Railway travel turns into an endurance test for battered commuters

There is no shortage of horror stories about rail travel.

There is no shortage of horror stories about rail travel.

On 24 November angry passengers threatened to take over a train after it was held up at Keighley station in West Yorkshire by other services breaking down along the line. British Transport Police were called in and the passengers eventually agreed to get off. A week earlier, a journey from Coventry to Durham, which should have taken four hours, took 10.

Passengers described the journey as an endurance course of wind, rain, fog, floods and track repairs. In October, the MacLeod family set off from Edinburgh for a holiday in Italy. They were supposed to catch their flights in London, but within an hour of starting their journey the train had to return to Edinburgh.

Virgin Trains offered to get them to their plane somehow, but after two separate train journeys and a taxi trip from London where the driver got lost, the family missed their flight. The train company, Virgin, refunded their fares and offered them a free, first-class journey.

A PA from the City of London described how, for the last two weeks, her daily journey to Liverpool Street station from Colchester, which normally takes 53 minutes, has taken more than two hours. On one occasion, her First Great Eastern train was three hours late.

Stephen Davis, 38, a personnel officer, travels on Silverlink from Bletchley in Buckinghamshire. "In 10 times I've taken the train recently it has been on time once," he said. Another traveller said a four-hour trip from Bristol to Nottingham took six hours because of problems on the Bristol to Birmingham stretch.

Sarah Cox, who travels daily from Ipswich to London on Anglia Railways, said her journey, which used to take less than an hour, now takes more than two. One trip took more than five hours, starting at 7.50am and finishing at 12.30pm. On another occasion, she had to stand for two-and-a-half hours outside an out-of-order lavatory in a puddle of what she hoped was water.