Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris
It's not the age with Pacers, Den, it's the fact that they are basically a goods wagon chassis with single decker bus coachworks on top. They're noisy and uncomfortable, and that's before they start moving. 
When they get going, the body rocks backwards and forwards on its bogies like a merry go round horse, or an oil well nodding donkey, hence the nickname.
I travel between Wigan and Liverpool sometimes and there are a few of these on the route. I always have all my fingers crossed that I'm not going to get stuck on one. They really are horrible. |
Fairly certain I went on one once.. Was travelling from Chester to London via Crewe and had to get one to Crewe from Chester. While it wasn't a nice experience, it was considerably more comfortable than the Pendolino we changed to from Crewe to London. The Pendolino was packed to the point where people were having to sit on the floors and in the corridor around the toilet, it was a hot day and the Aircon had failed. This, combined with the fact that the previous train had been cancelled and due to a fault, one of the carriages on our train was closed, meant that the train was dangerously overcrowded and the journey was awful. The train manager was doing what she could (handing out free water, basically), but she couldn't get to an area where most of us could reach her.
I was a little angry, but I felt sorry for the staff on the train (it's not their fault, things go wrong). What did make me furious is when we got to Kings Cross and got off, over 60% of the train consisted of first class carriages and Virgin had not opened these. That, and the fact that thanks to the journey being booked at the last minute (due to being an emergency), I paid just over £100 each for two tickets (admittedly, these were returns).