(12 May 2023, 9:36 am)Andreos1 wrote To be honest, I do think there was some improvement on paper. 
3 car 185's doubled-up, new rolling stock, extensions from Redcar to Saltburn etc. 

However those commitments were made a long time ago (pre-pandemic), before employee and customer relations got worse. 

Turning it around, improving those relations, improving staff retention and training new staff is quite a long-term task and they've clearly not achieved it.

Financially - no idea if it was profitable/worthwile or not.
It must have been at some point, otherwise they wouldn't have kept the contract/tendered for it repeatedly over the years.

The government need to take some blame for it. The railways over the Pennines are Victorian and should've been well on the way for major improvements by now. Instead they've made more plans than GNE route changes and the thing isn't fit for the 21st Century and have gone for sticking some wires up and not an awful lot more.

Why put up with all that crap as a driver when you can go work for LNER instead and have it easy.