We will be traveling along the south coast of England from mid March to mid April 2025. We will be traveling from London Canterbury Portsmouth , Weymouth, Lyme Regis, Saint Austell, Penzance, Saint Ives, Plymouth, and back to London. We will be traveling exclusively by train and bus. We have read that the railroad system has deteriorated since we were there in 2007. We wonder, if we should anticipate problems with the trains. Are the schedules posted still reliable? May there be problems with overcrowding? Are the train cars clean? Are there any other problems we should anticipate? We know there is no train service to and from Lyme Regis.
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Los Angeles
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Lake District, England
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We have read that the railroad system has deteriorated since we were there in 2007. We wonder, if we should anticipate problems with the trains. Are the schedules posted still reliable? May there be problems with overcrowding? Are the train cars clean?
This is one of those questions which is almost impossible to answer, as to me it is a glass 1/2 empty rather than glass half full approach to life.
We have read that the railroad system has deteriorated since we were there in 2007.
As has been said on other questions of similar vein, people who write reviews are those with a problem to chew over. No one ever writes a review which says "my train journey ran on time today and I got a great fare...." which is the vast majority of journeys. It also totally overlooks the fact that there have been a lot of new train cars delivered in the last 17 years.
We wonder, if we should anticipate problems with the trains.
Who knows if there will be strikes. So far out it is impossible to know if there will be engineering works on your travel dates which could impact services.
Are the schedules posted still reliable?
On the whole yes. Very often where delays occur they happen either due to passenger action, or external causes beyond the railway's control- such as weather or non passengers incursion onto the tracks for instance. As with any railroad around the world that can include people who sadly use the tracks as a way to conclude their lives. But the industry is taking a lot of very active steps to address that particular delay cause.
May there be problems with overcrowding?
That depends largely on the time of day you are travelling. Delivery of new train cars has allowed many routes to run longer trains, on routes and at times of day when capacity has been an issue. But local events can impact that, and sometimes you just don't know about trains which get large numbers of school children for instance. Generally on your routes I don't see that as an issue. But to somewhere like St Ives on summer and holiday weekends the train is basically a Park and Ride service from St Erth to St Ives. Thus loadings can depend on weather as much as anything else. But that is only a short ride.
Are the train cars clean?
Given that most of the trains you are using you are joining at the part way point in their journey (for instance from Lyme Regis you are joining a train at Axminster which started it's journey at Waterloo almost 3 hours earlier) that depends as much as anything else on the actions of your fellow passengers. BTW in a few weeks time I am doing the Plymouth to Lyme Regis (and on to Weymouth) journey and in my case am routeing through Taunton rather than Axminster as I want to see more of the countryside. On my journeys I will get a double decker bus for all the legs of my journey. Also route Taunton on that day and that time is cheaper than route Axminster, abnormally.