As you lovely people may know, I recently moved becausesex to Warwickshire, so nowadays I seldom use the train service in the area. However, my family and I have come to Essex to visit my parents and siblings and to go into London a couple of times this week. Since TfL have taken over the Liverpool Street to Shenfield Metro Services under the TfL Rail brand (run by MTR Crossrail), TfL have put most of the route in the London Travel Zones (that is all the route with the exception of Shenfield itself, so all stations to Brentwood). As Brentwood was in Zone 9 and Shenfield was outside the zones altogether, it was a lot cheaper to travel to London compared to travelling from Shenfield. Obviously this meant having to use the now TfL Rail branded Metro services.
As you may also know is that until the new Crossrail trains are delivered, TfL Rail are having to use the Class 315 trains that Abellio Greater Anglia (AGA) were using on the same route. Anyone who regularly used these trains while AGA were running them will know that the trains were in a bit of a sorry state, some of them were still in the blue with white strip livery with cracking paint towards the top, the garish pink vestibules (which do remain on a few) and the tired dirty interiors. A few had been giving them a lick of white paint and red doors, with red grab handles inside.
Since TfL Rail have taken over, some of the trains have been given a refresh, ie new seat covers, muted natural coloured vestibules and new white and blue paint on the outside and blue doors, carriage numbers in the TfL typeface and the TfL Rail Roundel. Others that AGA had recently repainted still have the red doors and the pink vestibules and original seat covers, but have been extensively cleaned and are now almost spotlessly clean. All trains have had new safety posters and TfL advertising and new TfL maps and TfL Rail route maps throughout, as you'd expect from pre-existing London Underground and London Overground trains.
The only down side to the train journey experience is on the way back to Brentwood yesterday, when the train we got on had the grey with white dots seat covers which were put on by AGA and are fairly new, however the seat covers were clearly cut too big for the seats and looked baggy, it's not TfL's fault, but even the original blue seat covers fit better than these do.
Upon our arrival at Brentwood on Tuesday, we got dropped off in the car park right next to Platform 4, we used the entrance & exit straight onto the platform, a guard was there, greeted us with a smile and asked what it was we needed, when we told him we needed to top up our Oyster Cards, he happily directed us up the stairs from the platform to the ticket office & entrance hall. Once there, there were no ticket windows open, but there was three members of staff helping people with the self service ticket machines, one of whom explained to us exactly how to top up the Oyster Cards and took us through the process.
As we had our son with us, who was using his 11-15 Oyster Card, when he tapped his Oyster Card on the Oyster Card reader to tap in, it made a different noise to what we were used to. We tried it again, thinking it hadn't worked, but when we asked the staff, they politely explained that the tap in had worked and the different tone was to alert the staff to the fact someone was using the 11-15 Oyster Card and to double check the person in question was the correct age.
Once we had cleared this misunderstanding up, we made our way down on to the platform and waited for the train, when we boarded the train, a couple of ticket inspectors boarded too, one of whom was the gentleman that helped us top up our Oyster Cards and double checked that our son's card has tapped in OK. When he checked our Oyster Cards on the train, he recognised me from when I used to work at the M&S next to Chelmsford Station, so we had a quick chat, having transferred from AGA to MTR for the TfL Rail/Crossrail services.
This isn't to say that AGA staff aren't helpful because they generally are, but MTR staff do seem to go the extra mile to make sure you have a pleasant journey with them, that combined with much cleaner trains makes their services much better than travelling with AGA.
Well done TfL & MTR.
