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'Stuffy trips and no loos for Virgin passengers'
By Dick Murray, Evening Standard Last updated at 00:00am on 04.05.05Rail passengers travelling between Euston and the North are today warned they face "uncomfortable" journeys.
A leaked memo reveals that some of the lavatories in Richard Branson's £10million a time Pendolino trains are not working properly and the air conditioning is erratic.
The memo is from Virgin Trains managing director Charles Belcher.
It says the lavatories are sometimes locked because the sensors wrongly inform the door mechanism that the waste tanks are full. Full tanks are not always emptied at depots.
The doors have also been jamming on their sliding mechanism and some of the pipework was incorrectly installed.
Other technical problems mean that when temperatures rise, the airconditioning blows hot air through the carriage rather than a cooling breeze. When temperatures dip below zero, the air conditioning cuts off.
A Virgin spokesman said all the technical problems should be solved by the end of the month.
