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[Travel] Railway flustercuck







bobbysmith01

Well-known member
Feb 6, 2015
785
I did the West Worthing to London Bridge daily commute about 10 years ago. I lasted a year and looking back there were hardly any delays but I'd still had enough of it. So how you poor buggers manage it in these circumstances simply amazes me. Respect!

I did the West worthing one as well
For a couple of years and decided enough is enough when they announced one morning ‘the 06:50
From Littlehampton to London Bridge has been cancelled as the driver has had a row with his wife’ sort of love the honesty of it, but the commuters did not see the funny side of it. I am
Now an occasional user of Southernrail and can say that at least 75% of the time they are late, cancelled or some other issue. Is there a worse company in the Uk for service ?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 


Guinness Boy

Tofu eating wokerati
Helpful Moderator
NSC Patreon
Jul 23, 2003
33,818
Up and Coming Sunny Portslade
see your Apple iPhone? very well constructed and made in China. along with an awful lot of good quality kit. they make tat too of course, but then so do the UK, European, US factories. the difference is in QA process applied and thats down to the company selling a product, not where it comes from. a blanket "chinese stuff is cheap rubbish" is prejudiced nonsense.

i dont rule out the parts, but there's the installation and maintenance to consider. or something of the wrong specification. or that it just broke and there's no one to blame but entropy.

It's going a bit off topic but iPhones made under contract to Apple and sheet metal supplied at a cheap price are two very different things. Thanks for your patronising tone but I lived in Taiwan for three years and visitied Hong Kong and the mainland numerous times. Taiwan now produces very decent tech cheaply and there are several excellent science sites (one of them bizarely full of Irish who we used to play football against). That doesn't mean that it doesn't produce crap as well, nor that the local gangs and government control much of the less-than-kosher end of the supply. They do. I've seen it. Same goes for the mainland only times about four.

You know all those kids who learned Mandarin because it was the "language of the future"? Know why they're not millionairres? It's because it's notoriously difficult for a Westerner to control mainland businesses. The effort required needs a company of Apple's reputation and size. Not Chris Grayling and the procurement guys at NR ordering some parts. Like I say, unless you've personally inspected the sites you don't know.

From my own personal view then Chinese is sub standard.

I'm a sheet metal worker. My company lost a large contract to China. Nearly sent us under. 4 months later the clients gave it back to us. At an increased cost to what they were originally paying. China couldn't match the quality. Despite it being to "spec" it just wasn't.

I can also say the same about some sheet metal suppliers. It's cheaper granted. But it is crap for folding. They can't maintain a uniform thickness over a sheet yet alone a batch. And it makes my life bloody difficult. European sourced sheet steel is generally <10% under quoted. So we adjust our developments to suit. China can be anything up to 12% under.

That 2% makes a lot of difference when trying to maintain 0.1mm tolerance during folding.

In saying this there was a lot of kerfuffle when the steel plant shut down in Wales. Not strictly Chinese but Tata made crap sheet. That's why the place folded.

Don't be silly. [MENTION=599]beorhthelm[/MENTION] knows best. He always does :rolleyes:
 


beorhthelm

A. Virgo, Football Genius
Jul 21, 2003
35,264
Thanks for your patronising tone...:

didnt mean to be patronising, just attempting to dispell the apparent prejudice from the original posting. i dont know why factory inspections are needed to acknowledge quality of output, but there we are.
 






Guinness Boy

Tofu eating wokerati
Helpful Moderator
NSC Patreon
Jul 23, 2003
33,818
Up and Coming Sunny Portslade
didnt mean to be patronising, just attempting to dispell the apparent prejudice from the original posting. i dont know why factory inspections are needed to acknowledge quality of output, but there we are.

Come back to me on prejudice when you can order several beers, a decent meal and a taxi home in Mandarin,
 


Perry Milkins

Just a quiet guy.
Aug 10, 2007
6,146
Ardingly
Come back to me on prejudice when you can order several beers, a decent meal and a taxi home in Mandarin,

I did that last weekend. Got some strange looks from the landlord at the Crown, the waiter at the Raj Temple and last of all Ernie the cabbie!
 








Beach Hut

Brighton Bhuna Boy
Jul 5, 2003
71,903
Living In a Box
and salt in the wound is he wouldnt have paid for first class.

Not strictly true as it is probably a perk taxed as a benefit in kind
 








Simgull

Well-known member
Jan 3, 2013
1,637
Hove
In one picture, sums up the arrogance of GTR’s leadership and the contempt they have for their ‘customers’.
 




oneillco

Well-known member
Feb 13, 2013
1,259
Commuting was shit under labour too. And Tory before that.

Sent from my E5823 using Tapatalk

As a commuter for 30 years I can tell you without a shadow of doubt that commuting to and from London has never been this bad before...
 


Publius Ovidius

Well-known member
Jul 5, 2003
45,919
at home
I see it's all fun and games today too.
 










WATFORD zero

Well-known member
NSC Patreon
Jul 10, 2003
25,662
Absolutely, 90% of managers are no more than supervisors and giving them 1st Class travel is a cheap way of boosting their T&Cs. I bet none of these give up their seats on packed trains

Easy [MENTION=38]Beach Hut[/MENTION], he's not worth it :wink:
 



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