To be really funking fed up of the shit train services in this country

[Medschoolmum]

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.

I used Southern Rail trains every day for various jobs for the best part of a decade and a half (for the last few years I’ve not needed to as my job is local). I can’t remember the last time I used a train where my day wasn’t plagued with delays or cancellations or short carriages or the absolute worst- replacement buses. I was paying soooo much money. The service was utterly disgraceful.

I used to live in Tokyo where you could time trains arriving and departing to the second and lateness caused by trains was so rare that if this ever happened, you were given a stamp card by the train company to prove this to your employer because a train being late in Japan is such a rare and unbelievable circumstance.

It’s not just the trains but also the bus network. I now take a bus across town to my work and they are just as rubbish as the trains. And I live in the town which has the supposed best and most extensive bus network in the country. Almost every other day, the bus home is cancelled or delayed by upwards of 30 minutes. Delays and cancellations never reported on the app so you are waiting in the freezing cold for ages for a bus that may never show up. Sick of it. We are a rich and successful country. There is no reason why our public transport infrastructure should be so bad.

@blackbird77 Completely agree with all of that - there’s no excuse for the state of the public transport here.

I used to live in Seoul and the trains/buses were only late maybe a handful of times throughout the entire first year that I lived there. Whereas here they’ll be late a handful of times in one week. And yeah I used to have issues with buses here too when I took them. It’s all a shambles.

I just can’t understand how we are paying so much for such a poor service.

Germany is not Switzerland. "National embarrassment" was what one German tourist I met in the UK said. I remember speaking to a booking office clerk in Amsterdam (having arrived 4hrs 28 mins late) who said that they deal a lot with passengers disrupted by DB. At the Euros this year, Austrian fans were singing "Die Deutsche Bahn ist so im oasch" (to the tune of "when the saints go marching in...") while Scottish fans sang "are ye Scotrail in disguise?". All that said, there are never any issues with ticket acceptance when it goes wrong, and station staff will quickly endorse your ticket for travel on another train. If you make some allowances for delays you'll be fine. It doesn't put me off, I'm going to do a circuit of the Baltic by train and ferry in the Spring, I just build in some padding at interchanges (especially where sleepers are concerned) and ensure that I have a plan B. If you'll be based in Berlin you should have fewer issues, the worst bits of the network are in the West, around the likes of Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Köln.

Post-reunification lots of investment was piled into the East, which has meant that the infrastructure in the West hasn't been looked after. They've also had staff shortages and industrial disputes, just like us. German long-distance trains also suffer from the same issues Crosscountry and Transpennine Express do in the UK - they cross multiple regions so pick up one delay and carry it over to the next. Regional trains are fine though, and cheap, 58EUR for unlimited travel on local public transport for a month https://int.bahn.de/en/offers/regional/deutschland-ticket

What really isn't helping the UK is how tight budgets are. The last government liked to talk of "modernisation" a lot. "Modernising maintenance" was code for "wait until it breaks, and then fix it". I'm getting tired of points failures which are merely down to lack of lubrication or something equally preventable. Skimping on preventative maintenance like this costs more than it saves. It's important to remember that 43% of Avanti's cancellations were outside of its control - usually down to Network Rail.

My trains are always cancelled due to “shortage of staff / crew which is odd to me because apparently the “immigrants have taken all of our jobs” so why haven’t they taken these ones!

But yes moving back to the UK I could not understand why all the rail networks are such shit shows and why we are meant to be happy with it.

The one good thing and Avanti services is delay repay. I love it!

I’m in Perth, Australia. All public transport is free this year from mid December to end of January. Trains are frequent, clean and reliable. This thread is not making me miss my old London commute at all!

Every train journey I have been on recently has either been delayed and/or cancelled.I have actually given up on them and resorted to using Uber instead.

At the Euros this year, Austrian fans were singing "Die Deutsche Bahn ist so im oasch" (to the tune of "when the saints go marching in...") while Scottish fans sang "are ye Scotrail in disguise?".

That made me laugh. Yeah Scotrail is abysmal too. Football fans can be quite witty 😂

Well I’m glad it’s not put you off enjoying what German train travel has to offer, and your planned trip sounds pretty exciting.

I think unfortunately I’d find excessive train delays on journeys involving connections too stressful, especially as I tend to travel solo.

I will admit I don’t even fully understand who all runs the railways and train companies in the UK, or how things work but everyone involved needs to get a grip and sort it.

Ridiculous that people have to resort to this
while those in power gaslight us that we have a great public transport service.

How much extra do the Ubers cost you?!

I’ll tell you what’s also shit. I live an hour drive from Leeds. If i want to catch a direct train from my village to Leeds it takes 2 hours via train and costs £35 return! Wtf. Why would i want to spend twice as long and considerably more money getting there. Never mind the risk of delays.

German trains are absolutely worse than they used tp be, but you have to remember they had a long way to fall. Where I am they're pretty good and the connection I use most frequently will often wait if there's a small delay. And importantly, every haystack has its station. The Deutschlandticket is an amazing deal, too (notwithstanding tje constant discussions about its funding kicked off by the parties more closely aligned with the motor industry).

Crazy. This is the type of madness I don’t understand. In the situation you describe, I’m sure no-one who has a car will sign up for the train unless they’re planning to have a drink in Leeds.

And even then- if there’s more than one person going out, they’d probably be cheaper splitting a taxi/Uber there and back.

I have lived in Italy for the past thirty years and the rail service in that time has gone from below average to excellent in my opinion. The difference is that a lot of money has been invested into high speed networks and rolling stock and usually my journeys are pleasant and on time and the prices are still somewhat reasonable. Nobody seems interested in actually investing in British railways and the costs are just exorbitant for the passengers.

I hope to learn to drive this year - I have been taking lessons off and on for years and have my test booked. However if for any reason I’m not able to, I will seriously consider relocating (don’t have kids yet) to a country where they have good public transport.

So I’m reading with interest people’s views on which European countries have good train services!

£170 for a 1.5 hour train journey? Wtaf?

YANBU. I don’t drive and rely on trains for day trips and holidays. It grinds you down. As you say I have to build a buffer in to everything. I will take a long time to plan a journey with enough of a buffer to allow for late/cancelled trains but there is a limit time wise if you are having a day out.

Even just booking an activity at the other end is risky because it is non-refundable and if the train you’re meant to catch and the next 2 are cancelled you’re stuck - I am from a quiet town and transport isn’t that regular to begin with.

Not to mention there is no thought to how packed and uncomfortable the trains get when you’re squeezing what should be 3 journeys worth of passengers on to 1 train. I’ve had to stand with my child on a 2+ hour journey. Travelling to the airport on the train (night before of course) with our luggage even with just one connection was by far the most stressful part of our transatlantic holiday. Worrying about cancellations, fighting our way on, trying to find space for our luggage and get seats.

I actually prefer National Express to trains most of the time as it can be a lot cheaper, you are guaranteed a seat and your luggage is safely stowed in the luggage compartment below. I realise coaches aren't available to everyone though. We did use trains for our holiday in Dorset last summer.

The fact is, privatisation was never going to really work, here. We simply don't have a big enough network to support multiple companies, so it was always going to be monopolised. There was never going to be the competition to improve service or reduce fares.

I would love to take advantage of the cheaper pre-booking system, but if I do that, I have to meet every connection. I can't just get on any train going my way. This means I have to check every connection, otherwise I risk pre-booking an entire journey online and then discovering I can't possibly make it from platform 2 to platform 10 to make the connection. Never believe Trainline's fastest journey time if you have to change. It only works if you can teleport.

I do remember British Rail, and it wasn't perfect, but I miss the simplicity. I miss the option of getting the slightly delayed connection because it's going to be going earlier than the one you planned to catch without having to pay the extra for the 'any network' tickets.

And don't get me started on the fact that, as a 50 year old who isn't a student, there is no railcard I can have apart from the two together, which I can only use if I travel with DH. It's great, it's saved us a lot, but we aren't joined at the hip and sometimes I need to travel alone.

@ObelixtheGaul if you miss a connection because of late trains you should be allowed on the next one. Although I'd always hunt out a member of staff to get it sorted.

We've just booked tickets for a 1.5 hr high-speed journey in 2 weeks time, it'll cover 220ish miles and hit 195mph at points (there are 2 stops hence why its not a 1hr journey). Price per person is 40 quid, and it will be clean, airy and a nice trip. Based on the performance of the system over the last 3 years it won't be more than 30 seconds late either ... unless there is an earthquake.

UK trains are a joke, HS2 not going to central london or even to Manchester is a joke. HS2 needs to go from cetral london to Edinburgh with a stop at Manchester and then non-express trains stopping elsewhere. Then they need to build HS3 on the east coast. Then HS4 to Devon etc etc.

They also need to get Heathrow 3 and 4th runways sorted, that place is creaking under the strain too. No point building the 3rd one without building the 4th.

Yes but it’s Perth, Wait Awhile….

😋

I’ve never had to Wait Awhile for a train though.😁

I got various trains in Germany this summer and all mine were fine - clearly it's quite variable but may be worth seeing what the stats are for timeliness etc.

Edited to add: French trains on the other hand were horrendous - we had massive disruption and they didn't even refund your ticket price. There were hours and hours of delays and the refunds were only on the "long distance" portion (about half our trip) and even then weren't the entire ticket cost for that portion. And we had bought the tickets as single tickets rather than split ticketing or anything.