Rail fares increasing again

Diddums said:
To give you an idea, I catch a train to work twice a week. There and back, two trains a day. I started this job on the 1st of December, and I've caught in total 12 trains so far.

Two of them were on time.

Two were cancelled outright.

Absolute dumpster fire.
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Yikes. I was very happy when I job change meant that I didn’t need to fight my way onto overpacked FGW Intercity 125s to get to Reading when the Thames Turbo “rattlers” broke down 2-3 times a week.
 
My daughter wanted to go to the Christmas winter wonderland in London this Christmas. I really didn't want her to drive but in the end relented as for her and her friend it was £150ish return each from Grantham to King's cross. It is diabolical really.

Even with the congestion charge and overnight parking in central London. The total cost was less than £80 and with that you don't have to share your space with unsavoury types and can go anywhere at anytime.
 
Terminal_Boy said:
Yikes. I was very happy when I job change meant that I didn’t need to fight my way onto overpacked FGW Intercity 125s to get to Reading when the Thames Turbo “rattlers” broke down 2-3 times a week.
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When I used to live in St Albans, I'd get the Abbey train line from St Albans to Watford regularly to commute to work, and the service was diabolical most of the time. And probably still is. Single track, so there is only a single train every 45 minutes or so. When there were cancellations due to a train fault or whatever reason, the line would have to close because only one train can operate on that line.

It's a branch line, so it often took less priority than the other main lines.
 
Diddums said:
£38.10 here, day return. Then another £7 on the tube in London. I do this twice a week, the tube every day.

My family in various European countries spend less than my daily rate on travel for a month, and they can travel anywhere in the country.

The absolute fleecing we get in this country is not sustainable.
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I'm going from Vilnius in Lithuania to Warsaw on Friday - 290 miles:

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That's a co-op service between Lithuania's LTG and Poland's PKP (you literally step from one train across the platform to the other at the border station)

Includes seat reservation (and unlike on many UK trains you WILL have your reserved seat)

Polish train has a full table service dining car, where a pint and a schnitzel and chips or whatever will cost you about 11 quid.


I don't miss UK trains one bit.
 
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When I was in Poland last year we did Kracow to Oswiecim (Auschwitz) via train.

It cost £4 each way or something daft like that.

It’s 45mins - 1hr depending on which route you go and 72km (45 miles) via car.

As I said yesterday, the 85 miles train into London from where I live costs £115.

Not only that, the trains were all basically brand new (to be fair, the trains on my like are new also) and well maintained.
 
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Given up buying the Two Together Railcard now because every weekend for a year or two now the service has been replaced by a bus service locally, or somewhere on one of the routes we used to take to cities or towns.

As the only driver, it was for me a good way to visit the cities and towns reachable by train and eat & drink if that was what we wanted and with no high parking costs and the like.

A few places we would visit often have now got sky high parking charges, if you find one and clogged roads/M-ways and are now just a once in while visit.
 
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Lopéz said:
In Austria we have something called the "Klimaticket"

€1400 a year gets you unlimited

Train
Bus
Underground
Tram

for the whole of Austria. I cannot even imagine what such a ticket would cost in the UK.
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I worked it out before I left the UK back in 2019.

Back then it was about £13,000 a year, trains only. I stopped calculating the rest.

Compared to where I live now, it's nowhere near that for the year and it also covers public transport throughout the whole country including parts of neighbouring countries.
 
Diddums said:
To give you an idea, I catch a train to work twice a week. There and back, two trains a day. I started this job on the 1st of December, and I've caught in total 12 trains so far.

Two of them were on time.

Two were cancelled outright.

Absolute dumpster fire.
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Do you use South Western Railway by any chance? Since the government took over running that line it's been awful.
 
Hades said:
Do you use South Western Railway by any chance? Since the government took over running that line it's been awful.
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Yep. Great fun, spin the wheel of "will the train arrive late, if at all?"

They also changed a signal box at Witley and "updated" the level crossing at Milford. We now have a man there every day opening and closing the barriers manually, and people are often waiting over 15 mins to cross the track.

I reckon this country is done tbh. As much as it kills me to say it, I'm struggling more and more to find any redeeming features of living here.
 
South Western railway this morning. First journey into London of the year annnnnd.... complete and utter joke into Waterloo.
Massive delays due to a signal issue at Surbiton. :(
If it snows again later the commute home you know is hell.
 
Hades said:
Do you use South Western Railway by any chance? Since the government took over running that line it's been awful.
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I live opposite a south western rail station and it’s always been crap (just check South Western social media) the government has had little difference in that regard.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
Can’t really blame south western train operating company for that. Issues like this have and always will be network rail.
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Possibly. But I can blame them for reducing my Saturday service from two trains and hour to one train an hour at certain times.

The government took over the previous company that they said was failing. Then they promptly introduced a time machine and took SWR back to the 1970s level of service.
 
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Hades said:
Possibly. But I can blame them for reducing my Saturday service from two trains and hour to one train and hour at certain times.
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Perhaps, perhaps not.

The train operating companies don’t control the time table either.

If it was reduced due to a lack of trains per personal then yes but if it is something else (e.g. engineering, demand or booking more freight) then no.
 
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