Northern Spirit > Reviews > Need to catch a train

Author's product rating:   

Frequency of trains	Satisfactory
Reliability of trains	Occasionally on time
Comfort of trains	Comfortable
On-board facilities	Poor

Advantages:	The new trains are a lot better than the old "slam door" type trains they had .
Disadvantages:	The trains hardly ever run on time

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Northern Spirit? More like Northern Ghost!

I had the unfortunate pleasure of this company (now renamed Arriva trains Northern) since they started to run trains. If you need to catch one of these I would start walking because the chances are you will get there before the train does. They are hardly on time, no announcements on why they are late no nothing.

The spent millions of pounds on some trains to run on the Airedale and Wharfdale lines (class 336 trains I think). Well these trains are really fun. Dispite the air conditioning and other extra features which, if the government want people to use public transport, train companies need to think about. However when they got these trains instead of sorting out problems before allowing them to come into service they decided to wait. The first time I went on one of these new trains the electronic doors wouldn't open so no-one could get on or off the train. That really did annoy me because I was having one of those days.

However the next day I had to catch one of these new trains again and was sat on it for 2 hours after the train's software malfunctioned and the train stopped moving...and we were no-where near a train station.

They have now sorted these problems out, but trains still tend to be late.