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.

This happened to my mother's wonderful planning a few years back but it is still happening.
Both 80 year olds, picked and paid for the direct train to London. (Virgin) They get to the station at silly o'clock and are then informed it's cancelled they will be on the one that they have to change in Chester or Crewe or both I forget, and also navigate the stairs and changing platforms. No problem in their youth, but one failing heart and two replaced knees this put them both under a lot of stress and upset. No help anywhere to be found to change platforms. Nearly missed the connecting train.
Train home was direct and exactly what they booked.
Train service is a mess.

End-stage privatisation. The private companies' main motivation is profit for shareholders, not to provide a quality service to you / us.

If they paid their staff properly, we'd have a better service. However, they'd rather not pay their staff properly, and they've calculated that even if they have to do loads of refunds to people like you to make up for trains that have been cancelled due to industrial action, they will still make more profit doing this, than if they paid their staff properly. So this is what they do.

Don't fall for the claim that the workers are greedy. That's the classic argument to pit one group of workers against another. The hope is that the workers will bicker, while the owners laugh all the way to the bank.

I decided not to apply for a job in central Manchester because the trains in the north west are so sh*t. Jamie Driscoll, mayor of the north Tyne area, refused to travel to see Andy Burnham in-person because Transpenninr services are so unreliable.

I'm going to have to start driving again because it's such a bloody joke.

£170 to go to London 😂 I'd pay £170 to not go to London.

Good grief, that sounds horrific! I'd have been beyond hysterical if I'd been stuck in a tunnel for hours. I'm not even keen on driving through the Dartford tunnel in case the traffic gets gridlocked for some reason, and I have a huge sense of relief when I can see daylight and know I'm nearly out.

That experience would have put me off ever getting on a train again, I think.

I hope the drunken rugby player got a big fine for being such an utter twat.

So you have to spend an hour on a Northern stopper to Crewe, then change for an LNW stopper to Euston. More than three hours in high density seating, on trains stopping at every other gatepost.

By contrast, on a TGV from Lyon to Paris (so 100km more than Manchester to London), the ticket will be no more than €109 (you could be in by 10:38 for €29). You have a comfortable reserved seat, plenty of room for luggage, catering onboard etc. Even better, despite being 100km longer, the journey time is less than 2hrs. This is why we need HS2.

Although I've never used trains to get to 'the high court or something', I have indeed used them for work related, time specific events, with great success

The ticket pricing is bizarre. Why is it £20 for an off-peak day return from my local station in Sussex to Victoria, but £31.50 to go to London Bridge? Both are direct trains.

Bloody annoying when you want to go and visit a friend in Bermondsey.

YANBevenatinylittlebitU.

It's an absolute joke. Family holidays are disrupted, my working day gets off to a crappy start far too often.

And the prices just get worse and worse. A trip of a couple of hours out of London is now £100. And so unreliable. It never used to be this bad. And since Covid the department for transport have cut services where there is demand. I have simply given up trying to get my preferred morning train now they've reduced the service as you physically can't get on. And there is space on that line! It used to run an extra service. So many of my colleagues say similar. It's not just that I'm unlucky.

I was in what can only be described as a sort of scrum yesterday at Euston when the train platform was announced. The previous two trains being cancellled. Despite going at a reasonable pace I was outrun/ walked by a horde of people all trying to get to the unreserved carriage. I managed to get a seat by chance. This is with Avanti and not an uncommon occurrence. Annoyingly they have started to announce the train will be busy and advising people to get the next service....like I really want to hang around a bit longer fir the next crowded train.

It's not as expensive, but Deutsche Bahn could give Avanti a run for its money in the unreliability stakes. I've had a few two hour delays when travelling long distances through Germany.

My 87 year old mother in law has given up going anywhere because she needs passenger assistance and it’s all fine if everything is the right trains but they’re so often cancelled and connections missed and then the help simply evaporates, it doesn’t get shifted to whatever service she ends up on even though with the ease of communication these days it would be entirely possible.

I have a journey I regularly make, it's cheaper to get a taxi to a station 10 miles away then it is to get the train from my local station.

Small station - destination is £80
Further station - destination is £30

The taxi is £30 return and less hassle.

They are getting away with it because the government is funding the cost of the delay repay. They don’t have any incentive to run them on time. Why they are allowed to renew their contracts is another matter. I’m all for renationalisation.

Even if the service wasn’t absolutly shocking £170 for an hour and a half on the train is an an utter disgrace. It’s no wonder everyone drives everywhere!

I pay £60 a day to commute on a train to London which is often delayed, sometimes cancelled.

When it does come it is always horribly over crowded and I usually have to stand for an hour.

I too am absolutely sick of this shit!

We often need a rail replacement. It is essentially £9 for the train ticket bus, £2 for the council bus.
They literally follow each other down the same road. Not even a route that many people get on and off.

I looked a few years ago, the UK subsidised its railways by the same gross amount as the Swiss did. Except the UK has a population of 67 million, more than seven times the Swiss population, so that money goes an awful lot further there.

Our shit train services is why I end up driving more than ever these days.

Any sanctimonious idiot who dares to challenge me on this can do one. I don't dare book any train travel in advance these days because the train will either be cancelled or they will go on strike.

It's also no use outside the home counties.

I work in railway ticketing myself so I'm well aware of all the ways that one can reduce the fare. That's no comfort to the person aged between 31 and 59, who has no disability, who is travelling on their own, isn't travelling within the South East, has never been a member of HM Forces and who has just had a call from their sick mother in Edinburgh resulting in a last-minute journey North.

That person used to be able to get change from £90 as long as they avoided the weekday peaks, which was a reasonable price to pay for a single ticket from London to Edinburgh. Thanks to the government's recent "simpler fares trial" they'll have little change from £200 for a single ticket if all of the Advances have been sold out (forget travelling around the Edinburgh Fringe or the Tattoo).

So we are paying for private companies doing crap while the shareholders are pocketing billions.
That needs to be stopped when the next government get in.

I believe that the AVE network was funded largely with EU money. Money that would have been available to us at the time, except successive administrations were too incompetent to get the most back from our contributions while we were a member.

Other than AVE, I'd generally use RENFE as an example of how NOT to run a railway.

Contrary to other answers. I commute by rail 90% of the time and usually arrive on time or maybe 5 minutes late. I had a bad couple of weeks in the winter with storm-related delays, but weather can affect the roads too. The last month the only problem was no trains on the strike day.

Cost, well that’s still a bit shit, it shouldn’t cost one person more to get the train than to buy fuel to drive, and it does. But if I factored in the increased maintenance and insurance cost from the extra mileage that would close the gap. Anyway I don’t like driving at 730 am.

PS: Avanti are as much use as a chocolate teapot though. Fancy trains and no drivers. I’m glad I don’t have to commute with them. For Birmingham-London get the LNWR, way cheaper, and for “off peak” you arrive in London at the same time anyway.

Ooooo, that sounds good! Which railway are you using?