I’m pleased to welcome Avanti West Coast today as the eighth train operator to Know Your Train.
Avanti West Coast operates services from London Euston along the West Coast Main Line to destinations including Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and the North Wales Coast. Their two fleets, the Pendolino and Voyager fleets, are both included in this release.
Know Your Train is our way of providing more information about the actual train operating than anything else. We will tell you what the train will look like, what facilities you can expect to find onboard and where your coach will be.
As with other train operators, Avanti West Coast trains are appropriately branded so all of the Know Your Train pictograms will look like the train that turns up at the platform.
And now on a personal note given that this is a blog (sometimes)…
Just over a year ago on the 9th March 2020, this journey was started with ScotRail. The discussion started only a few days after, in all seriousness, #DontTellCrossCountry, so thank you to CrossCountry for giving me the motivation to start chasing this goal! The world has changed somewhat in the tough intervening year: we all now play our part, limiting travel as much as possible, to get through the coronavirus pandemic and return to some sense of normality.
Throughout the last year, Realtime Trains has continued to work with the train operators, taking anything from a few days (in one case!) to several months, so that we can collectively return to a railway with an improved passenger experience. The aim of Know Your Train, and indeed Realtime Trains in recent years as I’ve considered its position more generally, has been to help passengers have a better, more informed journey and I am pleased that eight train operators are now contributing to that with us.
Every operator that has joined Know Your Train has progressively become more complex and Avanti West Coast has the biggest imagery set yet: 100 images have been made to cover their two fleets and all their livery variants. Know Your Train is now available on over a third of all train services covering over two fifths of the distance travelled by those trains every week.
Onwards and upwards, and thank you to everyone who has supported Realtime Trains over the last year.
Thanks to Demi Bowers for the title photo and Angus Duncan for the thumbnail photo. Many thanks to The Progress Train for providing assistance.
