Rail Travel - has it become more unreliable?

It times it almost seems like railway travel to the West of London is like travel in the wild west. When I started a thread on the "First Great Western Coffee Shop" this morning, commenting on all the people moaning about train problems, I knew I was traveling up to London and back later in the day. [here]

But did I expect it would turn into something that I could grouch about from the start. Well - frankly - yes. For I'm traveling from Melksham, and for my 18:30 appointment in London, I would have had to catch the 07:17 train and would have arrived some 9 hours early. So instead I drove up to Chippenham, from where I had a prebooked ticket for the 15:55. For those of you who don't know the area, Melksham is a town with a population of around 24,000 and Chippenham has around 35,000. Melksham has two trains per day in each direction; Chippenham has two trains per hour in each direction.

I paid the usual leg and two arms to park at Chippenham Station. Did you realise that in the Western region of the UK, Car Parking and refreshments account for 12% of the Train Operator's income (it's just 7.5% in the next area across)? I mused that my 7.10 is far easier money for the train operators than running a train to Melksham - much cheaper for them to provide a patch of tarmac than a train, after all, and they charge the same. Smart business.

Anyway - my ticket was prebooked and waiting for me in the Ticket Vending Machine, which I successfully negotiated - with about 15 minutes to spare. Yes - tickets and seat reservations for the 15:55. Then I heard an announcement that the delayed 15:25 had just arrived in and, glancing up at the departure board, was shocked to see that the 15:55 showed as cancelled. That's right - I had just seconds before been issued with a train-specific ticket for a train that wasn't running.

A quick dash over the bridge (pushing through the crowds coming towards me, and probably appearing terribly rude and thoughtless) and I got onto the platform as the station staff were closing the doors. "I have an advanced ticket for the 15:55 that's cancelled - please may I use this train?" and the uniformed station person held the door open for me and I got on. I'm now seated on the train, either 15 minutes late or 15 early depending on how you like to think of it and ...

... Train Manager has just come by and checked tickets. I was slightly nervous bearing in mind the dire threats about being on the wrong train that I hear and read so often. However, he was "nice as pie" about it - helped that there was obviously some joined up data around and he knew the train behind wasn't running!

It's very curious this business of tickets that are for a fixed train, of course. If we (the customers) miss the train - even if it's because a bus run by the same company was late - we loose our money. But if the train operator cancels the train, he can just laugh it off and put us (usually) on the following service. The words "level playing field" come to my mind, but with a heavy dose of irony attached.

I didn't expect to start this post with a tale of things going wrong today - but I was going to comment on how I travel between Melksham and the west of England and many other parts of the country by train ... and how it always seems to be the Western legs that are "eventful" [I'm still writing on the train, and we have lurched over the points onto the slow lines ... what now, I wonder ...]
(written 2012-02-02, updated 2012-02-04)

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Z501 - Public Transport - Rail
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