National Rail: What’s the bother?
InSITE editor Dale Prince thinks that train services are being given a rough ride!
With all the recent press regarding the ‘terrible’ situation of the railways, I thought that someone needed to defend them and say ‘They are not as bad as they’re made out to be!’
In the last two months I have made various trips from Hereford on the train and I was amazed to find that the service was actually of a good standard and not completely awful like some have made them out to be. My return trip to Crewe from Hereford was both quick and relatively cheap and the trains were on time in both instances. They were comfortable and on the way back we even arrived around 15 minutes early (that’s right, EARLY)!
My other excursion to London was yet another comfortable trip and leaving Hereford and trekking across the country was great fun. We encountered a delay towards London where a bridge had to be inspected before we travelled under it but the driver kept us informed throughout and we were stationary for only about 15 minutes.
After listening to all of the press about the ‘disgrace’ of the railway network, I was pleasantly surprised. These positive experiences have made me look into rail travel for other journeys whereas if I’d listened to just the papers and the radio, I wouldn’t have even considered it.
Another good reason for using trains is that they are much better for the environment; if everyone used rail the world would be a better, cleaner place. Imagine if everyone on a train were to travel by car, there would be hundreds more cars on the road - think of the fumes, yuk!
If you have a trip to go on, I would strongly recommend you log onto www.nationalrail.co.uk to see if you can make your trip by train, it might just surprise you!
