I wrote:

> > Britain's trains are a joke.

Bart Mathias commented:

> I used them for three weeks in the summer of 1998 and didn't
> notice anything funny, or problematic, about them.

We used them to get from a small town in Oxfordshire to Cambridge and back.
The return journey was the more memorable. The line from Cambridge to London
specialises in giving totally minimal information, so the timetable screen
and brief recorded announcement both tell you nothing more than that the
train is bound for London. So you get in. It lurches off down the track a
mere 15 minutes late and is shortly afterwards overtaken by another train.
All trains stop at Cambridge and go to London, so we could have been on that
one. It turns out that the one we're on stops at every station to London. We
are overtaken by two more trains on the way to King's Cross. In one case, a
train overtakes us, pulls in at the next station, then - just as our train
pulls in and the doors open - its doors close and it pulls out again, thus
giving the tantalising realisation that, with a few extra seconds, one could
have got out of the slow train and into the fast one (in Japan, one would
not only be given a chance to change trains in such a situation, but would
get clear announcements, both from the train and from the platform, telling
you where exactly both trains were stopping).

At King's Cross we hunt down a luggage trolley, insert a pound, and wheel
our luggage over to the Underground entrance. I then go in search of a
nearby trolley-point, only to find that someone has jammed a different type
of trolley in there, making it impossible to put my trolley in and reclaim
my pound. I track down the particular variety of station attendant who is
supposed to be responsible for the trolleys and, instead of removing the
offending trolley, he tells me to take my trolley to another trolley-point,
indicating that there is one at the other end of the station (i.e., where we
started from, miles from the entrance to the Underground). I dump the
trolley, and forget about reclaiming the pound coin.

At Paddington station, our train has been cancelled. There is a shuttle
service to Reading, connecting passengers to a main-line train to Bath. This
is supposed to leave forty-five minutes later, but in fact it too left a
quarter of an hour late, making it a full hour. Anyone - like us - wanting
the Henley branch line - was left in the lurch; the last train had left, and
there was no compensation for passengers stranded because of the
cancellation. We had to take a taxi for the last dozen or so miles.

From then on we ditched our family railcard and hired a car.

> Sure beat anything here on O`ahu.

Ah, O'ahu. Well, if I say Japanese trains are to British trains what Hanauma
Bay is to Bognor Regis, will that help to convey my point?

--
John
http://rarebooksinjapan.com