Having been a ShityRail traveller for the last two years, I just thought I would share with you all some of the frustrations of train travel. While overall, train travel is an easier way for me to get to work, it constantly surprizes me to find out how Bleep the ShityRail staff can be at times.
As a frequent traveller I have to catch one train from home in the mornings, to Hornsby Station, change there to catch a train down the Northern Line to work, a total of fourteen stations. Which now, under the new time table means catching three trains to get to work. Reverse that… thats a total of six trains per day, an hour and forty minutes of travel time each day, just to travel what out of peek hour takes me twenty minutes to drive. Not really much when I’m sure there are thousands more people who’s ShityRail experience each day is at least twice that. I take my hat off to those people who put up with more.
My biggest bugbear, which thankfully hasn’t happened since the new timetable, but happened at least six times prior to the new timetable, was particularly frustrating. The scene is set… After work on a standard work day, at the station, waiting for the train, which seems a little late, but then, thats normal. The Newcastle train arrives, luckily no more than ten minutes late, so I should be able to make my connecting train. Off we go, it’s a normal train trip, music, dancing games (Oh, on my PDA of course. Standard straight faced boring train travellers in the carriage)… Pulling into Hornsby Station, I can see that my connecting train is waiting with doors open on the other platform. My train stops, doors open, it’s a rush for the stairs as everyone who needs that train tries to get there, the same time, those that arrived on that train are streaming over the connecting bridge to hop onto the train we just got off. I’m the first to the bottom of the stairs just in time to see the doors close, the train pulls off, and the guard just shrugs and taps his watch as he see’s the steam slowly emminating from my ear’s. Why am I so annoyed? Surely it’s understandable that the train must leave on time? Sure, but here’s the thing… Not only is there a thirty minute wait for the next one, but the one I just missed… the one that HAD to leave on time, head about one hundred and fifty metres up the track, to be stopped by a signal, and there it waits for five whole minutes, as the Newcastle train I have just gotten off hasn’t left the other platform yet. So, there I stand with about twenty other disgruntled train travellers, annoyed, and thinking “Well, they must be smart, and need to clear the platform for a terminating train or somthing.” Seems like a logical thing doesn’t it? Checking the schedule reveals that the next train isn’t for fifteen full minutes. What utter Nonsense.