JFC Travel Blog

I have to say that overall I’m not too happy with the first few months of the National Express East Coast franchise. In fact, the only good thing I can say about them is that gner.co.uk redirects to their website so I don’t have to type the ridiculously long nationalexpresseastcoast.com if I’m on a computer where it’s not bookmarked. I suspect the people at the NXEC commuter blog are wishing for a return of GNER, their blog was originally set up to criticise GNER and they were happy that they lost their franchise. Perhaps now they can admit that GNER wasn’t all that bad really So far I’ve noticed the following on my travels with NXEC… (more…)

As mentioned in a previous blog post, the only problem I had with GNER’s new online booking engine (which has continued to be used by National Express) was that it did not accept American Express. I was promptly told that support for Amex was due to be added in January and, as promised, it arrived towards the end of the month. (more…)

A weekend in Glasgow means that I’ll be travelling NXEC for the first time since they’ve taken over the GNER franchise. Money is tight after the Christmas so I’ll be travelling standard class. It’s frustrating to see how much the prices for flexible tickets has risen over the last few years, I wanted to travel sometime after 3pm on the Friday - the cheapest flexible return for that time of day is £158.50 return (£126 single) so I decided to book a cheap webfare instead for £40.50 single on the 15:00. As there’s engineering works on the East Coast over the weekend my return on Sunday was either going to be by plane or Virgin Trains, so for the first time ever I decided to give easyJet a try. (more…)

Some carriage crests from GNER trains are starting to appear on eBay. The Victorian-style metal crests were attached to the side of GNER carriages and were removed a few weeks before the end of the GNER franchise. I can imagine that these crests will increase in value over the years due to their traditional design and build quality. GNER was the last railway company to use such crests on the side of their carriages. They’re not going cheap though, expect to pay over £500. This one has been operating on a GNER HST for a number of years which shows the quality of these crests and this one is unused, possibly intended to be attached to a newly refurbished train.

The new National Express East Coast franchise has started today. Although I do have my doubts as to whether the franchise will be a success (as I believe they’ve overbid for the franchise like GNER did in 2005) and I’ll miss the GNER branding, I do wish them well for the future and hope that they prove me wrong with regards to their bid. They have ideas for the future, some are totally new ideas and others are based on GNER’s original 2005 bid, if they can deliver and remain profitable then travelling the East Coast route will still remain a pleasure.

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It looks like the future of GNER’s new web site and booking engine is safe. If you visit nationalexpresseastcoast.co.uk at the moment all you get as an ‘under construction’ notice, however if you look up the IP address of the site you will see that it is the same as the GNER site. Also tickets.nationalexpresseastcoast.co.uk currently displays the GNER booking engine. Presumably from midnight all they need to do is change a setting and the new National Express brand will appear in place of GNER. It’ll be a shame to see the GNER brand disappear but at least the new website will be used for more than a couple of weeks.

UPDATE: new site is live at www.nationalexpresseastcoast.com (.co.uk has not been set up yet - looks like the .com form will be the official one).
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With the end of GNER’s franchise imminent I’ve heard stories about people collecting whatever GNER memorabilia they can so they can sell it on eBay. I expect most of the interesting items will show up in the next few days after the franchise is over. Some recently completed auctions have included a presentation boxed set to celebrate the first anniversary of GNER in 1997 and an award presentation set of two cut crystal glasses. (more…)

Update: Amex is now accepted on the NXEC site as of 25th January 2007.
Although I think most of us would agree that overall the new GNER booking engine (NXEC now use the same booking engine) is a big improvement over the old one that was based on thetrainline.com. However, it does have one drawback - it does not currently accept American Express (more…)

In 2003 GNER surpassed my expectations by a long shot. GNER customer services by this time had already impressed me on a number of occasions but this time customer services and the on board crew had really gone out of their way to make my parents anniversary special. (more…)

In most of the UK the trains look a mess thanks to the way the franchising process works. When a new company takes over a franchise it always takes a few years before all their trains are rebranded. In many cases it’s even longer, in London you still often see trains in the old British Rail Network SouthEast colour scheme or the colour scheme of the past franchisee, many times you see a mix of colour schemes over various carriages on the same train. It doesn’t do a good job of setting brand identity. (more…)