Goodbye Thameslink

[PacerTrain142]

Wow.. They do have it bad down South.

Strikes, Cancellations, Delays, Severe Overcrowding.

Southern Rail in particular is doing very BADLY at the moment...





Whereas up North, everything's doing fine. Northern Rail (our main train operator) have a good punctuality record, rarely cancel their trains, and generally have good staff (think of that rhyming conductor). Staff always seem pretty friendly and one once even let me stay on a couple of extra stations on a return ticket without charging me any extra!


Sure, we may have old trains, (some with bus seats and can only do 75 mph), an infrequent hourly service on many lines with single track only in many places, stations with just a platform sign, a lampost and a bus shelter and only a two-carriage train with no buffet service but I'd much rather have that than brand spanking new Class 5000 super power trains with air-con, plush seats, posh lav etc only to find that the trains running 30 minutes late, your stood in the cold with hundreds of other miserable people and busting for a leak after gluging a big cup of Coffee to keep warm, when your posh Class 700 finally does arrive with state-of-the-art brakes and plush seats and posh lav guess what... It's absolutely jam packed, you never find out how "comfy" the seats are cos you can't get a seat, and you never get to use that posh loo you so desperately need with it's glowing buttons and automatic flush and it's always occupied and there's tons of people stood round it dying for a pee.


Give me a nearly empty Class 142 with squeely brakes, slow speed and loud engine with rhyming conductor any day over a Class 700 no one likes and is always late and jam packed full of grumpy southern commuters.

 

[takno]

Wow.. They do have it bad down South.

Strikes, Cancellations, Delays, Severe Overcrowding.

Southern Rail in particular is doing very BADLY at the moment...





Whereas up North, everything's doing fine. Northern Rail (our main train operator) have a good punctuality record, rarely cancel their trains, and generally have good staff (think of that rhyming conductor). Staff always seem pretty friendly and one once even let me stay on a couple of extra stations on a return ticket without charging me any extra!


Sure, we may have old trains, (some with bus seats and can only do 75 mph), an infrequent hourly service on many lines with single track only in many places, stations with just a platform sign, a lampost and a bus shelter and only a two-carriage train with no buffet service but I'd much rather have that than brand spanking new Class 5000 super power trains with air-con, plush seats, posh lav etc only to find that the trains running 30 minutes late, your stood in the cold with hundreds of other miserable people and busting for a leak after gluging a big cup of Coffee to keep warm, when your posh Class 700 finally does arrive with state-of-the-art brakes and plush seats and posh lav guess what... It's absolutely jam packed, you never find out how "comfy" the seats are cos you can't get a seat, and you never get to use that posh loo you so desperately need with it's glowing buttons and automatic flush and it's always occupied and there's tons of people stood round it dying for a pee.


Give me a nearly empty Class 142 with squeely brakes, slow speed and loud engine with rhyming conductor any day over a Class 700 no one likes and is always late and jam packed full of grumpy southern commuters.

You'll miss those squealing wheels once the strikes to start on Northern over the forthcoming DOO

 

[maniacmartin]

I can assure you there is nothing plush about Class 700 seats.

 

[vrbarreto]

Oh well.. Door to door in 1 hour 30 minutes (as opposed to the usual 2 hours on public transport) and that was including the queue into the Dartford tunnel and a couple of queues on the M25.. Going anti clockwise is so much better than clockwise! And the 07.23 this morning from East Croydon to Bedford was 14 minutes late getting into Luton Airport. Do NOT MISS IT AT ALL!!!

 

[Abpj17]

job outside London doesn’t work for me. My job only exists in the centre and the salary drop would be pretty big now. The alternative would be other major capitals like New York or Paris - which aren’t practical for family reasons. It’s not a function of greed - I’m not super-rich. But 4 kids, house, bills etc. are expensive! While my season ticket is expensive - it’s not as significant relative anymore to my salary. And my mortgage is finally a comfortable multiple of my salary (less than x2 before 40 - which for the SE isn’t bad).

The car or a local job isn’t always gonna be the right answer.

And some will commute on well under 40k because they are on the ladder to a job that pays more than that.

Train does have the added benefit of not needing to be particularly alert - you can read, nap etc.

jimbo99 - there is a whole thread with regulars table rants about the 700s. What is important to know is that the rear car has a declassified first class section with tables.

 

[Stew998]

jimbo99 - there is a whole thread with regulars table rants about the 700s. What is important to know is that the rear car has a declassified first class section with tables.

Which is where I am sat right now, finally as the 2022 from Blackfriars went from on time to MIA and eventually I overheard one of the platform staff telling people that they didn't know when it would arrive and advising to use an alternative route. What was really unbelievable was that the station control room was refusing to make an announcement and leaving it to the poor old platform staff!

Anyway made it to Victoria to be confronted by the usual game of guess which train will arrive when. This evening's problems brought to you by flooding apparently. Eventually got a Horsham train and changed at East Croydon onto this delightful 700 which was the 2052 from Blackfriars.

Currently looking like almost an hour's delay in total.

 

[JohnElliott]

I had to catch a train southbound from St Pancras Low Level at about ten to three today. Thanks to a signal failure the service had fallen apart and the platform boards kept forlornly counting down the minutes to trains that didn't show, and then jumping back to '4 minutes away'.

It was also rather disconcerting to see 319009 going the other way making the most appalling noises and with sparks flying off one of its motor bogie wheelsets.

 

[Hartington]

When I first went to work in the late 1960s I lived in Chiswick and worked near Harrods - 55 bus to the High Road, Disctrict to Hammersmith, Piccadilly to South Ken. Over the years I had jobs in Notting Hill, St Mary Axe and Holborn all using public transport. Then I took a job in Cranford and drove. My final job in London was in Fleet Street and while I was there I moved to Waddon (Croydon) and I was cycling to work (about 45 minutes).

Then I got a job in Maidenhead in 1979. Only tiny bits of the M25 existed so it was East Croydon to Victoria, Circle to Paddington and an ALL (including Westbourne Park in those days) stations stopper to Maidenhead. By then I was married and we moved! The choice was Maidenhead or Reading or Slough. Maidenhead meant I could walk to work although the house was more expensive than either of the other towns. We only had one car and I wasn't going to leave my wife with no mobility so places like Bracknell and High Wycombe were not really practical because of the slow public transport.

Over the years the company had offices in several places in Maidenhead, all walkable, White Waltham (bicycle), Reading (train but against the major flow), Swindon (tiny house in walking distance - weekly commute), Windsor (car share) and Junction 5 of the M4 (car share) which was the real pain - on a good day about 40 minutes but when things went wrong it could take well over 2 hours.

It does depend on your profession but there are jobs outside London. If you are prepared to live locally to that job and save the commuting cost you don't need the same salary but, frankly, I reckon I earned more outside London than I would have in London so my living standard was pretty good (everything is relative!).

There was a point when I contemplated a job in Peterborough and, later, a permanent move to Swindon. In both cases the decision not to move was partly related to my employer (good), the work (I enjoyed it and found it stimulating) and schooling for our sons so I accept that changing jobs for a local one isn't always the right move but I'm sometimes surprised how people continue to struggle with the daily commute into London.

Now? I've retired to Somerset.