Sunday 20 January 2013

British railways, probably the worst railways in the world



My journeys with Southeastern Railways, probably the worst of the British railways





I'm a commuter, which means that I travel by train every day to and from work. It's a monstrously expensive journey, I pay around £1700 for an annual season ticket, and this rises by several times the rate of inflation every year. In return for these bladder-rupturing rises we're promised better trains, facilities and reliablity; none of these have ever materialised. One benefit of the delays was that it gave me more time to write my comedy-thriller The Royal Factor whilst commuting, and I have acknowledged my railway operator in the book for its contribution.

Many people hark back to the halcyon days of nationalised British Rail. However, this was awful too (and not just the 'Travellers Fare' terrible food part of the organisation). The culture of this nationalised 'business' has lived on but with a couple of further obstacles between getting passengers from A to B: shareholders expect a slice of our fares through dividends and railway company board members expect monster salaries and bonuses from our pockets. My railway operator is Southeastern Railways and we have developed a special relationship. I thought I'd post a few of my and other pictures to illustrate the issues.

By the way, what am I looking for from this? Southeastern is ludicrously expensive and it's rubbish: I would like to see fares reduced and the company made to get us from A to B reliably whether snowing, sunny, raining, windy or when there's a 'r' in the month. Er that's it...


Information system at my station, it did not work during a period of snow, a time when Southeastern Railways traditionally has a holiday from running trains.
Some weeks later the information system remained  in the 'chocolate teapot' style. I asked staff at the station about this as it was inconvenient not knowing if there would be a train and/or how long it was delayed by. The chap lamented that no-one was really interested in fixing things like this very quickly, especially when it's cold.


"In the summer time, when the trains are fine..." Which they aren't actually because summer bends the rails or something - and there's no information.
Every now and again Southeastern issues performance figures claiming that it has reached its punctuality targets. This means that board members get their bonuses and passengers don't get any discount on their season tickets. However, the performance figures are not exactly straightforward, we don't really know that they are reached. There are tricks too such as not calling at stations and stranding passengers elsewhere so late arrival at the ignored stations doesn't count. And short trains that you can't actually get on don't count either, plus a load of other shenanigans that are kept from us. Using the same system I could show that either England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have won several World Cups each since the 1930s.
A sight that often greets passengers at Cannon Street.  On these occasions the staff disappears entirely, if you do find someone they have no more idea than you of where trains are going and can be really quite offensive.
A lovely sentiment... Ironically I was trying to get home the night I took this photo. Temperatures in London had reached a dizzying 20 degrees and Southeastern had collapsed (again). It took me three hours to get home (should be an hour and quarter). I claimed under Southeastern's Delay Repay scheme and I got a £1.50 voucher towards my next £1700 season ticket. Part of the journey that night involved a bus, the fare was £1.50...
Our lives in their hands.
This poor girl has been left on the (luggage) shelf. To make more space on now less frequent services, Southeastern gave us trains with fewer seats (apparently we asked for them).  The result is that you often must stand even in the middle of the day, unless you can get on the shelf. And these new, 'improved' trains don't have toilets; don't get on one if you've had more than a couple of pints.
I found this on twitter, #southeastern can be an enormously entertaining hashtag if you don't travel on Southeastern, posted by a very miffed person. During the time of the complete 2010 Southeastern collapse thousands of people appealed to their politicians to make Southeastern do what it is we pay it for. Nothing happened as a result, although James Cleverly (he's the one pictured here either giving or wrestling a certificate away from a Southeastern person) , a London Assembly Member, did personally visit and present Southeastern with some sort of customer service/safety certificate. The staff could take time to receive it as there weren't any trains running at the time. I also understand that Mr Cleverly later took the time to tweet about Charles Horton's (he's the grande fromage at Southeastern) family not liking it when he 'gets grumpy when it snows'. Glad to hear you're thinking about us James...
When the railways were privatised by Mr Major, railway passengers pointed out that all the rail companies would just blame each other for the shoddiness of their services. We were assured that this would not be the case. However, the message in the above, and many other communications, that it's Network Rail's fault your trains don't work is not exactly subliminal. Network Rail also features in quite a lot of Southeastern's 'sloping shoulders' twitter service @se_Railway.
A jolly sight to greet ticket buyers. It's these magic tickets that ward off Southeastern's dementors, the revenue-protection thugs. I once saw a Southeastern person at Eltham station refer to a passenger as c*nt, he clearly qualified for a role in this elite unit and I have indeed seen him carrying out his new role, gleefully, on the network.
This amused me, it's the driver of a delayed service from Cannon Street. We were told that it's about to leave but as you can see: "I'm in no hurry mate." People actually ran past him to get on to the train before it left.
Information booth at Charing Cross. Why would anyone need information whilst the station is open? If you do open it you could use something like those spikes on top that keep the pigeons off around the sides to stop passengers asking things.


Dr Who visits Cannon Street when we have decimal time.  Daleks turn up to make sure the trains run on time. I wish...


There is something so evil about this seat at Blackheath that it's been tied down firmly, in case it bites. What I love about this is the way the old Victorian hazard tape from when the seat initially became possessed was left there whilst the new tape was applied. Or maybe Prince Michael of Kent is coming along to cut the hazard tape and open the seat to the good people of Blackheath.


Here we are again in 2013 with snow. The snow was really quite light on 18 January and Southeastern had promised us new rail technology, de-icing trains and everything else that NASA could offer. Never again would it 'fail at the first flake'. In fact it immediately collapsed at the mention of the word 'snow'. Please observe the times of those trains, I was there at 18.20. The 18.25 train I was trying to get disappeared from the boards. Can you see the member of staff hiding behind the ticket machine? I asked her what had happened; I got a very helpful "She done it," in response.


Alternative to first-class. Maybe the chance for some passengers to get a discount on their tickets? Southeastern should be nothing if not innovative.

7 comments:

  1. Great post David. So many people are frustrated by the continuing bad service, we actually set up the delay repay sniper service so that people could register their journies and then we would email them every night with a list of trains that were cancelled or delayed. If they are a season ticket holder they can claim for any service they might have been getting and so it serves as a way to punish the rail way companies for the money grabbing ways.

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  2. very good - keep it up!

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  3. Thanks both. I am in agreement with anything that punishes our railway companies. A concern for me though would be that they would use the sniper service as a justification to raise fares? However, I agree that Southeastern is entirely without morals and will keep on raising those fares anyway.

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  5. increase in fairs has to stop , the minium yo now pay for a young persons before 9 or 10 is 12 pound even for a 3 pound journey.

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  6. The problems stated are pretty much down to lack of money and government interference. If our railways had been given the correct amount of money over the last 30 years the service would be what we expect, but that has never happened. Added to which, privatisation has doubled the cost (in real terms).

    Weather problems are down to lack of investment, lack of local joined up management and due to government interference, only short term planning. No spare trains (which have to be owned by Network Rail) to fit dicing equipment to. No spare track capacity to use when replacing or repairing track or line side work. Not enough money to tackle even the growth of trees effectively.

    Not enough seats - since privatisation trains now pay to use the tracks (cost per carriage and how hard that carriage hits the track) so less carriages in a train is cheaper. Tables, toilets, buffets, and seats cost money, treating passengers like sardines makes money, and there are almost no spare carriages to cope with little things like rush hours or football match crowds.

    And finally private companies (mostly owned by the French, German & Dutch governments, and so nationalised really) only given short term contracts to run their bit of the railway with little chance of investment payback.

    Britain's Railways -making railway travel cheaper - in France, Germany & Holland because that's what our government wants.

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    1. Agree with most of the above. Though I believe that you could throw £billions at the railway companies and such is their attitude to moving us from A-B they would have thrown it all at painting stations, yet another redesign of staff uniforms and the cheapest possible info systems that have no idea where trains are. And of course much of the money would be kept back in order that cash flow targets are hit and executive bonuses are triggered.

      I didn't know that they paid less for shorter trains, that's interesting. Though I was told by a Southeastern person that it is fined for running trains too short at peak times.

      At the end of the day the problem is UK railway culture where all staff want to do is get home as quickly as possible (which is ironically what we want) and their managers want to take as much cash home as possible.

      The only recourse we have is highlighting issues through social media, our politicians have only made the problem worse by either supporting the railway companies or doing nothing at all. Interesting that Matt Hartley, the Conservative Party candidate for Greenwich has suddenly decided to start a petition against Southeastern, just before an election...

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