The week started snow bad for East Coast Main Line (and its ‘customers’), with trains that never were. But as the freeze appeared to thaw, my experience was that Peterborough-Kings Cross train ‘service’ became worse rather than better.
My week has just been rounded off with a truly nightmare trek home on one of the most overcrowded trains I’ve had the misfortune to be packed onto in over 30 years of full and part-time commuting.
I expected this evening’s rush-hour tube hops on the Circle, then Victoria lines to be the usual squeeze. And they were.
I was daft enough to look forward to a little more space for the 90-odd mile - and rather more expensive - journey to Peterborough.
But no. As the train crawled out of Kings Cross, every carriage had people standing in the aisles. I was forced to squeeze into the tiny vestibule between two carriages which I shared for the duration with enough bodies to make two full football teams, complete with a compliment of subs (...if only there were a subs bench!)
To add insult to injury, the guard was soon picking his way through us sardines, demanding to see all tickets, no doubt to make sure no-one was daring to travel on a ‘cheap’ ticket.
I was so tightly wedged between a door and three fellow travellers, I would have had real difficulty getting my hand in my jacket to extract my ticket and told the guard so. I added that given the state of Third World overcrowding on the train he was responsible for, I thought he had a bloody cheek worrying about tickets.
He clearly realised that even if I could retrieve my ticket, he would struggle to get near enough to check or clip it. So he sensibly suggested that I keep my ticket in my pocket and he moved on!
With the guard in full retreat, I shared my frustration with the rest of the Coach B Vestibule first team, explaining that my £87 ticket had bought me a cancelled train on my outward journey this morning and now, no seat on my return journey, not even space to stand in relative comfort.
He too had been delayed by a train that never was this morning and were we clearly in the same er, boat? heading north. Then he produced his Leeds-London ticket which had cost him a staggering £224...
Our conversation was interrupted by the worst moment of the ordeal was when the East Coast’s ‘at seat’ (er, what seat?) drinks and snacks trolley (aka a surefire cash cow within a cash cow) was forced through the vestibule on its relentless drive, sending us sardines falling over each other to avoid a broken leg.
Talking of legs, I’m just starting to get the circulation back in mine. My back will take a little longer to recover.
What an absolute disgrace.
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