Trains

[Dover]

How many of you travel or commute by train? Also are you happy with the service you receive?

I ask this as I am watching a documentary on Chanel 4, and chose not to have a vehicle at present.

 

[pasty]

I commute to London from Brighton every day, and yes, on the whole I am reasonably satisfied with the service.

It's the other passengers that piss me off.

 

[Marty McFly]

In term time I use the train in the week.

I'm happy enough with the Southern trains (except their gate staff) but dissatisfied with first crapital connect.

 

[West Hoathly Seagull]

I use Southern every day, whether it's to go up from East Grinstead, or from Clapham Junction, if I've stayed in London overnight. I use the East Grinstead line, which is extremely slow; it used to take 52 minutes in the off peak by British Rail and about 45 minutes in the peak. Now it's 54 minutes in the off-peak, and almost an hour for most of the trains in the peak. My regular train, the 0747 East Grinstead to Victoria, isn't too bad so long as I am able to get there in time. If not, I have to catch the 0802 to London Bridge, which means an annoying change at East Croydon and I don't get into the office until 0930. The service isn't too bad and the new trains are a great improvement on the old, but I don't understand why the service is so slow on my line. Recently it has got unreliable again, with a lot of cancellations and signal difficulties. It seems if there are difficulties they always cancel trains on my line first. I might try Three Bridges in future, even though it's £500 more per year. This I cannot understand, as they are the same distance from London.

 

[Beach Hut]

Commute daily and trains are really reliable now and clean for once.

Even better it is gratis as a former employee of the dastardly company British Rail

 

[bhaexpress]

I've been going all over the country recently mainly by train. The quality of service varies from company to company. Having travelled on some of the cattle cars of the North I would say that Southern Trains are better, more frequent and certainly far more reliable. The worst by a country mile were Virgin who's inability to get any train to near its destination anywhere near on time beggers belief.

I might add that flying is often the better and cheaper alternative terrorist threats not withstanding but at the end of the day you tend to wind up using a train to get to and from the airport. In terms of the best I would say that we have it right here. Believe me try getting from Liverpool Lime Street to Manchester Airport to appreciate the service we get.

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

Southern trains are fine now. The air-con made all the difference this Summer. And since they've upgraded the software from Windows 98, the doors open. Which is nice.

Whoever runs Thameslink now should be made to park their little boxes in sidings til they can supply trains fit for purpose. Change of franchise seems to have meant nothing more than giving them a flashy new logo on the side, which fools nobody.

And if the rail network as a whole had a brain, it would run trains every 15 minutes from Three Bridges down to Brighton in the evenings, rather than have two trains within a mnute of each other then nothing for 29 minutes. Don't get any more f***-witted than that. Morons.

 

[Thimble Keegan]

I commute from Goring to London everyday for work and on the whole the service is very good. The only thing is that trains often split at Worthing where one half trundles off to Southampton and the other to Littlehampton which includes my stop at Goring...Now my main gripe is that if they are running late the Littlehampton half then goes straight through to LA missing out West Worthing, Durrington & my stop at Goring so we have to get off at Worthing and wait for another train.

I actually do not mind being late, it is being chucked off a train that by rights should be going to my stop that really pisses me off.

Other than that they get the thumbs up from me.

Albion & England forever.

Thimble Keegan
Worthing BHA

 

[Deleted User X18H]

I now commute from Preston Park to London Bridge Monday to Friday and I have to say its not at all bad. Resonable service clean air conned trains and occasional tasty treacle opposite.

 

[aftershavedave]

commuting for nearly 20 years into london bridge from hove / brighton.

service with southern is a great improvement on everything that's gone before. the trains are clean, air-con and on time (apart from this morning......)

9/10

 

[Tricky Dicky]

Having commuted from Shoreham to London Bridge for almost 18 years, I have to say most of the time it's now pretty good. The trains are air-conned and pretty clean, so much better than the 40 year old slam-doors we used to have to put up with. Now if we can only get the guards to stop waking me up to check tickets and ban mobile use, it would make my day.

... Apart from yesterday that is, when my morning one was cancelled. Still, got a days "working at home" out of it.

 

[Tony Meolas Loan Spell]

Whoever runs Thameslink now should be made to park their little boxes in sidings til they can supply trains fit for purpose. Change of franchise seems to have meant nothing more than giving them a flashy new logo on the side, which fools nobody.

Spot on mate with that one.

 

[aftershavedave]

. Now if we can only get the guards to stop waking me up to check tickets and ban mobile use, it would make my day.

absolutely!

and why they have to announce every pigging stop and warn about taking your bags blah blah blah is beyond me.