Just zis Guy, you know? <
[email protected]> wrote:
> Yes, I was on a train that was delayed once.
One presumes in that case you have only ever used a train once or twice.
I use the train whenever I travel to work in London. I haven't yet arrived on time, nor have I had a
seat for the inward journey since 1983. On my return home it is routine and has been since 1987 to
discover that the train scheduled to leave shortly before 4:30 pm has been cancelled and those who
were expecting to use it now have to cram onto the same train as the commuters, making life hell for
all of us.
I have been abandoned several times in the middle of nowhere, including being abandoned on a train
without light or heat at 2am just outside Manchester Picadilly when my PDA told me that temperatures
inside the train fell to -4C. I finally got to my destination at 10.15 am (I should have been there
12 hours before), frozen, hungry and just a few hours away from my return journey.
I have honestly lost count of the number of times I have seen the train I was waiting for
cancelled, reduced to half its normal length, or to make it from the station only to break down and
have to wait for another locomotive to push it on to the next station where we all debark to wait
for the next scheduled train which now has to proceeed with the train packed with the passengers
from two trains.
Suffice it to say that I consider the existence of seats on trains to be a theory that no one has
yet managed to prove.
My mother who is in her 80s and arthritic was abandoned at a station 240 miles from her home by a
bunch of useless tossers who simply stopped the train and walked away from it, leaving the
passengers alone on an empty station. The next train scheduled to stop at that station was eight
hours later and it wasn't a direct train back home but one that required two changes of train
(whereas she had been booked on a service that took her directly to the nearest mainline station to
her home). She was expected to sit on the platform in the middle of a vicious winter until the next
train arrived. No offer of alternative transport, no attempt to provide food or warmth. Eventually
she phoned me and I had to drive a round trip of just under 600 miles to collect her, take her home
and return home myself.
My daughter was abandoned at Crewe where "friendly" staff told her to stop complaining, sit on a
bench all night and there would be another train in the morning.
So, that's two vulnerable lone women abandoned by railway staff, something which is absolutely
forbidden on the motorway network. On the same day my mother was abandoned, so were an entire pack
of cub scouts (on a different train) and again station staff refused to open a waiting room for them
and also refused to allow them to contact their parents.
FWIW I regularly travel to Hanger Lane and use the North Circular into Archway. Any delays I have
suffered have been minimal. But that's because I drive that route. Hanger Lane used to be a standing
joke in the 80s, it was however discovered that the light phasing was incorrect. Once that was fixed
traffic flow improved and I have not encountered any problems of note there for over a decade.
By contrast in the 20 years that I have been running backwards and forwards from the south to
the northwest using the motorway network, I have suffered at most a handful of delays and on
only two occasions have these delays exceeded one hour. Even when the car I was driving threw a
connecting rod through the engine block, I was home just two and a half hours later than my
normal arrival time.
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