Martin Lewis forces apology from East Midlands Railway over ‘degrading’ Midland Main Line service

East Midlands Railway has been forced to make an embarrassing apology to money-saving expert Martin Lewis after a tweet complaining about the operator’s London-Sheffield service went viral on X.

Lewis had complained about the “disgraceful” service that he likened to “something from the 19th Century”, which he estimated was carrying around 500 people. Lewis said that every seat was taken and passengers were being forced to sit in corridors and vestibules.

He went on to call the entire experience “degrading” as there was only one working toilet on the entire train.

Lewis added that fellow passengers on the train had asked him to highlight the conditions in a post on X.

Responding, East Midlands Railways said on X: “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.”

Lewis’s original post on X was seen by more than £4.2m people.