Dear transport system....
Dec. 14th, 2008 12:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
burntcopperWell, that was a magical mystery tour and a half. Yours truly set off at 9:30 this morning in the pouring rain for the 10:30 train... and got into Falmouth flat at 8:45.
Flooding in Swindon and Westbury, plus a bit of Bristol. Cue delays and cancellations all over the shop. Except. First Great Western would put up 'delayed'... and then only show the train as cancelled four minutes before or after it was originally due.
And then they kept us waiting around, telling us there might be the prospect of buses. 'But if it's not absolutely necessary, please make your journey tomorrow.' Lots of that. Some Bristol and Bath buses, which aren't helpful if you're going to the West country. And offers of refunds. uh-huh. *Really* helpful. Eventually after the 11:30 Penzance train got cancelled four minutes before it's due (seriously, if you know it's not coming, why keep people hanging on? That was one of the things that really pissed us off), they tell us to get on the Basingstoke train and there's a route to Exeter St Davids. Which was said very quietly to a small bunch of people - essentially they just didn't want to deal with us.
So. Train to Basingstoke. Train from there to Gillingham. Bus from Gillingham to Yeovil. (this was scheduled engineering works, which had been advertised) Train from Yeovil to Exeter St Davids. Exeter St Davids to Plymouth. Plymouth to Truro. Truro to Falmouth. When i should've been in Falmouth at 2:30...
First Great Western staff at Reading? Fuckwits. Who did not give one shit about us, and encouraged us at every turn to go away and leave them alone. They could've told us about the Basingstoke train a good hour earlier, and they *really* could've told the people who'd been waiting since 9. But no, they covered that up. Christ. a couple of buses wouldn't have been that difficult to organise to Exeter to get us round Swindon. Amazingly, people who've got a 4-5 hour journey ahead of them anyway do not want refunds or to come back tomorrow.
Swindon often floods. This was one night's moderate rainfall. PUMPS. Raise the fucking rails a bit, you're constantly doing engineering work. FSM's sake, elephants would work...
South West staff, on the other hand, really nice about having to deal with this exhausted, deflated motley crue that turned up and tripled the amount of people they had to ferry around the engineering works. So by the time we were at Plymouth, we all knew each other on sight and knew destinations.
ETA : now seen Stardust. may have died from sheer adorable. (though it could be a bit shorter) Also, cameo city much?
Flooding in Swindon and Westbury, plus a bit of Bristol. Cue delays and cancellations all over the shop. Except. First Great Western would put up 'delayed'... and then only show the train as cancelled four minutes before or after it was originally due.
And then they kept us waiting around, telling us there might be the prospect of buses. 'But if it's not absolutely necessary, please make your journey tomorrow.' Lots of that. Some Bristol and Bath buses, which aren't helpful if you're going to the West country. And offers of refunds. uh-huh. *Really* helpful. Eventually after the 11:30 Penzance train got cancelled four minutes before it's due (seriously, if you know it's not coming, why keep people hanging on? That was one of the things that really pissed us off), they tell us to get on the Basingstoke train and there's a route to Exeter St Davids. Which was said very quietly to a small bunch of people - essentially they just didn't want to deal with us.
So. Train to Basingstoke. Train from there to Gillingham. Bus from Gillingham to Yeovil. (this was scheduled engineering works, which had been advertised) Train from Yeovil to Exeter St Davids. Exeter St Davids to Plymouth. Plymouth to Truro. Truro to Falmouth. When i should've been in Falmouth at 2:30...
First Great Western staff at Reading? Fuckwits. Who did not give one shit about us, and encouraged us at every turn to go away and leave them alone. They could've told us about the Basingstoke train a good hour earlier, and they *really* could've told the people who'd been waiting since 9. But no, they covered that up. Christ. a couple of buses wouldn't have been that difficult to organise to Exeter to get us round Swindon. Amazingly, people who've got a 4-5 hour journey ahead of them anyway do not want refunds or to come back tomorrow.
Swindon often floods. This was one night's moderate rainfall. PUMPS. Raise the fucking rails a bit, you're constantly doing engineering work. FSM's sake, elephants would work...
South West staff, on the other hand, really nice about having to deal with this exhausted, deflated motley crue that turned up and tripled the amount of people they had to ferry around the engineering works. So by the time we were at Plymouth, we all knew each other on sight and knew destinations.
ETA : now seen Stardust. may have died from sheer adorable. (though it could be a bit shorter) Also, cameo city much?
