This guy is obviously having a bad hair day …
October 31, 2009
London Underground Staffer looses his cool …
Comments Off
October 30, 2009
10 ways to avoid penalty fares on trains
If, like me, you’re an honest passenger but are worried about landing a Penalty Fare because you were legitimately unable to buy your ticket, you should pop over to the ‘Penalty Fare Appeal Support’ website, and read their article on how to avoid potentially being bullied into paying a fine, over and above the cost of a standard single ticket.
I would like to print the details here, but the article is expressly stated as being the Copyright of the publishers, and I can’t find a way of contacting them at the moment, so you’ll need to follow the link below.
The article was written by Andrew Gilligan. Yes, THAT Andrew Gilligan - the one unlikely to be getting a Christmas card (ever!) from Alastair Campbell 
I’ll continue to try and get in touch with them so I can at least print an extract from it here, if possible. I’m no legal-eagle, but it makes sense, and would seem a rational way of dealing with the situation should it arise.
Comments Off
October 29, 2009
Follow MerseyRail on Twitter!
If you want to keep up to date with goings-on on the Merseyrail network, you could try following the Merseyrail Twitter feed. (more…)
Comments Off
October 28, 2009
London Underground video
This is brilliant, but be warned, it contains STRONG language
It also has little nothing to do with MerseyRail, but is aimed at the London Underground instead …
Comments Off
Facebook Group
This has nothing to do with me at all, but it was brought to my attention this morning – there is a Miseryrail Facebook group:
I’m so sick of Mersey Rail – their treatment of the people who use the train service and the way that they con us into paying hard earned money for a rubbish service!!
There are only a few members so far, but I don’t know how long it has been going, or who runs it. It might be worth joining though to see how it progresses.
Comments Off
October 26, 2009
Three nights out of four now …
… thats Wednesday, Thursday and now Monday evenings that Merseyrail haven’t been able to get passengers home on the train they wanted, at the time they wanted, and maybe even with a seat, if they’re lucky (plenty weren’t tonight – when the 5:21 from Moorfields arrived at James St on it’s way to West Kirby, there were plenty who couldn’t even get on the train, never mind on a seat).
I missed the start of the disruption, but I got caught in the chaos it caused. The train I was on was ridiculously overcrowded, and late getting me home.
If this continues, it really will be a return to the ‘old days’ of MiseryRail. I wonder if Bart has ever tried getting home after a days work on one of his early evening trains? If he did, maybe they’d see fit to make sure the trains they’ve got don’t keep breaking down, and perhaps lay on a few more 6 carraige units to ease the pain.
Comments Off
October 23, 2009
Thats two nights running … are they returning to the old days?
That makes two nights running that Merseyrail have managed to turn a journey into a trauma.
But last nights really WAS a trauma. It would almost have been funny.if I hadn’t been trying to get home from an after-work beer with SWMBO*, been lied to by a member of Merseyrail staff and saw someone nearly fall under a train.
Basically, it went like this:
Waiting in James Street for the 20:37 West Kirby train, on the normal platform (3, I think it is) an announcement was made that there was a ‘track fault’ at Central (you know, the same track that was shut for a whole month earlier this year for maintenance, causing a good deal of inconvenience). All Wirral Line trains would now start and terminate at James Street.
Note that the electronic board still said our West Kirby train was about 2 minutes away.
Comments Off
October 22, 2009
NEVER, EVER, believe the Merseyrail website
This is what the Merseyrail website said last night, at 5 o’clock, some 30 minutes after chaos descended upon the Wirral line and it’s hapless commuters thanks to a broken down train somewhere in the vicinity of Hamilton Square.
The Merseyrail website this evening
Luckily, someone called and warned me, so I managed to avoid the worst of it, but there was no warning to commuters as they entered Hamilton Square, so my girlfriend wandered unwittingly into the middle of it. You’d think they would at least provide passengers with the info they need to make a decision, before diving underground.
So never, ever believe their website status ticker, because it’s bullshit (probably so the regulator doesn’t get to see).
As an aside, it would be interesting to know how many trains technically ran late last night (which count against Merseyrail’s performance figures) and how many they cancelled (which, somewhat strangely, don’t count). So late is poor performance, cancelled isn’t – go figure!
Comments Off
October 18, 2009
We came first …
Maybe if they spent less money on these horse-shit poster campaigns, and more on improving passenger services, they might have a legitimate claim to make … why do they need to try so hard to convince us that we’re so happy?
Merseyrail first for service?
Who the hell did they ask, that’s what I’d like to know. And where did they find the smiley-faced staff members, I wonder?
Comments Off
October 3, 2009
So it’s not just me …
“Summary: They’ll get you to where you’re going on time as long as you don’t mind the unhelpful staff” (source article)
So, despite what the posters tell us, Merseyrail staff aren’t quite as popukar as Merseyrail would have us believe, are they?
You can read the full Merseyrail review here. In fairness to them, if you read all the reviews of Merseyrail going back a number of years, it’s plain that they’re getting better. Much better.
My point is that they’re not as good as they’d have us believe. If they spent less time trying to convince people how good they are, and more time actually working on the problems they have, they might piss fewer people off.
Comments Off
