Robert Shilston

I’ve been using the trains a lot recently, and whilst it’s always interesting to see exciting trains (no, I’m not a train spotter, but I am a technology spotter) such as one of Network Rail’s measuring trains, I’ve had a few battles recently.

The measuring train was sitting in Bristol Temple Meads for a little while early in September. I’m a bit short sighted, and don’t wear my glasses, so I couldn’t make out a lot of what was inside. However, I did see large numbers of equipment racks, flat panel monitors, and other high-tech looking equipment. However, I didn’t spot any particular apparatus protruding from the bottom of the train, so I’m not entirely sure what it’d have been measuring.

The next excitement comes when I was using the Fast Ticket machine in Bristol. This allows you to collect tickets that you’ve previously purchased online. However, it was busy rebooting (using Windows) and then spat out a ticket that was presumably a printer test page.

But, I got annoyed when I was at Paddington. I’d been going from Bristol to visit Mother (who I’ve previously mentioned has one of the coolest websites ever) and had allowed an hour and a half to get from Paddington to their offices near Liverpool Street. However, I needed to buy a travelcard. I fed money into the machine, which then promptly said “Out of order”. I went and spoke to the ticket office, who assured me someone would be “down in a minute” to have a look. To cut a long story short, I filed an official complaint having waited over 45 mins, and yesterday was rewarded with a cheque for three times the amount of money that the machine stole from me.

All’s well that ends well, I suppose.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 21st, 2005 at 10:03 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.