I of course, ticked off Edinburgh Waverley railway station a long, long time ago! But I’ve just been sorting out photos! While having a wee look, back at East Coast Trains, when they use to run the most trains on the ECML!
More photos can be found over at www.gordon-valentine.com/zenphoto/railway-stations/edinburgh-waverley/
RIP East Coast Trains 2009 – 2015. You were the best railway franchise in the UK. It’s all down hill from now on. Since Virgin have taken over running of the ECML. It will be like National Express all over again!
So from today, the trains will start turning Virgin Red. We’re going to lose the great colour of East Coast Trains. See some photos below!
Many of you, may or not know. That Virgin Trains East Coast (90% owned by Stagecoach, and 10% by Virgin), takes over from East Coast Trains (publicly owned) on 1st March 2015. They have not even started and they’re already off to a very bad start!
They are stopping the current East Coast Rewards club, in favour of a Nectar points scheme. Right now rewards customers spending £255 on train tickets accrue enough points for a free standard single-class ticket. In but in contrast, a £255 spend under the Nectar scheme will only earn enough points to buy a sandwich – with passengers having to spend thousands of pounds before they qualify for free travel.
If you ask them via @askVirginEC why they are doing this. They don’t get back to you!
They keep saying they surveyed around 2,000 East Coast passengers. They say the results demonstrated that Nectar was by far the most popular loyalty scheme amongst those people who took part in the research. But they will not make the results of the survey public or even what questions they asked.
Also I, have not found a single person, they asked!!
Want to learn more about this? Then follow @SaveECRewards!!
The list of people that have used my photos, just keeps on growing…
East Coast Trains have also used the photo on there facebook page. Which can be found at www.facebook.com/eastcoastuk.
Best they are very glad I took the photo. It shows everyone just now bad it was. And why Network Rail had to close the ECML between Peterborough and Grantham for most of yesterday afternoon and well into the evening.
I believe even some 24 hours later. Only 3 of the 4 lines are fully open. The one remaining line (the fast line towards London) is open but only for use by diesel trains.
I do feel very sorry for East Coast Trains, this happens way to often on the ECML. Network Rail, do really need to sort it out!
So happy. Now one of the local news papers, has used on of my photos. I took yesterday at Tallington of the downed overhead on the ECML. Below is the photo the Peterborough Telegraph used.
Read the news article at www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk/news/travel/latest-travel-news/severe-train-delays-for-peterborough-passengers-1-5607794.
If anyone else wants to use this photo, then just let me know :).
Below are my now famous Tallington ECML photos. When I heard that overhead lines had come down at Tallington. I of course had to cycle down and get some photos!
I had no idea at the time. When I posted them on twitter that both East Coast Trains (35,644 followers) and National Rail (144,390 followers) would retweet one of the photos. Which in turn, got lots of others also retweeting the photo!
I have now, lost count of how many people, that must have seen the photo!
More photos from this set can be found at www.gordon-valentine.com/zenphoto/ecml/