NXEC's gift for us commuters of 2 first class returns anywhere on the route was a welcome surprise. It seemed too good to be true...2 First class returns anywhere along the route....anytime up until next November. It was too good to be true I just tried to book 2 returns to Edingburgh at Easter only to be told "its not vaild over the Easter period"....what a shock!!!

As this mornings 07.20 pulled into Tinsel Town this morning, things weren't looking good. This service is usually a 225 electric train and when regulars see a 125 in it's place that usually means there will be no seat reservations and 1 coach less. Happily this wasn't the case this morning. OK so I didn't have a table seat as requested but at least I had a reserved seat and it wasn't rammed becasue there were the same number of coaches as normal.

What really made this mornings 125 stand out was that this set had been resprayed in the new National Express livery and it didn't actually look as bad as I thought it would. In fact I'd go as far to say that it looked OK. However, clearly this set has been washed fairly recently and it was obvious to one and all that NXEC are either going to have to wash thier train sets a bit more regularly or we will be traveling on trains that look like they've been pulled through the Thames estuary.