►►Deserted: The East Midlands Trains platforms at London St Pancras station on 26 December 2013◀◀
A handful of Boxing Day train services ran today (26 December 2013) with most intending passengers being left with few options to travel by rail.
Despite receiving £5 billion in subsidies from the Government every year, the rail industry failed to provide a proper service on what is one of the most popular days for family visits and leisure.
The few heroes of the industry were staff at Chiltern Railways, Stansted Express, Southeastern, Eurostar, ScotRail and Southern. They turned out to provide a limited service to some destinations, but most of the industry’s managers were conspicuous by their absence.
Trains did run from:
London Marylebone to Bicester North
London Liverpool Street to Stansted Airport
London Bridge to East Grinstead, with a connecting bus to Gatwick Airport
London St Pancras to Ashford (high speed services only)
ScotRail selected services
Brighton to Three Bridges
Eurostar services to Brussels and Paris
Although large amounts of public money are being spent on the railways, the Government refuses to recognise that they are a public service. It is happy to leave it to the 26 rail operating companies to decide what to do.
Mostly they did nothing, just like the Government-appointed Rail Delivery Group.
Labour’s shadow transport minister Lilian Greenwood accused the Government of hypocrisy in failing to provide proper Boxing Day trains despite being in office since 2010. In opposition, the Tories attacked Labour for shutting down the railways on Boxing Day.
Tory MP Stephen Hammond, now a transport minister, said in 2009: “Labour just does not get how important the railway is to people at Christmas-time.”
It is not clear what his attitude is now.
There were reports that Bicester Village, one of the most popular locations for foreign visitors to Britain, had subsidised Chiltern’s Boxing Day rail service.