New rail franchises for Scotland

[monxton]

The Caledonian Sleeper has been taken over by Serco from 1st April 2015. Instead of the usual 3-month booking horizon for rail reservations, they have opened up for 12 months ahead. So if you have a date in your diary to make reservations three months ahead of travel, get in now.

They do not seem to have any of the Bargain Berths of the old service, however they do now give railcard discounts on sleeper fares - I just booked Inverness to London for £54pp. Despite what they say on the website, there is no provision for reserving a bicycle place in the booking system, so I had to phone them.

The main Scotrail franchise is changing to Abellio at the same time, but they have not yet opened up advance bookings and bicycle reservations.

[Ron]

It will be interesting to see if Serco continue to carry the fresh fish products every night from Inverness hence restricting the bike capacity to 2 bikes.

[monxton]

Well, they say there will be new rolling stock in 2018, which may or may not take fish ... or bicycles.