JFC Travel Blog

This trip was taken shortly before the current election related troubles in Kenya.

Flight KQ 103 departs Heathrow Terminal 4 at 08:15 so I decided to spend the night at the airport Hilton which is attached to Terminal 4 by a walkway so no need to mess around with airport buses in the morning. Check-in at the Hilton was smooth, as a gold member I had been upgraded to the club level and had free access to the lounge which had a selection of complimentary drinks. The lounge was closed the next day in preparation for the Christmas holidays so I was given a voucher in the morning for breakfast. Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »

It has been announced that Air France KLM has purchased Belgian airline VLM. The airline has the largest number of flights out of London City Airport. Air France KLM started a massive expansion at London City in 2007 through their Irish subsidiary CityJet and VLM will add destinations including Manchester, Rotterdam, Jersey, Brussels and Luxembourg to the AF KLM London City route network.

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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.

From The Guardian: Trains on the money-go-round

Christian Wolmar with a not too optimistic look on rail franchising. London Overground is mentioned in this article, it’s going to be interesting to see how this TFL managed franchise is going to perform.

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. Read the rest of this entry »

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 Read the rest of this entry »

A lot of people seem to mistakenly believe that the East Coast franchise will be the first attempt by National Express at operating a railway. This is not true, but it is the first time they’ve decided to name their rail operation after their parent company. Giving a high speed rail operation the same name as a slow moving coach service seems to be a big mistake but it is part of a plan by National Express to expand the scope of their brand. Read the rest of this entry »