Having taken my daughter to her audition for a JD in London by public transport, I was happy she would manage the journey by train herself as I work on Saturdays and would not be able to take her. I would drop her at our local station at 7am and I would pick her up again just before 7pm - no problem. HOW WRONG CAN YOU BE ???? It's not so bad now she is 15, but I did have a few hairy moments when she first started two years ago, wondering if I would get a call saying she was in Scotland and please come and get her.
My heart sank when I realised today was Bank Holiday weekend, today she will have to leave an hour earlier, take 2 trains (instead of the usual one), a bus replacement service, a tube train, then on to the DLR which I understand is running a normal timetable, (but I don't believe in faries anymore either).
This got me to thinking about the service offered on Saturdays. Over the 33 sessions she has had to travel to London in a year, I estimate about 5 of those have run smoothly. A lot of disruption has been caused by work on the DLR, with bus replacements running from different stations every time, and there is never anyone about to ask where to catch the bus from, frustrating when your first lesson is at 9am and you are in a hurry. On other occasions the problem has been caused by the mainline engineering works. There was disruption to our local service for about 10 weeks. If we are lucky, there is a bus replacement service, on one occasion service was suspended completely, and at 5am I drove her to London, depositing her in the MacDonalds to wait for the college to open, so I could be back in time for work at 8.30, repeating this fiasco after work in the evening.
Now, this is all very well, but they still charge the same for tickets, and next year her fare will double when she turns 16, and I think they have got a nerve asking for so much money for such a poor, virtually non-existant service. I think they should make it perfectly clear that they only operate a 5 day service and at weekends you take your chances.
Right, I have got that lot off my chest. Is anyone else suffering from similar problems? I wish anyone travelling by train today the very best of luck, and I hope you arrive at your destination without too many delays!!
One final comment - my daughter has never complained, even though it is her who has to put up with the delays, and I think all this hassle is worth it because she absolutely LOVES her JD and wouldn't miss it for the world.

Oh no, I truly sympathise and will have this ourselves in a while although Claudia is still young so one of us will need to drive her initially. We also work on Saturdays and have to confess to not having stopped to work out how we are going to do this! I am waiting to see what the timetable looks like first.

Engineering works are an absolute pain...

If it helps, Transport for London are excellent at warning well in advance which lines are going to be dug up on a particular weekend : current list is here (accurate to mid-October).

I really feel for you. the situation sounds really horrendous.

I remember going to a concert once at Wembley Stadium and feeling very frustrated about having to leave potentially early to get a train back ot London to pass through Wembley again. BR as it was at the time thought it amazing that I dared to ask if they planned to stop trains travelling north to pick people up on route.

Remind me never to complain again about having to get up at usual time on Saturday mornings or to moan about the lack of parking spaces when I'm trying to drop daughter off for her 9.00 o'clock lesson. We only have a ten minute journey

Poor you, we went through all this with our daughter. Doesn't seem to improve. Don't forget that she can have a young person's railcard at 16 which should keep the cost down a bit

Thank you barry-clari and noisyhouse for your helpful suggestions. We regularly check the status of forthcoming engineering works online. The lovely guy at the ticket office knows my daughter now by name, where she's going and what she's studying, (Only about 6 people get on the train at that time on a Saturday morning), and gave us a railcard leaflet ready for when we need it.
It's not so bad for us as her journey is relatively straightforward when the timetables are running smoothly, and we are only about 50 miles away. I know there are students who travel much further and get up a lot earlier than we do and I admire their, and their parents' dedication.
Well, she got there in time yesterday, thank goodness for mobile phones! The return journey took so long that I drove to a station in the nearest big town, about 9 miles away, to pick her up as she had nearly an hour to wait for the connection from the bus replacement. I felt sorry for her as I think she had had enough by then. She was in a good mood though because she had had a brilliant day and even been allowed to eat the left over nibbles from the open day

At least if she's had a great day it makes the effort worthwhile. But what a marathon - hats off to you.

I do sympathise - my daughter has been commuting alternate weekends to visit her fiancé in the east midlands (from south of London) over the past couple of years, and she's had a taste of what you describe. Coming home on Sunday evenings has sometimes been a bit of a nightmare.

Hope you don't mind me asking a question.

I am going on an oboe course in Wales at the end of July which finishes on a Sunday afternoon. I was intending to leave immediately at the end of the course. Getting to where I want to go next will involve catching two trains to get to London, using the underground to change railway stations and then catching another train out of London?

Would it be more sensible to wait until Monday morning to travel?

(I live in France where, unless there is a strike, trains run on time all week, including weekends).

. I know someone who travels regularly in this route on sunday evening and he always complains that various tube stations are closed and there are replacement buses instead of trains.Sometimes his travel is prolonged by 1-2 hours . It is worthwhile looking at the London tube station closure for the date you are intending to travel on their website so you can decide.May be it wont be that bad if you leave in the afternoon instead of the evening.



I forgot to add- look at the prices as it is expensive to travel on monday morning compared to sunday pm.The other option is bus and this goes straight to victoria bus station - may be this will cut some of your tube journey.

I hate the engineering works as much as the rest of you! They always seem to be upgrading stuff and that is fine so long as I can see an improvement but I can't.

A couple of years ago I would often go from Weybridge to Woking on a Sunday and nearly always had to take the rail replacement bus whcih takes more than double the train time, for the same cost.

Then often at weekends when the routes are actually open they will run less trains on the route so each train/tube is more crowded, makeing the journey a lot less pleasant.

remember that in London children can use a 16-18 photocard on public transport but when they turn 18 they have to use an adult oyster card. Also for national rail they can use a young persons railcard however this does cost £26 to purchase but should save a lot more than this over a year.

So they jolly well should be!

I've just found the answer to my own question when I attempted to buy tickets.
The last time I looked it was possible to do the journey I wanted on a Sunday. On the date I'm interested in, it only offers via Oxford with 6 changes and taking some 12 hours (getting in the following morning)

It was the same price to go on Monday morning. No prizes for guessing what I have chosen to do.

We're on the metropolitan line. We also have the benefit of one of the chiltern lines. However, about 18 months ago, just when we needed to do a lot of weekend travelling to London the met line was doing weekend repairs, and it put our chiltern line out of action too, because of signalling and shared lines.

It was extremely miserable - the replacement bus makes a 45 minute journey about 2 hours which is ridiculous. And so we ended going to a nearby chiltern line station which is on a different branch if you see what I mean. But it was twice as expensive, although they waived the car parking charge if you went by car (very kind!!) or you could use the bus transfer which took longer of course, but meant that you could swipe your Oyster card at our station, in and out, and thereby end up paying less.

This went on for over 12 months, only at weekends. Occasionally the trains would run on a weekend, but it was never a weekend that we needed to travel of course, and people round here generally grew to assume that the trains would not be running.