Rail travel’s no fun when you have a rotten journey

Those of us that enjoy travelling by train and do it often will accept the odd bad journey in the knowledge that most of the time the rail network actually does work properly. However, if someone is only an occasional or semi-regular user of the railways, then bad journeys have a tendency to stick more in the mind, and consequently become more of a chore and less of a pleasure, which is what they should be – after all, you have a (relatively) comfortable seat, you can get up and wander about without stopping, you aren’t stuck in traffic and you don’t have to worry about the driving. Which brings me to a brief conversation I had on Twitter a couple of days ago with Kandi Kay, formerly of Babestation but now practising her trade on Red Light Central. Apparently RLC is actually based in Bristol, which, if you’re coming from a major city that isn’t London or Birmingham, can be quite difficult to reach. The lovely Kandi is from Liverpool and obviously returns to her home town quite a bit. So, if she’s either going to Bristol or coming from Bristol to Liverpool, it’s going to be something of a journey that will certainly require at least one change somewhere.

I’m not one to continually bombard someone with questions. What I do know is that the poor young lady seemed to be having one hell of a cauchemar, based on some of the things she was tweeting. For example:

Blahhhh fucking hate trains and I hate this journey #getmehome #dinnerbathbed

Ahhh having the longest shittest day hate travelling think I mite kill somebody possibly somebody who works for network rail #c**ts

When I asked what sort of problems she was having, it was evident that 140 characters was just not long enough to explain all that was going on:

@pipsrailway lots!!!!!! It’s just taking ages for me to gt home. 😦 3 changes!! Now there’s 2 smelly dogs sat next 2 me #ffs

Now, whether you’re travelling to London or Liverpool you shouldn’t need to change trains three times, and nor should it take you five hours, which it apparently had when she replied to me. Clearly there was something that went significantly wrong as it also appears she was stuck at a station somewhere:

Sum1 does NOT want me to gt home today am guna cry!!!! Grrrr fukkkkk

It was 20:10 before the poor girl was finally able to impart that she had returned home safely, having gotten onto the (first) train around 13:00:

finally home – pie&mash,bath bed #fooked#hatetrains!

I think you’ll all agree Kandi deserves our sympathy for what seems to be one of those “journeys from hell” that we sometimes hear about. Of course, there are worse, such as the occasions (thankfully rare) when passenger trains have been stuck in the Channel Tunnel. But for a domestic rail journey that, if it was to London should take two hours at most, and if to Liverpool less than four with a change, this at least qualifies for the rant that she put out on Twitter. Indeed, this is not the first time that I have heard of a Babestation babe having rail difficulties – there was many a time that Daryl Morgan complained about the conditions on the Class 390 when she was travelling from London to Manchester on the train, while I have had to explain to Camilla Quance why her train was late and standing at a platform while other trains were overtaking it. Nevertheless, I do hope that this experience does not totally put Kandi off using the railway again. After all, on top of all the other benefits of travelling by train that I’ve mentioned, it’s a lot greener than using your car. Assuming she has a car that is.

There are worse rail journeys