I feel the need to rant.
I left the village of Glenmavis at 08:30 this morning - there was a metre of snow on my car and no chance of the roads being cleared any time soon. I've been snowed in 225km from home since Saturday.
It took me over an hour to walk to Airdrie Station.
Get on a train at 10:12.
It stops half way there - at -6oC and no heating on the train. For two hours. THEN they tell us it is broken and they can't fix it. And there are no more trains to Queen Street for 24 hours.
Eventually give up. Thanks First ScotRail - aka a bunch of useless £@$%^& who couldn't keep a bus pass in working order, let a alone a railway.
Take a bus and taxi to Glasgow Queen Street.
About an hour later a train turns up heading in my direction. Except it needed a crew change in Perth and nobody there knew how to drive that sort of train. This is now about 80km from where I started and it's already taken longer than the total journey time ought to. Then it takes them SIX HOURS to look through the "Big book of excuses" to figure out why these losers can't get a working train to Perth in order to head north. Six hours in a station at -4oC. No extra clothes - I didn't take any as I was just going to be away for a day. I've been wearing the same clothes for a week now.
After six hours and increasingly psychotic messages from the centrally controlled automatic system which was talking about trains known to need pulling off the line with a crane as "delayed". Yep! Delayed till March 2011.
Thanks Scot Fail! You've done it again.
Increasingly baroque lies from the station staff. To be fair to them, their managers were lying to them.
But the automated system kept stepping on the station staff trying to tell us what they knew.
Six hours later, they put us on a bus to Dundee.
We get there around 21:00. this is the half way point - about 110km from where I started and about 110km to go.
OK there will be a train in 20 minutes.
Except its doors froze solid at Leuchars and wouldn't close. It isn't all that cold - around -6.
This can only be described as complete and utter incompetence.
So after a couple of hours in Dundee Station - There is one good thing to say about Dundee - the ring road lets you get out of there fairly quickly. I reckon they ruined the city when they put a speed limit on the ring road. There is nothing wrong with Dundee that a couple of fifty megaton weapons couldn't fix.
So a couple of hours in Dundee station. Their station staff were rude, aggressive and lying. These guys would do well at NeverBuying.com
Eventually they find not one, not two, but three trains. Or so they said.
So I ended up on the grossly overcrowded first one as nobody in the station believed that the other two trains existed. Including a lot of First ScotFail employees.
So I eventually get home at 01:00, sixteen and a half hours after I set out. On a bad day it would have taken 4 hours.
Last time I use one of First ScotFail's conveyances.
Yes the weather is awful but it hasn't snowed today and the temperatures are a lot milder 225km south of here than they are here (Currently -10). -30 is not unknown so why are things freezing solid (Like the brakes of the train I was on initially and the brakes of the train sent to retrieve it).
If you are in the UK. DO NOT travel by anything belonging to the First Group. You will regret it.
And this complete disaster cost me $80
How many Chinese lights have that effectively messed up your life?
I think it's time for lawyers at dawn.