Faq - our trains

You can use JourneyCheck  or NRE to view updates on any Chiltern Railways service. 

If all our trains stopped at all our stations then each journey would take a very long time. Instead, the amount of trains calling at each station is based upon how many passengers use each of our stations. 

During the school holidays we experience increased passenger numbers which make our trains busier. Unfortunately we do not have an unlimited number of carriages available and therefore making every train longer is not possible. However, we can assure you that we try to run services with as much capacity as possible at busy times all year round. 

There are a number of constraints on how long our trains can be. The main constraints that we face are the limited number of carriages available for use and short platforms that can only take a certain number of carriages.

Our trains are sometimes shorter than planned due to constraints such as train faults with the planned train meaning that we have to use a replacement train which may unfortunately be shorter than the original planned train.

We try to allocate carriages based upon how busy we think each train service is going to be. This ensures that we can provide the maximum capacity possible on our busiest services.

The smoking of cigarettes and vaping of e-cigarettes is  prohibited on Chiltern Railways trains and at Chiltern railway stations. Given their remarkable likeness the use of e-cigarettes can cause concern amongst other passengers.

In the same way as you would expect people to react if you were to vape an e-cigarette in a restaurant, in the confined space of a railway carriage or platform, their use has led to complaints.  In light of this, we have issued guidance to our staff to ask people using an e-cigarette to stop doing so for the comfort and convenience of their fellow passengers. Similarly to being asked to turn off a mobile phone if the conversation is causing irritation to others, most customers observe a form of social etiquette and do not deliberately undertake actions when they realise these could be annoying other people in their vicinity.