British Rail

A trip into London today - details and photos tomorrow.  Today, let me have a quick moan about British Rail.  Unfortunately this weekend, they were doing some engineering work and so there were rail replacement buses between Godalming and Guidlford.  Not a big deal I thought to myself, it might add a few minutes to the journey time but I can deal with that.  So I turn up at the station nice and early - in plenty of time for the scheduled train service at 8.15 am.  Things didn't look promising - no staff, not even any signs to indicate there is a bus replacement service.  But there were a few other people around, so just joined them waiting by the car park outside.  Then a small minibus showed up, but that was going in the opposite direction to Guildford.  I hope our bus will be bigger than that. 8.30 am.  No bus.  Mildly peeved.  8.45 am.  Still no bus.  Getting annoyed and impatient now.  9 am.  Still no bus.  Furious and frustrated now.  I'm not the only one.  Someone else waiting had contacted a helpline, and after initially being told it was delayed half an hour then they were told that they had no idea where the bus was.  Great.  And someone else mentioned that sometimes the bus was delayed, sometimes it showed up at the other side of the station to where everyone was waiting, and sometimes it never showed up at all.  9.15 am.  Finally, a bus - thank god.  Not our bus - this was a bus replacement for the 9.15 am train service.  Our one never showed up.  Absolutely disgraceful.  I note that South Western Railway offer "delay repay" if you're delayed by over 15 minutes.  I expect I shall apply for this.  And the kicker was that at Guildford, there were about 20 people in yellow bibs helping directing traffic and pointing people in the right direction for the rail replacement service.  I'd say of these 20 people, about 15 people were doing absolutely nothing.  How about actually relocating some of these people to help out customers at the impacted stations.  Really unimpressed - I will do my best to avoid travelling during engineering work in the future.