dmaze

Thanks, I was hoping someone who actually had firsthand knowledge what was going on would comment. :-) I stand corrected on the inter-city rail thing. I admit I find the 4-car Virgin trains baffling, especially the way they're made up to *look* like the old HSTs but actually appear to be glorified diesel rail-cars. Yup, I remember riding old compartment coaches in the 80's. If they were kept clean and maintained, and you could keep people from smoking in the non-smoking compartments, they were actually quite nice... There is, as you say, no baggage space on most trains today, and our Didcot-Swindon leg made this abundantly clear. (Actually, if the overhead racks could manage airline-scale luggage that would help quite a bit.)

I remember the accidents, especially the massive one near Paddington; hadn't realized track maintainence had been re-nationalized as a result. But the effect of enforced agnosticism, while not as bad as shafting just one company, still leads to peculiar running decisions in practice. Alas.

I did actually see what I thought were two different company's trains at plaform 8 in King's Cross (by left luggage, don't you know). One was GNER, "Route of the Flying Scotsman", but I don't remember what the other one was.