Nightmare Train Journey : This Morning

[Athers]

I think some work places should do more to get people to work from home. Some senior people in the organisation do it, plus some working mothers. With e-mail etc I think it really is a viable option.

You're right and my company does this Gertie, I believe there are 16,000 homeworkers in BT. You're given £700 to buy yourself a desk, chair, printer etc and you get free broadband/phone. I'm often talking to colleagues who work from home (can hear the dog barking etc.)
This is something to do with the fact that my desk that I'm at now costs the company £14k a year to give me. I'm only a bit more of an asset to the company than the desk I work on, great.

PS about the point - some trains are excellent (eg Virgin's Manchester - London in just over 2 hours) but some are pathetic (First's Warrington-Newcastle is nearly 4) but if you're travelling fairly locally it's just far more convenient to go in the car, even if you do have the stress of rush hour traffic. Not many people live and work next to linked train stations..

[Little Green Man]

My most recent awful train journey happened on the train immediately behind the one taken that the poor bloke who got stabbed to death at Oxenholme. Can't say it was nightmarish, that would have been the train in front; but being stuck in a cutting for four and a half hours without any communication to the outside world while the copters buzzed overhead searching for the murderer was no fun (especially the guard said he has heading up the line towards us).

That pales in comparison to the journey stuck with eight or so massively pissed Rangers fans (who'd been down to support Chelsea, naturally) who were abusing everyone on the train, particularly any woman under about fifty. One guy was so drunk he couldn't even find he way off the train at Berwick (of course, they weren't from Glasgow).

Happy days!

[warthog]

Getting around in this country is a nightmare, whether it’s public or private transport. It shouldn’t be like this and if we’d ever had politicians with a commitment to an integrated transport system it wouldn’t be.

A few years ago I was working in the centre of Leeds which is a real pig to drive into. As I live in a rural area, the idea of taking public transport all the way was a non starter, so I hit on the idea of driving to Huddersfield and then catching the train. There’s four an hour into Leeds so it should have been a cinch. In theory.

In practice, by the time the train arrived (always late) there was a seething horde of commuters on the platform, who would trample their first born underfoot in order to get a seat. Get to doors first and you’d be fine, but if you found yourself behind some old dear, struggling with a suitcase, you were standing up all the way.

The conditions inside were grim. The trains were filthy and the heating was on, even though it was July. The windows couldn’t be opened either, unless you got a guard to do it. At the time, Leeds station was being redeveloped so the train stopped for 25 minutes once you got there, while a platform was found.

Things were worse coming back. The express train for Huddersfield left from platform 18. Inevitably, there’d be an announcement that it was late. This meant that the train on platform 14, also to Huddersfield, would arrive first. At this, the horde ran up the steps, across the bridge and down the other side. Just in time to hear that this train was also delayed - the original would now arrive first. Cue the reverse manoeuvre. Crowd, steps, bridge, steps, platform. Recorded and played back at speed it would have been hilarious.

In the three months that I was there, there wasn’t a single day, when I arrived on time

[Batman]

Couple of years back, in the uni Summer hols (about March ) the missus was still in Preston and me in Bury - so one day I caught the train up to see her, and the train I was on ran over and killed some poor woman by Chorley Sports Centre. We waited 5hrs in the carriage, stifling hot, people were all smoking inside the carriage. I was well pissed off.

Got into Preston eventually, and I sobered up when we got off the train and saw all the blood and gristle etc on the front of the train, scary biscuits.

[Dr.Karl]

I was on the very same train, standing room only and bloody hot. The worst thing about it is the cost. My jaw nearly dropped to the floor when the ticket guy told me the price, £4.45 for a return to Manchester! Whats the point of having a railcard, if you can't get discounts before 10am?

[CAPSLOCK]

yet the w*nkers off Top Gear seem to think it's OK to keep building new roads. It isn't.

why?

[communistworkethic]

yet the w*nkers off Top Gear seem to think it's OK to keep building new roads. It isn't.

why?

yeah, given a fully loaded train uses more fuel per head and creates more pollution per head than a modern deisel car and the air that goes in to a Porsche 911 in London is more polluted than what it puts out the exhaust.

[Bruce Rioja]

Traffic jams are no better than train delays, and I can't see how one can be more tolerable than another.

What? Have you read this from the first post, Ratty? Wovlad got into work this morning, his journey so insufferable that a girl got off the train to collapse!! My only problems were changing the CD and getting the temperature just right . Can you REALLY not see how one is more tolerable than the other?

[TANGODANCER]

Up to about four years ago I drove to work. Mornings were blissful; I set off early, missed the traffic and the carpark worked on a first come-first served basis. Finishing at five-o'clock and working next door to the BBC on Oxford Road was another story. There is a traffic warden breeding centre around there somewhere (that adopts the Adolf Hitler school of charm and despotism) where they battery hatch those little tin soldiers in pantomime uniforms who run around all day booking anything that gets stopped at traffic lights. They are totally immune to common sense or reason. They cannot tell a police car from an ambulance and taxi drivers just knock them down on principal.

If I didn't get away by 4-55 in then afternoon it was a nightmare. You then become involved in the Manchester to Bolton road race for the mentally handicapped. Oxford Road morphs from three lanes to two, to one down by the Crescent. Add a never-ending fleet of buses, a rainy night and it was hell. Despite my moans about rail service and overcrowding, I can still be home twenty five minutes earlier by train. At least I can put my head in neutral, get lost in the thoughts of Chairman Rio or the "big club" huff-puffings of Psycho in the Manchester Evening News (free now) and forget all about road rage and stress in the on-off handbrake derby. Think I'll stick with the chuff-chuffs.

[communistworkethic]

Traffic jams are no better than train delays, and I can't see how one can be more tolerable than another.

What? Have you read this from the first post, Ratty? Wovlad got into work this morning, his journey so insufferable that a girl got off the train to collapse!! My only problems were changing the CD and getting the temperature just right . Can you REALLY not see how one is more tolerable than the other?

don't forget not having to deal with common people

[officer_dibble]

Everyone has horror stories about trains. My Woodlesford - Leeds journeys in rush hour sound the same as everyone elses. Simplistic I know, but why not just put more carriages on? An extra carriage on all commuter trains would be the way to go about. Then we need to build some of them US superhighways with 8 lanes...ahhhh if only ey? There aint enough space in this country, thats the fact,

[americantrotter]

dont kid yourselves. 8 lanes just means a wider traffic jam.

[TANGODANCER]

Everyone has horror stories about trains. My Woodlesford - Leeds journeys in rush hour sound the same as everyone elses. Simplistic I know, but why not just put more carriages on? An extra carriage on all commuter trains would be the way to go about. Then we need to build some of them US superhighways with 8 lanes...ahhhh if only ey? There aint enough space in this country, thats the fact,

"Oh, but we can't put extra carriages on, the platforms aren't long enough".

I remember all the rail bridges being designed and altered to suit the 8-6" sea-going iso containers. Two years later someone designed the 9-6" supercube version. Forward planning at its very best.

[hisroyalgingerness]

i also fail to see how checking my ticket 4 times on a journey is saving the rail service any money whatsover

[TANGODANCER]

i also fail to see how checking my ticket 4 times on a journey is saving the rail service any money whatsover

Twould take a brave man to try checking tickets on the 5-15 Blackpool Belle from Picadilly Ginge. A tin of sardines is roomy compared to the "shove a book down your pants, take a deep breath, suck a mint and hope for the best" flatulence special.

[hisroyalgingerness]

if i am lucky enough to get a seat, I'm often presented with the dilemma of do I let anyone else sit in it? sometimes a suitably pretty girl is stood a couple of feet by and there's the temptation to be a gentleman, if only once. then i usually pick up the back page, sit back relax and forget all about her

[TANGODANCER]

if i am lucky enough to get a seat, I'm often presented with the dilemma of do I let anyone else sit in it? sometimes a suitably pretty girl is stood a couple of feet by and there's the temptation to be a gentleman, if only once. then i usually pick up the back page, sit back relax and forget all about her

I was the epitome of good manners once Ginge. Then I started catching the train. Throw them out of the way, trample on them, and sit down. That's what everyone else does. Last week one idiot tried to stop me sitting down because his bag was on the seat next to him. When I asked him (politely) to move it he claimed it was reserved for his mate who was getting on at Bolton. We were at Bolton and I used a few choice words to tell him there were no reserved seats on a workers train and his bag wasn't having a seat whilst I stood up. He moved it, very grudgingly it must be said, but it was moving anyway. No quarter asked or given on rail travel. A school kid of ten or eleven won't stand up for an older person these days, something I'd have got a clip around the ears for. Leave your manners at the ticket office and pick em up on the way out.

[Bruce Rioja]

I was the epitome of good manners once Ginge. Then I started catching the train. Throw them out of the way, trample on them, and sit down. That's what everyone else does. Last week one idiot tried to stop me sitting down because his bag was on the seat next to him. When I asked him (politely) to move it he claimed it was reserved for his mate who was getting on at Bolton. We were at Bolton and I used a few choice words to tell him there were no reserved seats on a workers train and his bag wasn't having a seat whilst I stood up. He moved it, very grudgingly it must be said, but it was moving anyway. No quarter asked or given on rail travel. A school kid of ten or eleven won't stand up for an older person these days, something I'd have got a clip around the ears for. Leave your manners at the ticket office and pick em up on the way out.

Yet on this very evening you've also said;

I can still be home twenty five minutes earlier by train. At least I can put my head in neutral, get lost in the thoughts of Chairman Rio or the "big club" huff-puffings of Psycho in the Manchester Evening News (free now) and forget all about road rage and stress in the on-off handbrake derby. Think I'll stick with the chuff-chuffs.

[TANGODANCER]

I was the epitome of good manners once Ginge. Then I started catching the train. Throw them out of the way, trample on them, and sit down. That's what everyone else does. Last week one idiot tried to stop me sitting down because his bag was on the seat next to him. When I asked him (politely) to move it he claimed it was reserved for his mate who was getting on at Bolton. We were at Bolton and I used a few choice words to tell him there were no reserved seats on a workers train and his bag wasn't having a seat whilst I stood up. He moved it, very grudgingly it must be said, but it was moving anyway. No quarter asked or given on rail travel. A school kid of ten or eleven won't stand up for an older person these days, something I'd have got a clip around the ears for. Leave your manners at the ticket office and pick em up on the way out.

Yet on this very evening you've also said;

I can still be home twenty five minutes earlier by train. At least I can put my head in neutral, get lost in the thoughts of Chairman Rio or the "big club" huff-puffings of Psycho in the Manchester Evening News (free now) and forget all about road rage and stress in the on-off handbrake derby. Think I'll stick with the chuff-chuffs.

I did indeed Bruce. All part of the joys of train travel. Fight your way on, grab a seat, blank it all out and read your paper. After four years or so you become a veteran and immune to it all. I just do it. Late buses and crowded trains are something I've learned to live with. Just like getting up at six fifteen and not getting home till six forty five at night, constantly interupted lunch hours and high tec staff with no common sense. Makes getting home a real pleasure. One real bonus; in this age of the great open plan I still have my own office and get left alone by management. Could be much worse.

[Batman]

Got to the point where I'd rather stump up carpark money than faff around on trains..