East Midlands Railway apologises to Martin Lewis for ‘disgraceful’ train journey

Broadcaster Martin Lewis took to social media to complain about his experience on an overcrowded East Midlands Railway service.

East Midlands Railway (EMR) has apologised to Money Saving Expert’s Martin Lewis after he complained on X/Twitter about the conditions of one of its trains on Monday afternoon.

Lewis described the London to Sheffield service as “disgraceful”, and said his fellow passengers had asked him to speak out.

He explained that every seat and standing place was taken and there was only one working toilet.

Lewis posted: “Dear @EastMidRailway this train (Ldn – Sheffield) is disgraceful. Every seat taken, every standing space taken, scores sitting in mid train corridors so I guess 500 people on it and ONLY ONE WORKING TOILET at one end, so people must crawl over each 100s to reach it. It’s degrading, like something from the 19th century.

PS and as I walked to the loo, apologising profusely, a number of people asked me to say something publicly about it. One of the reasons for this tweet.”

In a follow up, Lewis amended: “PS it seems I may owe an apology to the 19th century – many saying trains then were efficient, on time, and luxury.”

Many went on to share their own experiences on overcrowded trains in the replies.

EMR attributed the busy nature of the service to network upgrades.

In a reply to Lewis, a spokesperson for EMR said: “We are really sorry about your experience this afternoon.

“Vital infrastructure upgrades on the East Coast Mainline have resulted in a very large number of customers trying to travel with us rather than using the available rail replacement bus connections.

“We have strengthened services as much as possible and increased the number of staff to help manage this situation but clearly it has not worked as well as we would have liked, and we will work hard with the wider industry to learn from this.”