wifi is now available free of charge to every passenger on the trains.

Where Can I Go?

National Express East Coast (NXEC) has it’s main route between Edinburgh and London Kings Cross. Branching off the mainline is the service to Bradford, Wakefield and Leeds, but travelling north from Kings Cross the line traverses Peterborough, Grantham, Newark, Doncaster, York, Darlington, Durham, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Berwick-upon-Tweed and Edinburgh, with several other minor stops. Several of the services into Edinburgh continue to Glasgow Central via Motherwell.

There are three trains a day from London Kings Cross to Aberdeen, and one per day to Inverness. The Aberdeen train also serves Kirkcaldy and Dundee, with the Inverness train calling at Falkirk, Stirling and Perth with several other stations served too.

Trains also serve Hull, Harrogate, Skipton and Keighley.

The Trains

The mainline between London and Glasgow via Edinburgh and the branch that goes to Leeds are electrified, and trains on these routes are the former Inter City 225 engines and carriages. These trains are sadly looking quite elderly these days despite refurbishment in the days of GNER. Trains have first class and standard class accommodation as well as a buffet car. Some services have a restaurant car, but this is firmly aimed at the business traveller in first class and is priced accordingly. Restaurant cars tend only to be available on weekdays.

Services which continue to Aberdeen and Inverness use 125 HST diesel locomotives since the line north of Edinburgh is not electrified. Most of the carriages on the 125 trains have now been refurbished but up until earlier this year I found myself in a very dilapidated and tired looking coach travelling to London. HST units also operate to Hull, Harrogate and Skipton. The HST trains despite the refurbishment are really in need of updating – for example there are no automatic doors on these trains, meaning when you wish to alight you have to manually open the window to reach the handle on the outside of the door.

Both these train types are due to be replaced around 2012-2013 with new Super Hitachi Express diesel and electric trains – not before time I must say.

It’s also worth reminding ourselves of train journey times and how these have crept up over the years. I remember using the HST trains from Edinburgh to London in the early eighties – back then the fastest train of the day, The Flying Scotsman took 3 hours and 59 minutes to do the journey. Nowadays the fastest journey time is 4 hours and 30 minutes – a pretty sad reflection on the state of our railways really.

Booking with NXEC

The best way to book with NXEC is to use their own website, at www.nationalexpresseastcoast.co.uk. Here you will be able to register dates you wish to travel so you can be notified of when tickets have been released and the company sometimes offer an extra 10% off ticket prices by booking here. I would actually recommend you book any train journey using the NXEC website as there is no credit card charge and no charge for sending tickets to you, something sadly lacking from the Virgin owned Trainline website.

When you book most tickets will require you to book a seat. There was a bit of a kerfuffle in the press earlier this year when it was announced that NXEC were to charge for seat reservations, but this was only if you were using a flexible ticket that didn’t require a seat reservation. If you are a bargain hunter like me, you will probably find seat reservations are compulsory with your ticket and you do not pay for compulsory seat reservations, so the whole debate in the media was somewhat disingenuous and over the top.

All trains are non-smoking. You can select if you want a table seat or an airline style seat and if you wish to be facing the direction of travel or not when you book on the website.

Tickets are usually sent to you within a couple of days of making your reservation – in fact I have been particularly impressed at how quickly I receive my tickets since NXEC took over the franchise on the East Coast Mainline – the last time I booked the tickets arrived in the mail the very next day.

Tickets can also be purchased at any major rail station.

Travelling with NXEC

Trains on this line can get very busy, so I would stress the importance of reserving a seat at all times. Obviously there are times when this isn’t going to be possible so I shan’t lie – be prepared to stand at peak periods.

You normally find that most carriages are filled with reserved seats but there will usually be one coach which doesn’t have reserved seats to allow a little flexibility for travellers.

If you are boarding at Kings Cross, NXEC platforms do not come up on the information boards until 15 minutes prior to departure. There is always a huge surge of people when platform numbers are announced as passengers hurry to the train to board. If you have a seat reserved and little luggage you might wonder why on earth people do this, but believe me, as a seasoned traveller with this company if you have a suitcase and want to stow it at the end of your carriage, you have to be quick.

Luggage space is usually adequate but if you are travelling at peak times you will struggle to find space for a suitcase – and I am not talking about a huge suitcase either – due to the shelves quickly filling up. There are luggage racks above the seats which can cope with smaller bags. If the train is particularly busy, luggage will be tagged and carried in the guards’ van.

Seat reservations are marked with cards which are placed in holders at the top of each seat. Sadly at busy times some passengers have absolutely no compunction in removing these cards and taking the seat for themselves. This is particularly irritating for the person who has genuinely booked the seat – usually the passenger will return the seat to the person who reserved it, but sadly whenever it’s happened to me it’s been done with bad grace and a complaint that “they didn’t know the seat was reserved”. This may be the case sometimes but the last time it occurred the card was returned to me after the usurper departed by the passenger sitting behind me, who had seen the lady who was sitting in my seat quite deliberately remove the card and drop it to the floor!

Occasionally seat reservation cards will not be put in place on the train – something that has happened to me once when I boarded a train with my daughter only to be told all seat reservations had been scrapped. Quite why NXEC couldn’t instil some order by informing passengers to respect seat reservations booked by people who genuinely had them is a mystery to me – their attitude led to bad feeling and chaos onboard.

Another thing you have to watch out for is the mystery of the missing carriage. Occasionally NXEC will pull a coach from the train and if you are unfortunate enough to have a reservation in that coach then tough – you will have to try and find a seat somewhere else. I haven’t had this happen to me but I have travelled with people who have and they were obviously upset at having to fight for seats when they assumed they had them reserved.

If you are travelling on your own or as a couple I would recommend you opt for airline style seats when making your booking online – you will have a little more legroom and if you are travelling on your own have a better chance of having the seat beside you free for your journey. Table seats are probably better if you have a laptop you want to use but certainly I find the small laptop I use when I travel fits perfectly well onto the pull down table you get with airline style seats. If four people are sitting around a table seat the legroom is paltry – and I say this as someone who isn’t quite five foot two inches in height. There is one plug point for every two seats, which should be adequate for most people – although occasionally on older trains these haven’t been working.

Coach B is the "Quiet Coach" and mobile phones must be kept in silent mode if you travel in this coach, and calls can only be taken if you go to the vestuble area at the end of the coach.

Seats are reasonably comfortable on the trains, but like everything on these well used trains, they are starting to look worn. I usually am travelling between Edinburgh and London, a trip that takes around 4 hours and 40 minutes and that’s probably my limit on these seats. Seats do not recline either.

Catering is alright – there are none of the famous soggy sandwiches of British Rail’s days, however it’s nothing to write home about either. A trolley service operates enabling you to get tea, coffee, soft drinks and some alcoholic drinks, with a better selection available at the buffet car. Here you will find sandwiches, some of which are available hot (but be aware – they are heated in a microwave), cakes, crisps and chocolate bars. The selection isn’t particularly healthy either, so you may well find buying something before you board, or packing your own, is a better bet.

There are toilets at the end of each carriage and in fairness to NXEC these are always spotless at the start of a journey, however if you need them several hours into your journey that can, and does change. Friday evening trains are particularly bad – these tend to be carrying people intent on getting absolutely plastered on the train and this leads to problems with blocked toilets, flooded toilets or worse.

I am a bit torn on the subject of alcohol being served on trains – I am a firm believer in personal responsibility and dislike being told I cannot do something, however on the other hand I have seen some absolutely disgusting behaviour on trains, all of which was brought on by the people involved being drunk. The worst case was an old woman who going against type turned out to be a foul mouthed pest as the drink NXEC staff were selling her took hold. She eventually had to be forcibly removed by four police officers short of her stop, something that held up the train for a good 20 minutes and was rather upsetting to witness.

It must be stressed that instances such as these are not the norm of course – which is possibly why this one shocked me so much.

Delays & Problems

This is sadly a common problem when travelling with NXEC. I have had delays on this line for many different reasons – some of which were clearly outwith NXEC’s control – but an inconvenience nonetheless. Sadly this line is popular with people intent committing suicide due to the number of express trains on it – so there is a possibility that might delay you. This has only happened to me once, but the police will not let trains proceed until they have finished their enquiries so delays can be lengthy.

Signal failures are quite common on this line too which can add to your journey time. I would say in my experience trains run on time around 80% of the time.

I have already said how old the trains are – and this is starting to manifest itself in delays. On my last journey on this line from London to Edinburgh, we picked up the passengers from a train which had departed Kings Cross before ours and was heading to Aberdeen. The elderly HST train had broken down at York, leading to major disruption for everyone on board. These passengers were forced to try to find a seat wherever they could on our train, leading to serious overcrowding, and NXEC were unable to give information for those passengers continuing north from Edinburgh about trains until we were just about coming into Waverley station.

Another time I arrived at Haymarket station to pick up my train only to be told it had been cancelled. I was told to travel to Edinburgh Waverley where NXEC staff would sort out my alternative journey, which was quite stressful – particularly as my daughter is autistic and quite simply needs to have a seat when she travels.

I have to stress NXEC staff are usually very good when there are problems, but they must have come to expect abuse from some people due to some of the problems with broken trains, seat reservations not in place and sudden cancellations. All I can say is the company must spend a lot of money training them in customer service as they tend to be pretty unflappable in times of crisis – either that or they are just used to it.

Overall

I have no choice in which train company I want to use when travelling between Edinburgh and London – NXEC has a monopoly on the route. However it’s still my preferred way to travel to London over the plane because I don’t have to stand in huge queues at security, I don’t have to worry about liquid in my cases, I know where I am sitting (usually!) and don’t pay extra to check in a bag. I also get off the train in central London – a perk that is worth its weight in gold to me. I also like the fact wifi is available and if I choose, I can spend much of the journey online.

NXEC do operate a “fair use” policy with their wifi and request you do not use bandwidth hungry sites such as YouTube or the BBC iPlayer. The signal does drop too - don't expect it to hang around as you travel through a tunnel for instance.

Delays and problems do get me down but I have suffered similar with airlines on the route and am realistic enough to know that sometimes things DO go wrong.

NXEC offers a good service between Scotland, the north east of England and London, but is also useful for travelling within Scotland. The service between Edinburgh and Glasgow via Motherwell is particularly useful – my sister frequently uses it as it is actually cheaper to use than the First Scotrail services. The stop at Motherwell is useful for those travelling from Lanarkshire to Edinburgh and beyond. Obviously there are nowhere like as many trains on this service but if you can find trains at times that suit you, it’s a useful alternative.

Fares vary incredibly too – if you book early and have a railcard you can travel to London for less than £25 return from Edinburgh. However fares can frequently top £100 return at peak periods. My advice is to use the website to register your interest in dates you want to travel on – NXEC will then e-mail you when these tickets are available to buy.

When NXEC works it’s usually a reasonably comfortable way of travelling intercity – but be realistic and accept sometimes things go wrong – as is the case with all train companies unfortunately.

 

...less