How difficult is it!? I want a train journey!

[tech_guy]

I need to travel to London on the 3rd May from Warwickshire. Can I get a bleedin' train? No. Not unless I make four changes, taking over four hours. This is a stupid country! And then there's no easy trains back at night according to the websites! Arrggghhhh. All I want to do is go to a rock concert. Sod it! Looks like I'm going to have to drive.

[DaveMurphy]

The worst thing is when you're on a train and then they say its going to a different location than it says on the noticeboard. I nearly ended up in Blackpool the other day! I only wanted to go to Rochdale!!!

[glennda]

its a direct train from here on tracks and even then they go wrong!!

[srochford]

The worst thing is when you're on a train and then they say its going to a different location than it says on the noticeboard. I nearly ended up in Blackpool the other day! I only wanted to go to Rochdale!!!

Actually, that's just the railway company taking care of its customers in ever better ways. No-one in their right mind ever wants to go to Rochdale and Blackpool in winter will be much nicer :-)

On a serious note, @tech_guy - have you tried talking to a real person at your nearest station? Sometimes the online system just seems to get stuck and the person might be able to get a better route. I'd guess it's only 100 miles (less?) and it just seems weird that you can't get a better train journey (particularly as you're going to London!)

[tech_guy]

It's because it's May Day - public holiday and all that. It's enough to make me want to riot!

[webman]

For the country that pioneered the railways, it strikes me as ironic (and highly frustrating) that we have a relatively pathetic and expensive train network compared to many other countries.

[laserblazer]

I used to drive to Banbury and get the X Country train to Euston. Stopped at every station but it was cheap and cheerfull.

[ahuxham]

Meh, had the same the other day.

Bruton to Doncaster, would take 9 hours on train at a cost of £162, the route goes via Kings Cross, so Bruton > Bristol > Paddington > Tube > Kings Cross > Two more changeovers and I'm there.

The time it would take was immense. Severly disappointed with the rail network lately.

[sonofsanta]

For the country that pioneered the railways, it strikes me as ironic (and highly frustrating) that we have a relatively pathetic and expensive train network compared to many other countries.

Same as the phone network then - because we pioneered it, that means we now have the oldest system in the world, and no-one can ever be bothered to invest to overhaul it, so we creak along with patches and plasters. Just see the current heel-dragging over fibre-optics despite the obvious benefits of having a high-bandwidth infrastructure in place.

To OP: I feel your pain, I live on the East Coast so all my train journeys are across country, and there's no such thing as a cross-country train, they only go north/south. To get the 3 hours from Skegness to Stafford (3 hours by car, at least) would involve at least 3 changes and has taken up to 7½ hours in the past - longer, no less, than a door-to-door journey from Skegness to Switzerland when I lived there for a year, and that's including the 2 hours sitting in departures. Bloody silly.