Travelling home for Christmas - and getting back afterwards!

[whole diary]

[grahame]

MSN news from Trainline tells us that the quietest days to travel are Christmas Eve (24th December) and Sunday 22nd December.  Busiest day of the lot expected to be Saturday 21st December, with Monday 23rd December second busiest.

They tell us that no trains will operate on 25th December and only some very limited airport services on 26th ... that latter contrary to Real Time Trains which, for example, has a London Marylebone to Oxford Parkway service showing, a whole lot of services on Merseyrail, and if you're in Glasgow you can get to Ayr,  Gourock, Motherwell, Larkhall, Neilston, Kilmarnock, ... even to Edinburgh and with a change of trains to Leven!

* From 27th to 29th, Paddington closed (so really from 25th to 29th)
* Liverpool Street closed from 25th December to 2nd January
* Crewe closed from 27th December to 3rd January (so really from 25th to 3rd January)
* St Pancras to Harpenden closed 21st to 29th December (East Midlands trains starting north from Bedford

The article does not cover the closure of Westbury from 24th December to 24th January 2025 - that's 30 days.  Perhaps that's because they regard it as a long term closure rather than a Christmas Story?    But with trains timetabled when open from Westbury on 6 lines - to Cardiff, to Portsmouth, to Weymouth, to London, to Swindon and to and via Taunton to the West Country, the shutting of  "the west's Crewe" for a month deserves a mention, surely!

[TaplowGreen]

On current form, anyone contemplating travelling via GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) on the days leading up to Christmas, particularly Sunday 22nd, has probably imbibed a bit too much of the Christmas spirit already!

Better off booking a seat with Santa, I understand the reindeer have the whole of that period in the working week!

I wonder if Hopwood is putting any special arrangements in place in terms of ensuring sufficient staff are available to run the advertised service in the runup to Christmas/in between Christmas & NY?

[grahame]

On current form, anyone contemplating travelling via GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) on the days leading up to Christmas, particularly Sunday 22nd, has probably imbibed a bit too much of the Christmas spirit already!

Better off booking a seat with Santa, I understand the reindeer have the whole of that period in the working week!

I wonder if Hopwood is putting any special arrangements in place in terms of ensuring sufficient staff are available to run the advertised service in the runup to Christmas/in between Christmas & NY?

I am going to try to describe what the grapevine suggests will happen carefully.  It suggests that "the Christmas period will be no worse than the summer was, or than recent weekends, but it will be 'a challenge'" . 

I admit to being glad that the Melksham Transport User Group is no longer attempting to run Santa trips.  The reasons for their demise were multiple - not just limited to train reliability, but on that one issue alone a risk assessment would suggest a mitigation of "don't do it".   Marketing a product to newcomers to rail where there is a significant risk of it going wrong, with the damage if it does go wrong being significant in terms of long term damage and no easy mitigation plan to put in place does not make sense.   I am looking forward, more in hope than in being convinced it will be less risky to recommend rail, to February 2025.

[John D]

An old friend of mine (when I was in London) used to hire a small (car size) van, because public Transport was so rubbish near his relatives out in country and journey back to London between Boxing Day and New Year so regularly messed up by engineering works.

Many firms and contractors have 2 week break, and van hire firms offered them at cheap rates as sitting around, but car hire rates and Advance rail fares were often higher around Christmas

Nowadays rail is even worse as there are inevitably staff shortages and no attempt to incentivise sufficient staff with required levels of overtime to get sufficient to volunteer to work uncovered shifts.

[Timmer]

I am going to try to describe what the grapevine suggests will happen carefully.  It suggests that "the Christmas period will be no worse than the summer was, or than recent weekends, but it will be 'a challenge'" . 

That’s not reassuring in the slightest as there were times throughout the summer where cancellations abounded and not just on weekends.

[TaplowGreen]

I am going to try to describe what the grapevine suggests will happen carefully.  It suggests that "the Christmas period will be no worse than the summer was, or than recent weekends, but it will be 'a challenge'" . 

That’s not reassuring in the slightest as there were times throughout the summer where cancellations abounded and not just on weekends.

My thoughts exactly. Weekends have been shambolic recently and this has bled into weekdays too (particularly during half term which is of course known about months in advance), combination of weekend, school holidays, Christmas, volume of customers in this context is an opportunity for complete meltdown given GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway)'s limited ability to manage such things.

[IndustryInsider]

Though GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) are more likely to get agreement from  the DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) to offer an enhanced ‘special’ rate given that it can be classed as a one-off.

[grahame]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driving_Home_for_Christmas

Driving home for Christmas

In interviews for the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page) Radio 4 programme Today in 2009, and The Guardian in 2016, Rea said he wrote "Driving Home for Christmas" many years before its first recording; this was in 1978 when Rea needed to get home to Middlesbrough from Abbey Road Studios in London. His wife had come down to drive him home in her Austin Mini to save money because it was cheaper to drive than travel by train

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDt3u2Ev1cI - he needs to drive on the other Side of the road from this video - or pop in to Barnard Castle for an eye test