Envy123
Member
Golden age of railways? You are kidding.
It's devolving into a shambolic mess, where journey times are being manipulated in the name of punctually and performance and timetables now have more padding than a comfy chair.
With extortionate fares, an over complex fare structure, too many managers and less and less staff on the ground and a system over burdened with legal bureaucracy & general bureaucratic clap trap, which stops any sort of sensible service development.
Well, coming from Moscow, UK railways seems like the Holy Grail in comparison.
The rolling stock is being upgraded at a snail's pace and connections to Moscow from other nearby towns and cities by rail are abysmal at best. If you want to commute from your "dacha" (country house) to Moscow, prepare for some really long traffic jams. Even the Moscow version of Chelsea is poorly connected, because "everyone drives, who needs rail?".
Yes, UK railways have their inefficiencies but if I were to choose between paying less and having abysmal connections to other places by rail and paying more and having much better connections, I'd probably choose the latter.