All the news on GNER this week has been focused on their parent company, Sea Containers, bankrupcy application following their failure to repay a £62million bond. So far reports indicate that GNER will remain unaffected but personally I find this hard to believe. Some reports have already suggested that Sea Containers may instruct GNER to cut staff by 10% in an effort to save money.

The UK Gov has also reitterated that they are not prepared to re-negotiate the ECML franchise and that they expect GNER to live up to their 10 year, £1.3 billion committment.

Glad I'm not the man who has to sort this little lot out. Then again I suspect I will be one of the many who has to, in some small way, pay for it.

I was in barcelona while this happened but have picked up on the story thanks to Stamford Gooners comment on my Tales from far away entry.

Apparently on Wednesday morning this week (Oct 18th) the 07.20 made an unscheduled stop at Stevenage to let a passenger off the train. The usual Guard, Sean promised to let passengers know why but for whatever reason, chose not too.

I now know the reason why they made the extra stop at Stevenage. The story goes that a passengers mother or father had died suddenly while they were on the train. The person told Sean who arranged for both the 07.20 and the nothbound service to stop at Stevenage so the person concerned could jump trains and go straight back to where ever it was they came from.

That, for once, is what I can only describe as excelptional customer service from GNER though I wonder if they would have gone to such lengths had Sean not been the guard on that service.