It was bad enough that Mrs D's birthday today entitled her to a trip to Ikea, but we decided to try the newish one at Meadowhall, which meant a trip on Northern Rail's Penistone line from Huddersfield to Sheffield.
Fucking hell. It's mostly single track, so you'd think it would be like in Wales where the trains pass each other at a station and then proceed - there are only two fucking trains on the track, so we're good to go. Not with the signalling system they've got, which lost track of our train on the way there (although Mrs D's iPhone was showing exactly where we were), meaning a 40 minute delay awaiting permission to use the obviously empty track, followed by being cancelled and turfed out at Barnsley. Same again on the way back, minus the Barnsley bit.
Other passengers confirmed it is like that every day.
It's a scenic route and looked a picture, but fuck it, tear the line up, give to some hobbyists to run, they'll manage to run a better service, use those token ring things.
And Ikea was shit, just like all the others.
Fucking hell. It's mostly single track, so you'd think it would be like in Wales where the trains pass each other at a station and then proceed - there are only two fucking trains on the track, so we're good to go. Not with the signalling system they've got, which lost track of our train on the way there (although Mrs D's iPhone was showing exactly where we were), meaning a 40 minute delay awaiting permission to use the obviously empty track, followed by being cancelled and turfed out at Barnsley. Same again on the way back, minus the Barnsley bit.
Other passengers confirmed it is like that every day.
It's a scenic route and looked a picture, but fuck it, tear the line up, give to some hobbyists to run, they'll manage to run a better service, use those token ring things.
And Ikea was shit, just like all the others.
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