Re: Southern Arurora

["David Proctor" <daproc@spam_this.umpires.com>]

Les Brown wrote in message <36e26590.43919876@news.ocean.com.au>...

>The money side is not the problem for most business people, if it were
>then they would travel up stand-by the night before.

Stand-by is no longer available - and that is also not what my corporate
clients told me - they were operating to very tight budgets, and were most
p***ed off that they could not take advantage of cheap airfares.

>Most business
>people would prefer to be where they need to be; wide awake, shaved,
>showered, breakfasted and, most importantly, on-time. If this costs a
>little extra ($200-$300 is "a little"), then so be it; it's worth it
>and it can easily be buried in the budget for that sort of thing.

Again, not what the corporate clients told me.

>But being late for a very important client cannot be compensated for.


>If only they could arrive that way! Often the case was that they
>couldn't sleep, no breakfast and the shower didn't work.

This is purely because of maintenance (or rather, lack of it) on the
carriages.

>Worse still,
>the train was held up at Albury or Junee or Goulburn or even worse,
>Liverpool, awaiting some slow freight or some suburban spark stopping
>all stations, to get off the rails.

Should not happen now with open access - they should bee able to pay extra
for some priority.

>The service was terrible long before the end.

The reason for THAT is because neither rail system was overly interested in
running it.

>I confess that I
>preferred air-travel, even the night before, to getting into Sydney.

I preferred air-travel to what was on offer at the time - but having
travelled in the UK and Europe on sleeping trains, I would much rather
travel on PROPERLY MAINTAINED sleeping cars and arriver somewhat earlier
than the first flight can get me there.

>And if it meant going around in circles above Mascot for an hour or
>so, it was still better than the rail experience which was not
>pleasant.

Again, this is because of the attitude that prevailed at the time, not the
actual possibilities.

DaveP