Night Riviera - merged posts, ongoing discussion

[whole diary]

[PhilWakely]

20/11/19.....

23:45 London Paddington to Penzance due 07:55
20/11/19 23:45 London Paddington to Penzance due 07:55 will be terminated at Newton Abbot.
It will no longer call at Plymouth, Liskeard, Bodmin Parkway, Lostwithiel, Par, St Austell, Truro, Redruth, Camborne, Hayle, St Erth and Penzance.
This is due to slippery rails.

Failed to crest Dainton and set back to Newton Abbot, where pax were transferred to 2-car 2C41 (0628 Exeter St Davids to Par)

Edit to clarify date of the incident - Grahame

[bradshaw]

or as RTT^» (Real Time Trains - website) succinctly puts it

This service was cancelled between Newton Abbot and Penzance due to it being Autumn (TT)

[stuving]

or as RTT^» (Real Time Trains - website) succinctly puts it

This service was cancelled between Newton Abbot and Penzance due to it being Autumn (TT)

Strange to say, that is the official "cause" - or at least a very short version of it. In full, code TT is:

Autumn-attribution Neutral Zone delays (See Supplementary Autumn Attribution Guidance)

So we'd not have been much the wiser if it said that.

"Neutral zones" are places where some time loss due to leaf problems is accepted as inevitable, and NR^» (Network Rail - home page) and the TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company) agree on a certain amount that is taken out of delay attribution (i.e. neutralised). Either party can still be held accountable for excessive time loss. However, he current process is meant to avoid fruitless bickering over delays - to quote the DAPR:

The principles of this common attribution process are based on reasonableness and pragmatism. The procedures and the guidance, if applied in the right spirit, have the potential to reduce TRUST^▸ (Train Running System TOPS) incident disputes during each Autumn.

[Umberleigh]

The DRS^▸ (Direct Rail Services Ltd) 57 306 was back on the Down sleeper this morning.

Have to say being transferred from my berth to a 2 car DMU^▸ (Diesel Multiple Unit) in the very early hours would ensure I never, ever trusted the sleeper again. And that’s sad.

Something has to change.

[Jamsdad]

Occasionally bad things happen ( i must say never to me) but mostly its very good and I use it a lot.

[grahame]

You'll need to sleep in your own bed (or someone else's) between Christmas and the New Year ...

From The Independent as part of a longer article of what's running where over the holiday season

GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) Night Riviera

The first of 11 days of disruption to this London-Penzance overnight service begins gently, with changed timings between Exeter and Plymouth. But the following night, the Penzance-to-London train will go no further than Reading.

And from Christmas Eve to New Year’s Eve, no Night Riviera services will run.

Disruption continues up to and including: New Year’s Day, counting cancelled arrivals that morning. Services re-start in the evening of 1 January 2020.

[bobm]

This isn’t different to any other year in my opinion. For as long as I can remember the sleeper hasn’t run between Christmas and New Year.

[TonyK]

You'll need to sleep in your own bed (or someone else's) between Christmas and the New Year ...

As the proud owner of four double beds, one kingsize, one superking and a couple of singles (all of which will be filled over Christmas), I can cope.

[GBM]

You'll need to sleep in your own bed (or someone else's) between Christmas and the New Year ...

As the proud owner of four double beds, one kingsize, one superking and a couple of singles (all of which will be filled over Christmas), I can cope.

All over to FTN mansion for a paaaartay 

[1st fan]

The Sleeper to Penzance had a lousy start being as it was 3+hrs late leaving Paddington. It has made some of that up and is now only 2:15 late.  I assume this was due to incoming  crew being late because of the storm.

[bobm]

At least it ran - all the Scottish ones were cancelled.

[phile]

1C50 Down Sleeper with 57603 failed and terminated at Plymouth this morning.      ECS^▸ (Empty Coaching Stock) ran to Penzance later

[RivieraRegular]

As my username suggests I do a round trip on the Night Riviera once every 2-3 weeks all year round, I found this thread while searching to see if its just me or does it really breakdown so often.

Many of the failures you discuss here I was on including the getting towed back to Plymouth by an engineering train last October (by the way the replacement IET^▸ (Intercity Express Train) definitely did have first class) and this Thursday's failure to leave Plymouth as the breaks were stuck on (this is what we were told).

I am a huge fan of the Riviera when it works and have nothing but praise for the fantastic staff many of whom now recognise me, but the unreliability is becoming worrying to the extent that I often go up to London a day early if I have a meeting I can't miss just in case, which kind of defeats the point of a sleeper train.

Don't even get me started on how quickly the refurbished cabins are wearing out!

[phile]

As my username suggests I do a round trip on the Night Riviera once every 2-3 weeks all year round, I found this thread while searching to see if its just me or does it really breakdown so often.

Many of the failures you discuss here I was on including the getting towed back to Plymouth by an engineering train last October (by the way the replacement IET^▸ (Intercity Express Train) definitely did have first class) and this Thursday's failure to leave Plymouth as the breaks were stuck on (this is what we were told).

I am a huge fan of the Riviera when it works and have nothing but praise for the fantastic staff many of whom now recognise me, but the unreliability is becoming worrying to the extent that I often go up to London a day early if I have a meeting I can't miss just in case, which kind of defeats the point of a sleeper train.

Don't even get me started on how quickly the refurbished cabins are wearing out!

Breakdowns are quite rare now and the instance quoted in the last post was not actually a failure.    It had actually struck a beer barrel on the track which could happen to any train anywhere.

[grahame]

As my username suggests I do a round trip on the Night Riviera once every 2-3 weeks all year round, I found this thread while searching to see if its just me or does it really breakdown so often.

Welcome to the forum.  With the best will in the world, a forum like this tends to pick up the operational incidents and oddities and 'headline' them far more that the daily good operation that happens the majority of the time ... just as the GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) site will pick up the positive and headline that to the near-exclusion of bad news.  The real truth comes somewhere between.

Time after time, meeting after meeting (and I have personally been to a lot), what turns customer off and on - what is most critical to them - is reliability.  Forget speed. Forget frequency. Forget cost. Forget comfort. Forget even safety.  I would suspect that - if we had a safety issue that the individual traveller identified with - that would shoot to the top of the list, and it's to the credit of that real industry it's presently a no-issue.

Many of the failures you discuss here I was on including the getting towed back to Plymouth by an engineering train last October (by the way the replacement IET^▸ (Intercity Express Train) definitely did have first class) and this Thursday's failure to leave Plymouth as the breaks were stuck on (this is what we were told).

I am a huge fan of the Riviera when it works and have nothing but praise for the fantastic staff many of whom now recognise me, but the unreliability is becoming worrying to the extent that I often go up to London a day early if I have a meeting I can't miss just in case, which kind of defeats the point of a sleeper train.

Don't even get me started on how quickly the refurbished cabins are wearing out!

I cannot speak from experience of planning trips on the Cornish Sleeper - no logical reason to personally us it - but I do on rare occasions use the Caledonian Sleeper.  If my meeting in Scotland is vital (training and I'm the instructor) it's travel up the evening before every time; if I'm there for contract programming or as an audience member at an event, the sleeper works for me.

We have much interest in the sleeper here (that's what brought you to the site!) ... what stats does anyone have to put numbers rather than spin on its performance?