I paid £170 for an advance ticket for a trip into London this morning. Journey of around 1.5 hours. Booked a seat with a table so that I can work on the train. Got up 45 mins earlier than usual to get to the station on time. Parked at the station for an exorbitant sum. Arrive to be told that train is delayed by 22 mins. Annoying, but OK, I have built in additional time. Not a massive issue.
After waiting for 10 mins, they announce that the train is cancelled. Not stopping at my station because they are running late. (This is not some tiny village station with one person on the platform BTW- it is a substantial sized station with loads of people waiting for that train.
We are informed that the next train will depart half an hour after the original scheduled train. This will mean that I'm a bit tight on time but should just about make it to my meeting on time. This is why you build in a buffer zone, right?
So now the next train is delayed as well, who knows when or if it will arrive. When I finally manage to get on the train, it's clearly going to be heaving. No chance I'll get a seat. And in the meantime, I'm still sitting here in a dingy waiting room drinking crap coffee.
The last time I took a train was around 10 days ago. That one was also cancelled for a different reason. I was delayed by around 40 mins.
I know I can claim back the ticket cost etc, but how on earth do they get away with charging such extortionate prices for such ridiculously unreliable services? I used to live overseas in a country where the trains were much cheaper, cleaner and ran like clockwork. Why are we so incapable of doing the same?
I'm not convinced that nationalising them is going to fix the problem either... the days of British Rail weren't exactly much better.
I am so fed up of this shit show.