Just another day on Northern Rail

A short story for today's blog all about 'a' passenger's attempts to get to work on by Northern Rail.

This is Northern Rail, the firm which will run all of the North's local (ie non express services) until 2012-ish, and get £2bn in subsidy from the Government to boot.

For £2bn over eight years I'd like to think the Government would expect passengers to benefit from a) new trains which don't smell of wee and which are cleaned regularly, b) trains which run on time and c) accurate information when the trains don't run according to timetable.

Apparently not.

This passenger, you see, got to his local railway station about 10 minutes before the train is due to arrive. It's a small train station, which has one train an hour stopping at it. The train station had four railway lines going through it, two of which have platforms for trains to stop. The other two don't, and waiting for his train, this passenger often looks at the Virgin trains sailing past, wondering why £2bn doesn't buy some nice new trains for his daily journey.

Anyway, the trains appears to be running late. But despite being in an age where Tony Blair can carry on international diplomacy from a Caribbean beach, it hasn't been possible to link up a tannoy at this passenger's station to a manned station for staff to announce the delay.

So he rings up National Rail Enquiries to be told the train is running 20 minutes late. Which was a relief. Until he saw the train approaching - on one of the tracks which doesn't have a platform. It simply sails past. So he rings National Rail Enquiries back, and they confirm it has, indeed past his station, and he'll have to hang around until 1pm for the next train. This is after telling this passenger the train had stopped at his station and that he must not have seen it. He is then told that sometimes trains do this (miss stations with passengers waiting on them) to make up time when running late. Good idea that - miss out stations to get to a destination on time!

He decides to ring Northern to ask what's going on. A friendly woman can't tell him what is going on but promises to ring back. It's begun to rain on the platform and the only shelter is in a bus shelter on the platform which looks like kids use it to recycle their bottle at night while emptying their bladders at the same time.

The friendly woman rings back and says she's sorry, but a points failure further up the track meant no trains could use the track with the platform on it. Which was a surprise to this passenger as a) there are two track with platforms and b) in the meantime, a freight train with about 100 noisy trucks behind it has pulled up at the station on the track which is apparently still out of action.

She can't promise that the next train at 1pm will be able to stop at the station, and says she'll have to have a think about what to do. She does that, and rings back offering a taxi to this passenger's destination - it'll take about 10 minutes to arrive.

That's good, thinks this passenger, because the next train due might not stop and isn't due for 25 minutes. 20 minutes later and there is no sign of the taxi, so he rings National Rail Enquiries to ask if the next train is indeed going to stop at his station. He's told it is, but it's running 20 minutes late.

Which is kind of strange because soonerner had the man on the phone said this, than the train pulls into view - some five minutes early! Still no sign of this taxi meant to arrive 15 minutes ago so this passenger gets on the train (which is rubbish-strewn and has a faint smell of wee about its vestibule) and sits down. The conductor comes up and insists the previous hour's train never ran at all - 'that's why we're pulling extra carriages' - but looking at this passenger's face of thunder, he decides to check his facts (communication exists between trains and stations, apparently, not between stations and stations though).

He comes back out and says: "Oh yeah, it was sent down the wrong track."

Now this passenger knows that it may not have been Northern's fault, but surely £2bn in subsidy, seeing as its not being spent on new trains or even extra carriages, could be spent on communications so that the staff - and perhaps the passengers - knew what was going on.