How little has changed ?

[AM9]

I am not so sure about this. I read an autobiography by someone who cleaned excursion trains to the seaside at Leicester in the 1950s, I think. He wrote that the state of the trains on their return was truly awful, in some cases quite disgusting.

I also recall appalling amounts of rubbish deposited on the tracks at some London stations in the 1980s.

I'm not talking about excursion trains football specials or even trains on traditional holiday runs (e.g. GWR to Devon and Cornwall). I've seen plenty of trains after regular commuters have travelled in them. It seems that some commuters lose all sense of consideration for others when travelling as if the railway is really only run for their benefit.

 

[30907]

There are good and bad things compared with the BR era.
I commuted for two spells , totalling about 7 years, first in the steam era and again in the early 1970s.
Never was a train cancelled due to staff shortages.
Never was I so late that it created problems for me.
Never was a train terminated short of destination.

You obviously didn't commute on the SR around London.

 

[Taunton]

It's hardly reaching new areas. The national rail network is still almost identical to the one we had in around 1983.

It's actually what was there in 1914 (I choose 1914 rather than 1900 because the GWR built a lot of main line mileage in that period). Very little has been built since, either lines or stations. The network is effectively what the Victorians did. This contrasts to roads, airports, even deep sea docks, where the bulk of the mainstream trunk infrastructure has been built new in more recent times. The key thing though that has changed is the distribution of the population, for living, work and leisure.

 

[yorksrob]

It's actually what was there in 1914 (I choose 1914 rather than 1900 because the GWR built a lot of main line mileage in that period). Very little has been built since, either lines or stations. The network is effectively what the Victorians did. This contrasts to roads, airports, even deep sea docks, where the bulk of the mainstream trunk infrastructure has been built new in more recent times. The key thing though that has changed is the distribution of the population, for living, work and leisure.

I would have thought that in 1914, the network would have been close to its greatest extent - far more so than today.

 

[Taunton]

You are correct, and maybe I phrased it poorly, but what we have today was pretty much all extant more than a century ago, lines, station locations and land take. HS1 and Selby Diversion, sure, but I guess more than 99% of what we now have is from those times, Even the 4-tracking we have is mostly what had been done by then; there hasn't been a lot of widening done since (notably through Taunton being an exception).

 

[Bevan Price]

You obviously didn't commute on the SR around London.

No - St. Helens to Manchester.

 

[Sprinter107]

I preferred it before privatisation. I used to commute on the Coastway line to Brighton in the ninwties. In three years I had four trains that did not complete their journey and zero journeys where I could not find a seat. Doubt that would be the case today.

Same on my local route. Frequency was nothing like today. But they were more reliable. Not once did I not make school because one didn't turn up, nor was I late.