(03 Jan 2015, 6:35 pm)Dan wrote Agreed. I've done it two or three times on Sundays and often been tired enough to just sit there and chill whilst having my earphones in, but I didn't do that today. The monotonous announcements were a little more tolerable on this journey, but still irritated me.
I've never quite been able to understand the discussion with regards to capacity issues on the 7 service, as whenever I have used it, I've basically been one of about five on-board. As I said above though, I've only done the journey on Sundays so assumed that was the reason why. I found there was still plenty of room on-board the 7 I used today, too, though. I didn't count or anything, but I'm inclined to suggest that the X66 I used afterwards to Stockton carried more passengers in total, and there was still plenty of room on that as well. Certainly wasn't ever more than three people in front of me at any point during the journey, and I was sat on the row of seats behind the emergency exit.
Everything is quiet at the moment though being January - even our 5's are carrying small loads whereas before Christmas we had standing loads. The express version of the 7 is the train - you couldn't really compete with that, journey time wise.