Some thoughts on Northern in Tyke Country

A week away in Beverley in a holiday let right next to the town’s rather grand station, so what do we do but travel with Northern three times to Scarborough, Hull and York on separate weekdays.

 

A Northern Class 170 at Beverley

 

All the trains (6) were on time, clean, well patronised and had very robust on-train ticket checking. I did notice though the Northern and indeed wider operating rail company’s problems of Sunday cancellations due to lack of train crew.

A downside with Northern was our pre-booked, via their own website, tickets to Scarborough. I inadvertently selected the wrong Monday, should have been 24^th March but I booked for 31^st March. I realised my error straight away and tried to change the tickets to the correct day – wait for it!

The original tickets were £22 ish ,I recall, and the new ones were £27 ish. No problem thought I, I’d pay the extra and a small admin fee. Oh how wrong that thought was. The admin fee was quoted as £40!!! I was stunned and had to just buy new tickets and let the wrongly dated ones go. Yes, I know it was my error but £40 to change them to the right day that I wanted to travel on when the tickets were in the £20’s strikes me as appalling. Northern, a public company these days, should be ashamed of such a stunt.

 

A Northern Class 155 at Beverley

 

Other thoughts - Scarborough Station was a right old mess as it’s clearly undergoing major works. The trouble is there’s nowhere for the diesel fumes to go as the temporary roof is only a short distance above the trains. You had to walk down the platform to the uncovered part to escape the fumes.

 

A TransPennine express Class 185 at under refubishment Scarborough Station

 

OK, I’ve had a grumble but the Class 170’s were a great ride (I’d previously sampled the East Midlands Trains version of them on the Robin Hood Line down in Nottinghamshire) and even the refurbished and elderly Leyland-built Class 155’s to York were passable. So that was our experience over in Yorkshire of Northern. A bit of a curate’s egg.