Avanti suspends ticket sales and running only one train per hour to London

Blue Mist said:
Stop being so miserable. One an hour, luxury. I want to go from Sydney (the real capital if Australia) to Canberra (the pretend capital) I can go at 8.05am 12 noon or 5pm.
That's it.
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Why on earth would you want to go to Canberra from a buzzing city like Sydney, though?
Bill Bryson's very funny about Canberra, incidentally. Odd how you get these sleepy towns — Ottawa, Canberra, Berne — that are chosen as capitals.
 
Lovebitesandeveryfing said:
Slightly off topic, but not that much. I've been trying to work out how to get up from London for the derby, if Avanti are simply not running (at present no trains announced for any weekends, except that I see they're running tomorrow). One way is to go up via Sheffield. Anybody been taking the Transpennine recently? I ask because when I've passed through Piccadilly recently, that doesn't seem to be entirely reliable. Is Northern more reliable than Transpennine, or can I rely on the latter?
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Try London North Western takes around 3 hours Euston to Crewe then crewe to Manchester can be aviva/northern

If you book as a group of 3 for London North Western you usually get a group discount ends up about £33 from Euston to Crewe.
 
mat said:
Beardy was suiing the government over NHS contracts at the time. This was their way of telling him to fuck off.
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Not only that, beardy lost the contract a couple of years ago so he took them to court and won.
 
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Lovebitesandeveryfing said:
Why on earth would you want to go to Canberra from a buzzing city like Sydney, though?
Bill Bryson's very funny about Canberra, incidentally. Odd how you get these sleepy towns — Ottawa, Canberra, Berne — that are chosen as capitals.
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I am in Sydney for 3 months so want to go just cos.
From what I've heard the Oz Govt realised everything was centered around Sydney so wanted to spread everything out. For that reason alone they decided to make Canberra the capital.
 
Lovebitesandeveryfing said:
Never quite understood according to what criteria Virgin lost the deal. I did that run Euston to Piccadilly and back many times. I don't remember any cancelled trains, and they were rarely late. They were o.k., by and large.
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Same.

It's a journey I did a lot or work (post covid less so, everyone loves video calls nowadays) and bar one or two exceptions under Virgin the trains were broadly on time, efficient and staffed by friendly helpful people.

Yes peak trains were expensive and nobody's perfect but it's gone massively downhill.
 
Exeter Blue I am here said:
No change to the ongoing bunko with Avanti West Coast I see. Trying to book travel for the United and Brighton games, but all weekends for (at least) the next 2 months are grayed out on their timetable, even this weekend coming. I rang them up and they said they are currently releasing weekend tickets for sale only 4 or 5 days in advance of travel. The nation’s premier railway line and you can’t buy tickets for weekend travel. I’ve said it before about a million times, but this verkakte country is utterly fucking broken
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It's not often I feel sorry for united fans but imagine how much of a pain in the arse it must be for them to get to home games now.
 
Lovebitesandeveryfing said:
Slightly off topic, but not that much. I've been trying to work out how to get up from London for the derby, if Avanti are simply not running (at present no trains announced for any weekends, except that I see they're running tomorrow). One way is to go up via Sheffield. Anybody been taking the Transpennine recently? I ask because when I've passed through Piccadilly recently, that doesn't seem to be entirely reliable. Is Northern more reliable than Transpennine, or can I rely on the latter?
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TransPennine are absolutely abysmal. Having been priced out of the West Coast route by Avanti, I've used LNER from Kings Cross to Doncaster and then TransPennine from Doncaster to Piccadilly for our last 3 home games, and on each occasion TransPennine have failed to produce a driver for the return leg from Piccadilly to Doncaster, causing me to miss my connection back to London. For the Palace game last week, they advised us that they'd obtained a replacement driver, who they'd stuck in a taxi in Cleethorpes bound for Piccadilly. He turned up nearly an hour late and then having finally set off for Doncaster, TransPennine then truncated the service at Sheffield anyway as they didn't have a guard to complete the onward journey from Sheffield to Doncaster. I got home to SW London at midnight.
 
Thanks for all replies everyone.
Ok. I simply can't take the risk of not getting back to London. There's a flight connected to it. And work connected to that. I'd have to give up going to the match. And because Haaland brings out the sadist in me, I really want to be at this one.
Can anyone give me a life over the Pennines to Sheffield (or know anyone that can) after the match? Sharing petrol costs, naturally. I reckon I can rely on the East Midlands train down to King's Cross running. PM me if you know anything. Greatly appreciated.
 
Lovebitesandeveryfing said:
Never quite understood according to what criteria Virgin lost the deal. I did that run Euston to Piccadilly and back many times. I don't remember any cancelled trains, and they were rarely late. They were o.k., by and large.
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Virgin refused to guarantee they would fully fund the pension scheme.
That’s why they lost the franchise.
 
paulchapo said:
I used to have to commute a fair bit via London and Virgin was the operator when I did. Three trains an hour and usually on time. Yes they were expensive but so are Avanti. I have caught them twice since they took over and they were two trains an hour, packed solid and even more expensive. An horrendous service.
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Virgin did at least also have regular promotions and decent deals for advanced bookings, or did up to around 2012.
 
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