Review: the Caledonian Sleeper lounge at London Euston station

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• Jonathon says:

  28 Jan28 January 11:31

  Sorry but no lounge should be charging for food or drink. Cough up for a basic beer and wine for prices that would match main airline prices to Europe. If I have to ever take out my credit card in a lounge I’d be walking out of it right away. Bye.

  • ChrisBCN says:

    28 Jan28 January 12:38

    So as the route is subsidised by the tax payer, you are suggesting that tax payers should also fund the cost of beer in the lounge?

    • executiveclubber says:

      29 Jan29 January 00:19

      By that rationale should the journeys cost £500? Or, to go further, if a taxpayer funded my hospital stay should I have to pay for the NHS food?

• broomy23 says:

  28 Jan28 January 11:37

  Feel like the only reason one would choose this service over the much more competitively priced flying option is because of environmental concerns. £300 is absurd when a flight and airport hotel would cost less. Plus the airport hotel would be an improvement on sleep quality.

  • John says:

    28 Jan28 January 20:34

    If you’re concerned about the environment you can take a day train. Faster and less likely to be cancelled.

• Gordon says:

  28 Jan28 January 13:11

  There’s lots of criticism of the cost of rail fares and food.
  But there is some good news from Mr Khan for a change!

  Off-peak Friday fares trial to start for Tube and trains in London https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-68109486

  • G says:

    28 Jan28 January 16:52

    Shaving 10p of tube fares is small comfort for those commuting into zone 1/2.

    • Gordon says:

      28 Jan28 January 19:53

      You would still be moaning if it was a 10p increase!
      No pleasing some people!

    • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

      28 Jan28 January 19:56

      It’s 10p for zone one only trips but 60p for zone 1-2 trips.

      Don’t let your bias get in the way of accuracy.

  • Gordon says:

    28 Jan28 January 19:52

    Hence the “for a change”!

• Rma says:

  28 Jan28 January 13:13

  If they brought back motor rail, I would use the sleeper service again. Although the old sleeper cabins were fairly basic, the advantage of arriving in the north of Scotland with your own car transported there, packed with all the luggage etc needed for a family holiday, was well worth the cost. The service was expensive but always fully booked. The demand was certainly there but was discontinued several years ago.

  • tony says:

    28 Jan28 January 13:23

    As per comments above though when it comes to the actual cost of operating Motorail, doing it profitably would be impossible. You’d be looking at paying thousands. (Perhaps there’s a market opportunity here to drive someone’s fully loaded car from Fulham to Inverness and meet the family at the airport?)

    I used the sleeper in ‘21. Took a club room with my son. He could get onto the top bunk fine, but don’t think I’d have managed and whilst carrying some excess timber I’m not obese.

    Finally got to sleep around Carstairs but as we were heading to Inverness is wasn’t all bad. But don’t think I’d rush to do it again.

    • John says:

      28 Jan28 January 20:30

      I’d pay for someone to drive my car (with me and family and stuff in it) from London to Edinburgh / Glasgow to start off a Scottish car trip.

  • Richard T says:

    28 Jan28 January 13:45

    When I was a child in the 60s my parents always used the motorail from to and from Stirling and Newton Abbot; and until it was closed down I used to use it for family holidays to Cornwall and Scotland from London. As you say it was always fully booked and also I think strangely underpriced, I would happily have paid more. For the sake of doing it I took one of the last car trains to Cornwall in probably 2006. GWR told me they were closing the Cornwall route because it was so expensive paying professional drivers at each end to put the cars on and off the train; and having now sold the rolling stock to an operator outside the UK it would be very hard to get going again.

    • The real Swiss Tony says:

      28 Jan28 January 19:17

      I vaguely recall using Motorail in the 1970s with my parents – I was still in short trousers – to get from Newcastle to Bristol. The platform & height barrier at Paddington is still in evidence, although suspect construction means that couldn’t be resurrected easily.

    • Andrew. says:

      28 Jan28 January 19:38

      My late uncle worked for a windscreen replacement company in Stirling, part of their core business was replacing broken glass for BR. Windscreen and ballast aren’t good partnerships.

      This was in the days before the A74M and Newbury bypass though and cars were nowhere near as comfortable. There’s no way that a rail service could economically compete with Stirling to the M25 in 6 hours.

• Lilian says:

  28 Jan28 January 13:26

  Food should be free pay for alcohol

• babyg_wc says:

  28 Jan28 January 14:09

  This (lounge) looks grim… before this review i was curious to try the overnight train, but that desire has vanished..

  • Jan Wright says:

    28 Jan28 January 14:28

    You would be really right – lounge grim – exceedingly expensive double cabin with en-suite just about ok – world’s worst breakfast!

  • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

    28 Jan28 January 20:01

    Looks pretty much like a lot of airport lounges to me.

• Duncan says:

  28 Jan28 January 22:52

  I’m lucky to have a non-public railcard, so I do use the Sleeper a bit. Did a return to the HfP summer party on it.
  The new CAF (an appropriate abbreviation) carriages are a backward step from the BR stock. It’s more modern, sure, but the classic and club rooms layout is poor. The sink on BR had a lid, which was handy for organising things, while now, its open all night, with only a cheap pull-out drawer under the sink.
  The under-bed storage isn’t huge, and the ladder says do not remove. (It’s easily removable).
  The mattresses are in dire need of replacing already, and the soundproofing is also not as good as the old stock.
  I’m not a fan of the new lounge car. The lighting is a bit bright. There was something about the old couches the old lounge had.
  I had better night’s sleep on ViaRail’s 1950’s Canadian train than the new Cally Sleeper.

• Alan says:

  29 Jan29 January 07:35

  Pretty shocking for them to charge at that ticket price and not sure I’d describe as ‘only’ £6 for a sorry looking toastie and what look like supermarket value tortilla chips!

  Also if you remove ‘back’ from ‘back into London’ it would immediately make it less London-oriented!

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.