good morning guys from a very dark and chilly Shrewsbury railway station it's
6 20 in the a.m and i've got up super early today to take this service which
is the avanti west coast service down to london euston the only direct service from shrewsbury
to london and it's on one of their class 221 super voyagers and i'm travelling in first class i don't
know what to expect at the moment but that's the reason why i'm here isn't it so we'll go and check
it out see what you get for your money and i'll speak to you again on the train cheers for now
yeah i'll tell you what it was really cold this morning i'd probably walked a mile and a half to
get here but i don't mind that i'd be sitting down anyway for the next two and a half hours
now this train normally leaves shrewsbury at 06:39 in the morning and gets into euston at 09:12 which
is a journey time of 2 hours and 33 minutes it's a 5-car class 221 super voyager er at this point
anyway and you'll see here we have one first class carriage at the front and then there's standard
class behind that including the shop we'll be having a look at that area a little bit later on
so i went straight into the first class area which was laid out in the 2-1 configuration you would
expect and the first impressions were cozy which is probably what you want on a dark morning like
this about half the seats were available and i chose the rear-facing double on the left-hand side
a dedicated first-class host was in attendance and they immediately asked if i would like a tea
coffee and some juice this was served promptly in a proper cup and glass too i have to say this
made a great first impression even though i was the only person in the carriage at this point
i was then asked what i would like for breakfast and to my delight
there was a full breakfast option on offer or salmon and eggs i think now i could have chosen
either but i went for the full breakfast which as you can see was fulsome and tasty
the only thing missing was an egg i think but to be honest this was much more than i was expecting
anyway and yeah i really enjoyed it and isn't it nice to get proper stainless steel cutlery as well
i had easily finished breakfast by the time we arrived at wolverhampton at this point there
were only three of us in first class a few more got on here and it was time for a second cup of
tea now it's at wolverhampton where our five car unit couples behind another five car unit
to take us all the way down to euston now this effectively doubles the capacity of the train and
both units have similar facilities er first class though remained sparsely populated throughout
so let's have a look at the seats here in first class and as you can see
they're quite wide and they have these wraparound type of headrests which
i think feel quite luxurious all seats have tables though in the airline
seats the aisle seats table is hinged which i think is to allow easy access or egress
the tables themselves are solid and spacious enough and note the placemat here which was
from my earlier breakfast power is provided by means of conventional three-pin socket
only so remember to bring a plug it's located near the floor on the sidewall
now here's a better look at the seats where you can see the anti-macassar in place
there's quite a gap between the seats and to be honest it was a bit awkward filming uh because uh
as per usual somebody had chosen to sit right behind me in an otherwise fairly empty carriage
believe it or not this always happens to me for some reason do you get the same yourselves
we have the seat recline levers here and a retractable wide armrest
legroom is as you would expect from the size of the table is plentiful
so even the tallest shouldn't really have an issue with this
the seat padding is good er needs a little bit of a deep clean i think in some areas which are
probably a bit more difficult to reach but overall i think cleanliness was generally acceptable
now above the seats you have ample luggage space with integrated personal reading light
digital reservation displays and general lighting beneath which is a singular coat hook there are
pull-down blinds at each window now on the window itself is a qr code for the onboard hub which is a
recent initiative by avanti west coast enabling all customers to order food drinks from their
seat now i'm not sure how popular this is have you tried it i think personally it's a good idea
i thought i'd try out the wi-fi at this point and yeah it was decent
loading up social media images pretty quickly i thought uh it's certainly one of the better
free on-board wi-fi services that i've encountered recently anyway
we left birmingham new street with views over the construction site for the new hs2 station
curzon street which incidentally will be the first brand new inter-city terminus station
built in britain since the 19th century apparently curzon street is currently due to open in 2026.
by the way guys if you like what i'm doing and want to support the channel i'd really
appreciate it if you could take a look at my ko-fi page you can get loads of exclusive stuff
over there and yeah any support would really help me out thanks very much
"we are now arriving at coventry please take care when leaving the train we hope you've enjoyed your journey"
oh well i certainly was enjoying my journey so far and here is coventry which looks like it's getting
some building work of its own here doesn't it if you know what's happening please leave a comment
in the usual way lots of people got off here uh there was still lots of glare on the window so
you know i thought it was probably time to have a wander off to do the loo review
so a big accessible toilet here with the push button open close and lock functions i don't know
what that knocking noise was by the way it sounded like somebody was trying to get in doesn't it baby
change here and i thought i might be in luck this morning but no nothing here to swap unfortunately
below that and above the toilet is the push button flush
and there's a large mirror here to my right with integrated soap water and dryer functions
as you can see here everything worked and the super powerful water actually
worked too much in a way because it managed to get a blob onto the camera lens at this point
which was slightly irritating but it wouldn't last for too long now beneath the mirror are the
assistance alarms and to the right of those is the litter bin and some double coat hooks on the wall
there is a retractable handle next to the toilet as you would expect and yeah pleased to say that
this toilet was generally very clean and it was well maintained top marks to avanti west coast here
well me and the blob of water decided to have a walk through one of the quite busy
i thought standard class carriages and you can see that it's in the expected 2-2 configuration
a bit brighter than first class i thought um but quite busy as well now i spend most of my time in
standard class on avanti west coast services and yes in my opinion they're perfectly comfortable
for long journeys part of this carriage you'll see is taken up by the shop so let's go and have a
look and see what that's like too on these trains the shop normally consists of a refrigerated
section for sandwiches cold drinks and alcohol plus some shelving opposite the counter for snacks
there's also a microwave or two and a hot drinks machine behind the counter
i didn't dwell too long uh i wanted to get back to my seat and order another free coffee to be honest
i'll tell you what i was really glad to be in first because the shop announcer had previously
informed the train they were open but were only taking cash payments i think there was something
wrong with the card machine at that point well i don't know about you but i hardly ever travel with
cash anymore so it's a bit awkward and maybe i should really for these kind of scenarios
anyway talking about money if you want to take this train yourself the best price i
could find for an advanced first class single from shrewsbury to london direct was £66.70
and i used a load of delay repay vouchers to pay for my ticket otherwise i'm not sure i'd
pay that much for this journey ordinarily that's not to say it's bad value the cheapest price i
could find for this exact service in standard class was £37.40 and there's plenty of services
for half that price providing your prepared to change trains on the way
what do you think let me know there's a link to another video i made on this subject just up here
well it was brightening up a bit outside as we came into rugby the blob of water
had gone fortunately so let's enjoy a bit of the scenery as we get closer to london
and i'll speak to you again when we get there
"good morning shortly arriving [??????....] on this journey from shrewsbury this morning this will be
london euston just before you do leave us please make sure you do have a look around and make
sure you have all your personal items to hand, on arrival do take extra care when stepping off the train"
okay um yeah i'm at london euston that has been the avanti west coast service
all the way down from shrewsbury in first class and yeah what did you think i thought
it was pretty good now i've been on three avanti west coast services in the last
six months or so and they've been consistently good which says to me it's a pretty good service
and i will continue using that service and the company so yeah very pleased with this and
i'm gonna head off now to um my second destination of the day i hope you can
join me for that as well in the meantime guys thanks very much for watching and cheers for now