BRITAIN’S sadistically bad rail services are being taken back into public ownership by Labour. So which one will you be most pleased to see the back of?
Avanti
Paid for an eye-wateringly expensive ticket from London to Glasgow and expect to get further than Carlisle? Don’t be a f**king idiot. Only 46 per cent of Avanti trains ran on time in 2023, meaning you could end up stranded in the middle of the night waiting for a taxi to drive you the remaining 100 miles at 3am. Yet they still got their contract renewed by the Tories. Because they hated you.
TransPennine
Even a halfwit with no experience of running a rail company would be able to figure out that cancelling trains and yet still selling tickets for those services was a bit of a dim idea, but not TransPennine. They merrily crammed people in, packed together like terrified cattle on the way to slaughter, and still got shirty if someone had the wrong ticket. They’ve already been taken under state control for badness, but you can’t wait to see them gone forever.
CrossCountry
Aside from overcrowding, ageing stock and a habit of cancelling tens of trains every day, the worst thing about CrossCountry trains is the unique and disquieting smell that permeates them. It appears to be coming from the toilets but it reeks like no cleaning product you’ve ever experienced, and may actually be the very aroma of Hell. Labour’s patriotically-titled Great British Railways trains had better not smell like that, or there’ll be an insurrection by customers just wanting a grief-free journey to Penzance.
Northern
Do you like your train journeys to be livened up by a brush with danger, and possibly even death? Then jump onboard a Northern service, which has been known to pack their trains so full that people start vomiting and fainting due to the overcrowding. At least the inspector can’t force his way through to check your ticket, because you would have been insane to pay for this experience.
Southeastern
Customer complaints typically include delays and dirty trains, but their true ire is reserved for the prices. Unless Southern folk are especially tightfisted, this seems like an entirely plausible grievance, and it’s not surprising passengers/victims are a bit miffed at paying £700+ a month for a crappy service that’s only providing them with the joyful experience of going to work.
LNER
In a country as allegedly civilised as the UK, you’d think sitting in the aisles of a train wouldn’t be necessary, but you’d be wrong. Services are regularly cancelled, meaning nobody has a seat reservation and everyone is incredibly pissed-off and uncomfortable, throughout an entire five-hour journey to Edinburgh. Need a wee? No chance. What do you think this is, some futuristic sci-fi utopia?
Caledonian Sleeper
Sounds fancy, doesn’t it? Well, it’s not. You’re either crammed into a bunk so minuscule that you’ll have a panic attack every time you turn over, or you go for the cheap option and you spend the night sitting in a chair with the lights on full blast, like some kind of freakish travelling torture chamber. Honestly, just fly. It costs a tenth of the price and will leave your mental health intact.
