I’m finding myself getting disproportionately irritated about small annoyances on trains. For example, I find my trip is completely ruined if any of the following occur:
1) Closest toilets not working
2) No buffet car
3) Reservations not downloaded
4) Air conditioning not working
5) Train is in reverse formation
6) No knobbly things on the top of chairs to hold onto
7) No tea trolley
8) Stopping seemingly randomly
9) Job titles: ‘train manager’ instead of ‘conductor’. ‘Host’ instead of ‘barman’ or ‘shop keeper’
10) Overfamiliarity, I don’t want my journey to be ‘awesome’. I don’t care that your name is Tim.
11) Speakers for train announcements being impossible to hear or crackly
12) Incessant announcements
Have I missed anything? Am I being wholly unreasonable and unBritish in being vexed by these trivial annoyances. Or do they genuinely matter? Rail Travel is meant to be a high end service as well as being a public good.
You're not being unreasonable at all! I'm off on the 08:58 from Didcot Parkway to Liskeard for 4 to 5 hours. As I've had only 4 cases when my booked seat was forward facing on the IET's (1st time on the 09/01/19 from Didcot to Paddington when both sets of 5 coaches were in reverse formation), I'm more concerned as to whether the 3 trains I catch run On Time or not too late. If the 08:58 has a trolley service then I'll be surprised - no catering available on this service (08:59 on the 30/09/18) and the 16:31 from Liskeard to Reading (8-coach HST) on the 30/09/18.
1 thing I find irritating myself is that some trains will run a full route over an hour late but some will terminate early just to get back on time.
With XC, on Twitter people might mention
someone standing on one of their trains after an operation, having a panic attack or an epileptic person falling over. Looking at the comments on XC's Twitter page rather suggests, dare I say, that as long as people have the right ticket and get from A to B on time or near enough then they're happy.
If I was manning the XC Twitter feed and someone tweeted this to me, I'd have asked if the person needed medical assistance. I'm sure East Midlands Trains would have shown more sympathy.
XC do have their positive points but when something goes wrong then I feel they don't acknowledge it properly.