Transport for Wales

 Cardiff to Manchester 

I found Cardiff station a little confusing. Arrived nearly an hour before my train, which starts from Cardiff, was to depart and there were many announcements about platform changes. Most of them were typically "Here's a platform change for passengers on platform 2 waiting for the next train to Newport. This will now depart from platform 2B" - that's the same platform! Confused people making for the lift then turned away from the lift area. This happened maybe three times.

It is common for a diagram of the train coaches to be shown in the platform information screen, complete with coach letters, and which Zone of the station platform to wait for your coach. This helps passengers and train companies too as there's much faster boarding.

Except the Transport for Wales train to Crew I and many others awaited. The diagram was displayed but absolutely no information in it. Luckily it was a shorter 5-coach train and as most 1st Class coaches are first or last (often both) I opted to wait at the front, but no, it was number 4 of 5.

Having found a seat to my liking it was a good journey, scoring 75%. This would have been 70% but the tea and coffee was accompanied by a sugar bowl and milk jug for each passenger.

The next train, also Transport for Wales, from Crew to Manchester, had no 1st Class accommodation. I scored it as I had planned, it came to 20%. However, this trip was under 1 hour so it's not included in the comparison table.

The maximum speed the trains achieved today was 92mph.