Michael Palin praises the Wrexham & Shropshire

The Shropshire Star has a famous guest writer today. Former Monty Python funster Michael Palin writes about the Wrexham & Shropshire railway company, which runs a sightly and very popular service between those town and London Marylebone:

Perhaps it lacks the hurtling speed of a Pendolino or a TGV, but Wrexham & Shropshire makes up for this in every other way. Nothing is sacrificed for speed, and yet passenger satisfaction figures are at the top end of the scale.

Which surely shows us that people rate a railway on how they’re treated on the train. Wrexham & Shropshire may seem like a throw-back to old-style comforts but I see it as a pioneer setting an example of high service standards which other lines would do well to follow.

See also Euan Feguson's comments on the company's sensible ticketing policy, quoted in an earlier posting here:

"Now, the train's going to be moving off in that direction," says the guard, bending solicitously over a sweet little bundle of embroidered tea cosies which turned out to be a shawl wrapped around a lady of rather more than a certain age. "Do you want to go to the opposite seat, face forward, see the countryside? Oh, don't worry about the ticket stuff; we'll get that sorted later."