Bigbro's foray into the scary world of blogging
7:47pm: Today I have the privilege of sampling Hazelhatch/Celbridge train station from the inside of a dark train. The lights turned off just a few minutes after leaving Heuston, Dublin. After the first 15 minutes of the unscheduled stop, the driver finally began a walk through the train to inform us what was going on and that we would be here for another 10 minutes waiting for maintenance to come and fix the lights.
7:52pm: Still no sign of any maintenance people and my iBook battery is starting to die. The battery went from holding 6 hours of charge to barely holding 45 minutes. It sucks but not anything like as much as the woeful public transport system we have in this country.
8:00pm: The view out the window has utterly failed to change. Still no update forthcoming regarding whether they are repairing stuff or whether we'll make Limerick tonight or not. I live in hope...
8:07pm: Now 20 minutes since the driver announced what the problem was, and still no sign of us moving. We're now running at least 35 minutes late.
8:17pm: Still not one inch of progress towards Limerick, and unsurprisingly no update on the train's status from anyone in charge. This is starting to get ridiculous and very annoying.
8:23pm: The driver has announced that there will be another train on the way in 20 to 25 minutes. Im assuming this is the last train from Dublin. I may as well have waited for it and had a decent meal. Public transport in this country is not just bad, it is a joke. I hope everyone on this train writes and requests a full refund of their ticket price for this fiasco. I certainly will be.
8:42pm: To add insult to injury, they have now asked us all to step off the train and wait on the platform for the twenty or so minutes its going to take the next train to arrive. At least its not raining, but it's really quite chilly just standing on an open station platform optimistically hoping a train will eventually appear. I'm too angry at this point to compose a reasonable and balanced letter of complaint. I'll wait until I calm down slightly.
8:54pm: A whistle and a light signals another train's arrival. We've been stopped in Celbridge for a little over an hour at this point.
8:57pm: We finally leave Celbridge station. Feeling is returning to my fingers and there's a hope growing that we'll make Limerick before midnight.
9:00pm: And we've stopped again. Once more, I have no idea why we're stopped or for how long. A joke, this 'transport system' is. Ah, only two minutes this time. Perhaps we'll try and exceed ten miles per hour in a while, who knows?!? Stopped again! I'm beginning to suspect this train is also broken.
Once again, the only saving grace is the good humour of the Irish. Despite having their time wasted and been made to sit in the dark and stand in the cold, they laughed and joked, mocking the trains and the situation, talking and chasing away any atmosphere that could otherwise make the long wait unbearable.
11:24pm: We finally arrive in Limerick station, having left Heuston at 7:15pm. This is a shocking condemnation of Irelands 'public transport;' moreso when you consider that I had to travel for an hour to get to Heuston from my office near Merrion Square - and that's without anything breaking down. I intend to laugh in the face of the next politician who suggests we should be leaving our cars at home and using the laughable fiasco we term 'public transport' in this country.
We were met at Limerick station by three staff, apologising for the delay and handing out forms to make claims for delays. It has a space for postcode and the currency is marked as £ (pounds.) My cup of bitterness doth runneth over...
</rant>
posted at: 11:53 | path: /rants | permanent link to this entry
