I changed jobs and moved house to avoid my commuting hell

My local station is East Croydon which is mainly serviced by Thameslink and Southern – two of the worst performing rail companies in the UK. On Saturday I was waiting for a train north into central London to visit my son. Al trains were delayed by between 10 to 30 minutes. What amused me was the variety of excuses used by the recorded message system for the same delay – the same train! It varied from “behind a slow-moving train” to “an earlier cancellation” to “someone pulling the emergency switch”. This often happens and has prompted me, and fellow passengers with whom I discuss the absurdity of the messaging system, to speculate that the actual excuse used is a product of a process that selects the excuse randomly from a prepared list as the announcement is made.

My local station is Meopham and I commute to Blackfriars. Southeastern run 1 direct morning train and 2 evening return direct services. I don’t think I’ve had an on-time arrival this year but I have had a 29.5 minute delay when the train went past a set of signals just outside Blackfriars one morning . The train is old and very worn out with badly dirty seats, stretched seat covers and generally looks like it should have been refurbished years ago. Toilets are often unusable. I have also started considering retiring rather than continuing with the despicable service South Eastern provides for the ridiculous cost.

I have not been on a train for approx 35 years but that does not stop me from making this point “What is wrong with the thinking of those people who run the railways. The British invented the steam train many years ago and other countries picked up on that and developed their own (mostly better) The point Iwant to make is countries that have been devasted by conflicts (Japan,Germany,China etc) have the best rail networks in the world and are effective and run on time

Some companies have had frequent strikes for over three years and when they return rolling stock is in the wrong place causing more delays.

Hi. I – thankfully have retired now, but never used the trains anyway. I can fully understand the gentleman giving up his job and moving away. It must be a big rench, but eventually with a better quality of life it should work out for him. There are frequently “stand in buses” between Deal, Dover &Folkestone, for “for planned engineering work”. When the hell is all of this work going to be completed I wonder?

One has to ask the question.Is a long commute, a longer working day worth the extra money in the end. You pay tax and N I then most of what is left you have to pay out in massive fares!

Every weekday it’s hit and miss whether we get the first train of the day in the morning. It originally departed Sydenham for London Bridge @ 5:25 arriving @ approx. 5:45, unless delays, cancellations due to missing staff, whether due to weather too cold for them to bother getting out of bed or points failures due to over antiquated systems, yet they have plenty of money to expand London Bridge for more trains to be delayed due to an antiquated points system, not to mention the Crossrail fiasco.
Then last year they permanently delayed it till 5:32 which usually means much later or never.
I decided to go by bus, which worked out fine until I found a schedule to suit me, then the buses started messing me about!
I mentioned this to my manager, who thankfully understands the situation, and agreed with others with similar transport problems to come in late but regularly. But still it’s NOT ON!

I believe that Which? should campaign to highlight the problem of overcrowding to the relevant authorities and urge them to make it mandatory for the correct provision of train carriages to be allocated according to the crowd estimates per train on a rail companies’ network. What should also be mandatory is to ensure that every person travelling on a particular train can be seated guaranteed. I myself have suffered as a result of overcrowding on a train and it is not pleasant.