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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-20783986

Guess which is my train?

Fortunately since I live in Henley I always get a seat, because the train fills up at Twyford and Maidenhead.

First class traveller here, never had any problems with overcrowding.
Except when it was rush hour london and the suits all got in first, it was funny when half were asked to leave after a suprise ticket inspection.
Bunch of pretenders

What takes the piss is on a 6 car train, 4 of them are first class and are always empty while the standard compartments are utterly filled to bursting.

I used to go between Sheffield and Stoke every 2 weeks and more often than not the route between Sheffield and Manchester was a single engine compartment with people absolutely crammed on. So many times the train had to leave people on the platform as they physically could not fit any more people on the train.

Re-nationalise the trains so they stop being run to wring money out of people and instead are used to provide a service.

 SilverMK2 wrote:
What takes the piss is on a 6 car train, 4 of them are first class and are always empty while the standard compartments are utterly filled to bursting.

I used to go between Sheffield and Stoke every 2 weeks and more often than not the route between Sheffield and Manchester was a single engine compartment with people absolutely crammed on. So many times the train had to leave people on the platform as they physically could not fit any more people on the train.

Re-nationalise the trains so they stop being run to wring money out of people and instead are used to provide a service.

Or turn more of them over to Branson, I quite like his business ethos.

Yeah, Virgin Trains are fething mega. I'd pay him £60 to run my bath.

Wait wait wait.... The trains in the UK have classes? You bloody Poms make me laugh. This is what happens though when you sell off public utilities and the like to private companies. What sized intervals between trains do you guys have?

What on earth is a train?

 Snrub wrote:
Wait wait wait.... The trains in the UK have classes? You bloody Poms make me laugh. This is what happens though when you sell off public utilities and the like to private companies.

Yep.

What sized intervals between trains do you guys have?

Depends on the service. Some routes will be every 10 minutes, while others will be hourly. Some rural routes only have one or two trains a day, some only a couple of trains a week.

and the worse bit is you can spend a a grand+ a month and not get a seat!

 Snrub wrote:
Wait wait wait.... The trains in the UK have classes? You bloody Poms make me laugh. This is what happens though when you sell off public utilities and the like to private companies. What sized intervals between trains do you guys have?

There used to be Third Class, back when the railways were invented by private companies.

I believe the railway companies try and keep the intervals between trains longer than the trains themselves. There have been a few incidents when two trains were put into the same volume of space, which had most regrettable consequences.

 Seaward wrote:
What on earth is a train?

A conspiracy.

Given that my rush hour train is not on there I can't believe what everyone else is going through O.o

Fortunately work don't mind me sloping in at 9.10 because it means I can dodge the sardine tins and actually get a few cm of oxygen between myself and the next person.

If I was slightly less lazy I could actually get a seat on one specific train, but only because it starts at the station as a "rush hour overflow" train basically.

There's a reason I've always tried to live near work.
Not always possible, but always part of the decision to appling for a job.

If half the train wasn't set aside for empty first class seats, more people might use each train, and profits would go up.

Has anyone seen how much 1st class tickets have gone up, in relation to standard?

Could be worse. It could be like it is in Tokyo where people actually have to be physically packed into the train carriages. Quite frankly I wonder if many of the supposed train groping cases are actually people struggling to breathe.

Of course with a population so vast the crowding is unavoidable, but still, damn. It's one of the few things that puts me off from a trip to Japan (the other things being the cost and fear of acting like a tit).

 SilverMK2 wrote:
Depends on the service. Some routes will be every 10 minutes, while others will be hourly. Some rural routes only have one or two trains a day, some only a couple of trains a week.

Ooh must be nice having trains run every 10 minutes. Ours are supposed to come every half hour. Your lucky if they are only a minute or 2 late. After i think 10pm ours are every hour on the hour.

How about we sell all our trains to Russia and get jetpacks instead?

 Squigsquasher wrote:
Could be worse. It could be like it is in Tokyo where people actually have to be physically packed into the train carriages. Quite frankly I wonder if many of the supposed train groping cases are actually people struggling to breathe.

Of course with a population so vast the crowding is unavoidable, but still, damn. It's one of the few things that puts me off from a trip to Japan (the other things being the cost and fear of acting like a tit).

Tokyo mostly is not as bad as that except some of the major lines at rush hour.

The compensation, though, is that the trains are frequent, reliable and relatively cheap.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The compensation, though, is that the trains are frequent, reliable and relatively cheap.

So completely unlike trains (or indeed public transport in general) in the UK

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 Squigsquasher wrote:
Could be worse. It could be like it is in Tokyo where people actually have to be physically packed into the train carriages. Quite frankly I wonder if many of the supposed train groping cases are actually people struggling to breathe.

Of course with a population so vast the crowding is unavoidable, but still, damn. It's one of the few things that puts me off from a trip to Japan (the other things being the cost and fear of acting like a tit).

Tokyo mostly is not as bad as that except some of the major lines at rush hour.

The compensation, though, is that the trains are frequent, reliable and relatively cheap.

Its my understanding they are also almost surgically clean no?

EDIT: that level of crowding would set off my claustrophobia. I'd probably freak and unleash 3-5 attack wiener dogs.
And then the subway wouldn't be clean anymore. (TBone! Really? You just went outside! Seriously?)

Yes, except in the late evening when pissed sarariman start to spew up occasionally.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Yes, except in the late evening when pissed sarariman start to spew up occasionally.

sarariman? Was ist das?

Salary men.

I commute by train, and public transport in south wales is fairly awful, crappy trains that regularly break down, overcrowding and less punctual than a teenage drop-out.

On top of that, it is cheaper for me to drive 20mins to a train station further away from my destination and get a train from there than it is to drive to the train station <5mins from my house, because the parking charges per week are more than the petrol it costs to drive to the other station

Walk?

 Avatar 720 wrote:
Walk?

It's a 5-minute drive but a 30-40 minute walk, I have to leave the house at 7am to be in work for 9am as it is, plus, this is South Wales, it has rained cosecutively for 3 weeks now, I would like to make it to the damp and smelly train without being damp and smelly myself (this condition also limits the use of bikes...)

 Leigen_Zero wrote:

 Avatar 720 wrote:
Walk?

It's a 5-minute drive but a 30-40 minute walk, I have to leave the house at 7am to be in work for 9am as it is, plus, this is South Wales, it has rained cosecutively for 3 weeks now, I would like to make it to the damp and smelly train without being damp and smelly myself (this condition also limits the use of bikes...)

I have a similar problem with the bus. I work a 5-10 minute car trip away but it takes between 30-60 minutes on the bus. It would take about 20 minutes to cycle the same route as I would go in the car, but there is no access for bikes along parts of that route, so it would end up taking about 40-60 minutes to cycle in going all round the houses