There seems to have been a shift in the language of Arriva communication since the takeover and my latest reply from customer services is an another example.

For the first time they've given some positive news and actually a commitment that things should improve in the coming weeks. They've never done that before in responses to me. I do wonder if with DB gone, the new company are allowing more to be done to rectify local issues? DB clearly had no interest in committing to money being spent when they had one foot out the door.

The following does fit with what a driver said last week to me that now the takeover is complete, we'd see a very quick improvement on what we have seen lately.

"We do apologise for the inconvenience caused and look forward to bringing you a better service going forward as the depot confirm that we have a number of drivers started with us and we should see a big improvement on our reliability issues in the coming weeks which I understand has been frustrating".