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Review of: Virgin Trains' handling of July 2007 floods in southern England

2/5 (minimum 1)

by tom on 25 Jul 2007

In mid-July 2007 southern England received some very heavy rainfall in a short space of time, leading several rivers to burst their banks flooding a number of rail lines and the M5 motorway. I was unlucky enough to be trying to travel along one of the affected rail routes on Friday 20th July, and it wasn't a pleasant experience.

The initial delay to trains due to water on the lines was inevitable, and I wouldn't blame Virgin Trains for that. However, what came next was a shambles and the seeming lack of preparation for this scenario shocked me.

At Birmingham New Street hundreds of passengers were stuck and unable to make onward journeys due to the flooding of rail lines. Normally replacement buses would have been dispatched, however I was told these were not running as the M5 motorway was also closed, and there were no alternative arrangements in place.

After 30mins of waiting to see how it panned out, I was told that in fact buses were on their way, so joined the hundreds of people (who had obviously been given different information) already waiting in the queue. After an hour and a half (in which time just two buses had departed) the queue was disbanded (quite aggressively) by Virgin staff and transport police.

The remaining passengers were herded into a "lounge" whilst staff tried to arrange overnight accommodation in a local school hall. By this point it was around 10pm, and the floods showed no sign of abating. I was shocked that these arrangements were only just being made. The scenario of both road and rail routes being flooded doesn't seem so unlikely, but there seemed to be no plan.

Eventually one bus turned up heading towards by destination and I jumped on, assuming that the motorway had reopened. Unfortunately this wasn't the case and within 1 hour of leaving Birmingham we were sat in traffic, where we stayed for the following 7 hours, overnight, with no food or water and no information about when the situation might be resolved.

Sure enough these are (hopefully) exceptional circumstances, but what really grated was the total lack on information throughout the process (or even worse, the conflicting information given by different Virgin staff), the rudeness of some of the staff, and the fact that our bus was allowed to depart when the motorway had not reopened. We were not even warned of this and given the chance to buy supplies. Shocking.

I'm normally a staunch defender of Virgin Trains, who have made major improvements since taking over their franchises. However, after my 19 hour ordeal I'm a little less impressed.

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