Trains to Preston - via Virgin, do they still smell, are they on time?

littlerock

I need to go to Preston next week and am debating taking the train. (I live in London.) However, my sister, who regularly travels to the north by train for work, says Virgin trains are as smelly as ever and those to places like Preston are not very reliable as regards timekeeping.

I have to come back on Friday for another appointment and am worried if I can count on being back in time - I have a two hour gap but she says that might not be enough. And I am concerned that after apparently spending so much money to fix it, the trains still smell. Do they?

wealdroam

littlerock wrote: »

I need to go to Preston next week and am debating taking the train. (I live in London.) However, my sister, who regularly travels to the north by train for work, says Virgin trains are as smelly as ever and those to places like Preston are not very reliable as regards timekeeping.

I have to come back on Friday for another appointment and am worried if I can count on being back in time - I have a two hour gap but she says that might not be enough. And I am concerned that after apparently spending so much money to fix it, the trains still smell. Do they?

Why are you asking that question?

Don't you believe your sister?

littlerock

yes but she does not catch the trains to Preston very often as lately she has been going mainly to Sheffield and Derby and for all I know there may have been engineering works delaying Preston trains plus I read they were gradually fixing the smell so I just wanted to check other people's experience. To be honest if you can't say something helpful I should prefer it if you didn't say anything at all. I thought we were supposed to be nice to each other on here not snarky.

KeithP

You will struggle getting a three metre worktop on those trains.

~Beanie~

You can google to see what engineering works are taking place and assuming that there aren't any, I can't see a train being two hours late.

As for the smell, I'm not sure what kind of smell you are referring to, I can't say that I've ever noticed one on Virgin Trains (other than the odd smelly passenger :rotfl:)

Gleeful

Sometimes there is an odd smell near the toilets. To be honest though I haven't noticed it recently. I travel the route on average once a month.

pappa_golf

Preston is on the main line , its not a backwater , trains go thru preston from Scotland to get to that dirty hole called London , the smells start south of Watford gap

bleuggh

I googled "smell in Preston" because there is an awful smell (of sh*t quite frankly) in the air. This post came up.

I felt compelled to reply to it because I have been travelling from up to Preston for work since January (I also live in London).

Several things about the trains:
a) Bizarrely, for the most part, I've found that they've mostly been on time (based on my Monday-Thursday experience since January).

However last Monday I was delayed for over an hour and arrived into Preston after 1am in the morning due to a signal failure on a part of the line (~ Stafford somewhere iirc). I was checking up on the trains once I was aware of the delay (should have been keeping an eye earlier on tbh!) and realised that some unlucky passengers were stuck on a train for an extra 2+hours, presumably stationary until they could fix the signal failure.

Another case was last Thursday where someone had been hit by a train (presumably suicide) on the way up to Glasgow. This time I was fortunate to be monitoring the trains earlier in the day and managed to avoid another 2+ hour delay.

In short, monitor them carefully and be prepared for the usual bizarre delays that we get due to the "wrong type of sun" and such. Especially as the weather begins to get warmer, it really seems to be the case that Network Rail get caught out by this phenomenon every year (you would think that maybe one year they might start learning from this). To be fair to the west coast mainline, it's a fairly universal problem up and down the country.

b) Smelly trains. Yes, I would agree that the trains do smell more nearer the toilets, although I find it's not necessarily close proximity to the toilet itself. There are some areas half way down the carriage that seem to be dealing with the sewerage. Bear in mine I have a very sensitive sense of smell, seems most people don't notice it as they're quite willingly sitting anywhere.

c) Virgin trains generally. Not the "high quality" you'd expect from say the "Virgin" brand like Virgin Atlantic, even worse to swallow when you realise that most of the money for improvements has been put in by us, the taxpayers, while Virgin went on to profiteer as much as they could, anyone can google this. The general state of our railways in our country (all things considered: cost, infrastructure, GDP) are of such a low standard compared to other first world countries. Train operators like Virgin Trains make their fair contribution to the situation, rephrase: train operators like Virgin Trains are the root cause.


Digressed somewhat but it's past 1am and went off on one, sorry!

PS: I'm just an ordinary passenger.