Prices....urg. I was until earlier this year living in London but visiting family (the inlaws) in the West Country several times a year. The year I married my wife we were going back and forth to there once a month if not more. We never paid the same price twice, and on one emergency occasion the only available tickets for our journey worked out at £105 each.

The price for hiring a car for the weekend, including petrol worked out at £95 between us. No contest.

We see so much about cutting down on car journeys, but ever since then (4 years) we hired a car for any of our journeys and saved at least the price of the car hire. Plus we then had the freedom to move around at the other end without relying on other people or on more trains.

Now I live in the West Country, having moved after the birth of our child and the wife wanting to be near family, and I'm commuting to London. Season ticket is £7616. Now that works out at about £30 a day, which much cheaper than the normal return ticket, but still a huge amount of cash.

Luckily I work for a company that pays for 75% of it!

I'm also lucky that I get a seat, given that I'm quite a way down the line, but by the time the train arrives at Reading it's standing room only, which must really annoy season ticket holders at that point.

You should try commuting into London with the satanic First Capital Connect.

Turns out 50% of the service was drivers doing voluntary overtime. Due to a pay dispute the drivers have, quite rightly, refused to work overtime, so the service is reduced by half, resulting in over-crowding and delays.

At St Albans station last Thursday they had shut the station doors and were turning people away due to overcrowding.

I used to happily travel pretty much everywhere by train but for the last few years I've limited myself to trips to London (from Newport) as it seems to be the only route that offers a reliable, consistent quality of service.

In defence of the train companies, they appear to have moved to some sort of yield-management pricing; similar to the airlines; so there are bargains to be had if you're willing to be flexible. The 'walk-up' rate for Newport-London is just under £250 return but, with advance booking and selection of the train it's possible to get it for a quarter of that.

This does of course bring all sorts of issues with tickets being valid on certain trains etc etc but no-one seems to have a problem with having to book airline tickets, do they?

You want total flexibility, you pay full price. You're willing to commit to a date/time, you get a cheaper rate.

the issue is that Rail privatisation was carried out by the Tories in such a way that it was almost impossible for the rail network ever to be nationalised again (umpteen passenger carrying "franchises", separate ownership of the tracks, separate contracts for providing the rolling stock, doing the maintenance, cleaning, catering etc). While the tracks have been taken into semi-public ownership via Network Rail, the East Coast line is the first train operator to be taken back into public ownership.

The issue isn't really about private or public ownership - it's about investment. The current passenger franchises either receive a (reducing) level of public money to provide unprofitable services or have to pay a fixed dividend to the government based on assumed profits. Either way they have to reduce costs and because most of the franchises are relatively short (7-10 years) there is no incentive to plan for the long term (it takes 20+ years for investment in new trains, e.g. the Pendolinos that Virgin use, to payback).

So while I'm in no way defending the privatised train operators (many of whom are pretty crap) it's actually a system fundamentally designed to fail.

In the UK they used to run well, but they no longer do.

They're late a lot. Weather and leaves can be a factor, but it's mainly to do with staff who can't be arsed getting out of their beds.

Trains are usually not terribly clean or litter free.

Food and drink on a train is never value for money. It is usually of sub-Macdonalds standard (when available), with a Ritzy price attached.

You can no longer smoke in trains.

Ticket pricing is of a complexity that would have Einstein tearing his hair out.

When travelling in a train, you will be subjected to a non-stop nagging tirade from automated messaging and the "helpful" guard.

Trains have quiet zones that are not actually quiet.

Train toilets are invariably disgusting.

Steam trains are brilliant!

Train travel in the UK is a vision of purgatory. But the Gatwick and Heathrow Expresses are actually a pleasure to use. The Eurostar is wonderful - and it takes you to a place where train travel is efficient, clean and cheap - France.

I remember when the route was owned by Richard Branson and he brought in those short voyager trains & you wonder why there is overcrowding. Train travel is expensive and I'm afraid nationalising it wont make it cheaper cos ultimately the government of the day control the variables which set fares i.e the franchises and the fare calculation mechanisms. A franchise is just a service delivery mechanism - whether it is state or government owned. Just wait and see if the newly nationalised east coast franchise cuts its fares - dont hold your breath!

Two other things annoy me: 1) the ability of the trade unions to hold the country to ransom by threatening/calling a strike and 2) railway drivers not having contracts which stipulate that they should be available to work on Sundays - after all we travel on Sundays - the railway companies/unions cant get this sorted.

PS wifi is a nice to have - not much good on a crowded train when you are standing ;0)

I don't give a toss who has what franchise, how much they paid for it, what the Tories did when they carved things up for their buddies to run, or how much it will cost the taxpayer to get rid of the debacle, we NEED a national rail infrastructure and it's too important to leave to a bunch of hideously overpaid 'talent' and their non-executive director chums.

I drive all over the south of England and Wales in pursuit of work, and the road system is beyond improvement; there are too many roads, too many cars and too much out-of-town expansion. In fact, unless there is some kind of sea change in our national development strategy, the second I can afford to I'm getting out of the country to somewhere less densely populated, and HMRC can go hang for my taxes.

So with roads beyond improvement, the railway system should be the mainstay of national public transport policy. And if the EU has said the tracks should be owned by an organisation other than the one running the trains on those tracks, they can go and shaft themselves too. Bollocks to the E effing U, the people running the rolling stock need to be the same people that are maintaining the lines; how else can they plan the evolution of more sophisticated rolling stock without being able to say when the lines will be capable of supporting it? FFS.

Commuting to London each day to work on the iPlayer project for the Beeb, I was paying £1250 a MONTH for my season ticket, mainly for three reasons: driving to and from London daily is ecologically and psychologically unsustainable, I had to travel in 'peak time' (aka when most people do) and I was obliged to travel First Class because I wanted to effing well be sure of getting an effing seat. Call that reasonable? I don't. It's a bloody disgrace.

/rant

..entitled Parallel Lines by Ian Marchant, published by Bloomsbury. Actually it isn't about trains, it's a fascinating cultural and social history of the British railways, written as a travelogue - funny erudite and hugely entertaining.

Don't think we can complain really...

I probably travel into London once a month for business from Didcot at peak times and always get a 1st class ticket to ensure a seat and 1.5 hours extra working time in an otherwise crowded train.

The last four occasions I have travelled I have been sold a return ticket to Ashford in Kent as this is £8 cheaper than the equivalent ticket from Didcot to Paddington!

Bizarre.

from Cornwall to Scotland - according to The News Quiz (I think) - which I find rather staggering. I know no-one pays that unless very unfortunate or in the case of a dire emergency, but still...

why I have to pay 100% fare for 90% efficient network. I travel almost everywhere on public transport and I can't see it getting better anytime soon regardless how much I pay. This Sunday morning I got 9 am train and of course it was late and over crowded and yet unlike every other service I buy there is no recompense for this. The lack of any central coordination is the main problem.
Oh and don't get me started on closing down the system on Bank holidays .

I sort of think it comes down to this sandwich some cretin was busy labelling a ham and cheese sandwich "limted edition" all the while the GWR train I was on (on a line that been open for 150 plus years) was 40 mins late because the points weren't working. Of course you can't claim any money back unless you 2 hour journey is 3rd longer than it should not merely 25 %.

that is rail travel in the UK on a daily basis, can I urge you to COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, in writing, in triplicate, with copies to all of the consumer affairs activists you can think of.

In the 12 months I recently spent 'enjoying' the 'services' of the inexcusably poorly named FGW, I wrote a letter of complaint at every viable opportunity. I think I wrote 7 in one year. For the trouble of doing this I received £75 in compensation. Not much, in the grand scheme of things, but at approximately 15 minutes per letter (after the first one, the rest were variations on a theme, tempered by the level of anger I felt on each occasion, and varied by dint of my reactions to the varying excuses peddled by the hapless staff) that's about 1 and three quarters of an hour's work.

I was making around 10 times the national minimum wage just by complaining to FGW.

Says it all, really.

The rail network is now shifting more people than it has for decades. It is trying to make up for terrible underinvestment in all those decades of, yes, state ownership. Thousands of bits of ancient, rickety and dangerous bits of rolling-stock have been binned. We now travel in nice, fast, safe, quietish, air-conditioned trains with bogs which aren't always clogged with turds. The food is not now the joke it once was. There are power sockets. There is Wi-Fi.

Perhaps, once the rail network has been dragged up to scratch, prices might fall a bit. But we have to look around and think a bit. Trains can only be so long, only so many can travel on the same tracks. They will be crowded at peak times. So will the roads. Such is life.

moan again about my 50-60 minutes long drive to work. OK, I go through Hounslow West and Hayes but my God it's got to be better than the train from what I've read here.

So why can't we? Scandinavia, Germany, Austria, Italy all have excellent and reliable train services even in the extremes of weather. Tickets don't cost the earth and they are kept in a clean usable state. We get graffiti, leavings of meals, newspapers and litter, cancellations and regular fare hikes that do not reflect a better service. A ticket does not guarantee you a seat and if you commute it's invariably a crammed cattle truck. We are being encouraged to use public transport rather than our cars yet there is little advantage in doing so, which is why motorists are now being screwed with higher fuel and congestion charges.

... how it can possibly be cheaper to fly almost anywhere in Europe than it is to take the train from London to (say) Bristol. Rail pricing (and its Donnie Darko-like complexity) is an outrage, especially for the poor level of service we get.

And (for our London-based readers) don't get me started on the tube...

..you could get from Bristol Temple Meads to Paddington faster in 1976 than you can in 2009.

I took part in a "conference" with First Capital Connect management (you email in questions and they answer them on their website in real time) during which it emerged that they are looking at installing advertising boards on trains of the type you see in the Post Office - scrolling crap products with voice over. Predictably the response from "customers" was of the "Congratulations!!! You have found a way of making the completely intolerable even worse" variety.

I like my daily rail commute from rural Cheshire to Manchester a darn sight more than driving in.

Whenever I want to go to a gig in Manchester (where I work), I have to go through a mental cost-benefit analysis - do I love the band enough to put up with 1.5 hours of motorway crawling in a car first thing in the morning (incidentally, 15 mins longer than my normal short car journey, 45 min train, 15 min walk)? When I drive, I arrive frazzled, tired and wound up at all the other drivers. It costs me about £17 for petrol & parking (when I've already paid for my rail season ticket).

I know I'm lucky that I get on the train early enough to generally get a seat, and if it doesn't arrive, our station is open, windswept and deserted apart from potential passengers huddling round whichever commuter is checking the live departure boards on their mobile phone in the driving rain.

But at the moment, for me, it's still better than driving.

oyster pay as you is to be in place on the overland by the new year not sure why it's not sooner (for anyone outside of london it makes life easier and crucially cheaper). As usual the downside is they are cutting back on the buses. So back to jam tomorrow.

cheaper than buying a second class ticket!
I came back from London several years ago with a colleague who hadn't bought a ticket. We sat in a first class carriage and the first class price seemed very expensive but the ticket inspector explained if we bought a second class ticket and ordered a meal (about £6 or £7 then) we would be able to stay where we were.
So we could sit and eat in first class cheaper than just sitting in 2nd class! Amazing.
The state of the carriages on our local trains is disgraceful frayed seats, different coloured materials, smelly, dirty, strewn with rubbish even at the start of the journey. Privatisation into many small operating units simply hasn't worked. Governments have only been interested in how much they can secure for the operating licence without examining the credibility of the business models. It would have made sense to ensure these were sound before awarding the licences.

My commute into Manchester from Marple is pleasant enough and has been much more reliable lately. However, the ticket office is being refurbished and is closed and the guard doesn't always get round to collecting money for daily tickets.

At Manchester Piccadilly the ticketless hourdes are then faced with having to join a long queue to buy a ticket from GFS, a private security company with particularly stern faced officers. Everyone is in a hurry and when you show them your ticket they have been known to physically restrain people with intimidating body movements, just short of force.

It is a horrible and humiliating experience.

The journey to London from Manchester and Stockport on Virgin Pendolino trains is excellent. Expensive, but immeasurably better than it used to be.

I agree about Cross Country though, it's wretched. But not as bad as the Arriva Trains Wales service from Manchester to West Wales. Luckily I only ever go as far as Cardiff.

My commute into Manchester from Marple is pleasant enough and has been much more reliable lately. However, the ticket office is being refurbished and is closed and the guard doesn't always get round to collecting money for daily tickets.

At Manchester Piccadilly the ticketless hordes are then faced with having to join a long queue to buy a ticket from GFS, a private security company with particularly stern faced officers. Everyone is in a hurry and when you show them your ticket they have been known to physically restrain people with intimidating body movements, just short of force.

It is a horrible and humiliating experience.

The journey to London from Manchester and Stockport on Virgin Pendolino trains is excellent. Expensive, but immeasurably better than it used to be.

I agree about Cross Country though, it's wretched. But not as bad as the Arriva Trains Wales service from Manchester to West Wales. Luckily I only ever go as far as Cardiff.

Now, about those bloody cyclists...

is to pay more tax so we can collectively invest in our national infrastructure. That should do it.

Anyone remember the mighty Deltic engines? Well, they weren't that mighty as they were over engineered with twin engines, but still made a creepy electric hum. Great to see them pulling in and out of Kings Cross in the seventies, as I sat in Mark 2 compartment carriages with a flask of coffee, corn beef sarnies and a copy of Melody Maker to read on the journey home. Breakdowns and delays often expected, I don't think the rail network has really improved since then, just more boring looking Arriva multiple unit trains everywhere.

I'm not entirely au fait with this subject, but I would suggest that the problems with the rail network are possibly similar to those of British industry in general, i.e. the infrastructure was not bombed into oblivion during the war to the same extent as it was on the continent.

This point was raised in a recent BBC4 programme I watched about Clyde shipbuilding. After the war, the industry experienced a mini boom, as the yards were in a fit state to carry on as before with the existing machinery. However, this was a pyrrhic victory, as other countries had no option but to start from scratch with state of the art equipment and therefore soon overtook us. I imagine the same point applies to the rail industry.

Another factor that any large civil engineering project must struggle against in the UK is the stringent planning process. I can’t quote any evidence to support this, but I get the impression this does not apply to anywhere near the same extent on the continent. There, as I understand it, local concerns are secondary to the perceived national interest.

Edinburgh Park Station sits at the edge of the Gyle, on Edinburgh's western edge. Thousands of people work there, and every morning and every night there's traffic gridlock as people try to drive in and out and try to find places to park.

There are two railway stations, one on the Fife line, the other, Edinburgh Park, on the main line between Glasgow and Edinburgh. It's big, spankingly modern, and well served by footpaths for access to the many huge businesses (RBS, HBOS, BT, NHS all have HQs there).

Trains run between Glasgow and Edinburgh every 15 minutes in each direction, and whizzzzzz! straight through Edinburgh Park, without stopping.

I've sought in vain for an adequate explanation of this, and the only explanation that I have had offered is:

Some people just need a slap eh?

tonight my time was frittered away by muppets. The trains from new cross to Charing Cross weren't running ( i needed to get the BBC) fine change at London bridge and get the Jubilee line wrong that was stopping at waterloo!! so a journey of 35 mins took 1:15 plus.
Problem no coordination why close both overland and tube in the same area and where was Boris et al coordinating and banging heads together? But boris et al will around come Jan 1st to increase the fares for this 80% trave system. It's aload of cock.

(which personally, I don't)...

Then don't come to Sydney. CityRail are monumentally incompetent. I could go on at length about this, but suffice to say that they aimed to have OysterCard style ticketing installed for the 2000 Olympics. 10 years later, they've just scrapped their progress on trying to get this to work and have started again from scratch.

Punctuality, cleanliness of trains and overcrowding are MUCH worse than the UK, and tickets are frequently more expensive. A one day travelcard is about twice the price of its London equivalent.