Transport

Commuting
This post has been a long time coming, and I have thought about writing it several times over the last 6 months but never got around to it.  So now I find myself in Taiwan, unable to sleep, so thought I would see if this helped.


As readers of this blog will know I was traveling down to the smoke each week on the fabulous Wrexham and Shropshire Railway.  This was a fabulous little service, the most highly rated by its customers on the whole of the British rail network.  It was full on most of its runs, and had a thriving and loyal set of passengers.


Owned and operated by the German company D-Bahn.


So earlier this year, at the height of its success, just after another record customer satisfaction survey, D-Bahn shut it down.  Not only was this done with no warning to passengers, but also no warning to its staff.  They were called in at 5pm for a meeting on the Tuesday/wednesday - if memory serves me correctly, and it shut the following Friday.


WTF!


Apparently they couldn't see it making enough profit for it to continue.  Yes, it was losing money, but in rail terms such an insignificant amount.  But the decision stood, even following lobbying by the local member of parliament.  Unbelievable.


Having spoken to several members of the crew, the basic fault it would appear lay with the marketing and ticketing teams.  The basic fare for a peak return into London was £60, which was very cheap.  To put this into context, on the more convoluted, and not direct Virgin service it is £230 for the same journey.  However if you booked in advance for it, you could get it for £10.


Now this is a great system and is used by Ryanair and the like.  However they limit the number of the lowest fares, and then slowly increase the fare based on date and fullness of the plane.


Not so W&S.  You could buy a £10 ticket as long as there were any seats free.  Even the night before.  So a train could be 80% £10 fares, so no wonder they lost money.  If they had done it even on a 25/25/25/25% rule, so 25% of the train was at £10, 25% at £25, 25% and £45 and the last 25% at £60, they would have still filled their trains and made a profit.


Anyway, it was closed so I needed to find a new way down to London.  Tried the Virgin train for 2 weeks, but was so unreliable, and bloody expensive that I decided to buy a commuting car.

The Little Demon

I spent a weekend running over the various economical options, and then had a brain wave.  If my good lady had a larger car - a 7 seater, then I could get away with something smaller and more fun.  Result!  So the family car is now a Volvo XC90 (Jeremy Clarkson's fave family car apparently), and I bought a Smart car.

No not one of those sit up and beg, half cars that the ecomentalists love, but the roadster coupe.

This is seriously the most fun I have ever had in a car with my clothes on.

It came out of the factory as a standard model, but had the Brabus engine upgrade.  Also has an F1 flappy paddle style gearbox (as well as fully automatic and tiptronic), and genuinely sticks to the road like a roller skate.  Also it is the hardtop convertible, so has a couple of targa panels which come off in about 30 seconds, and store in the rear glass boot/trunk area above the engine - yes its mid/rear engined.

I have been running this for about 5 months now, and with the savings made on the train it has already paid for itself.  Its called the Little Demon by my kids as the number plates were manufactured by Demon Plates. Not very original but there you go.

It gets admiring looks wherever I go, literally from guys in Bentley's to builders vans.  Thumbs up, or great comments, and makes people smile, including me.

So this now brings me onto another topic on transport.

Audi Drivers

Or at least UK Audi drivers. 

What a bunch of nobs!

I know this is a broad generalisations, but God damn it, if there is an idiot on my tail trying to prove that his saloon is faster than my sporty looking car - it will be an Audi driver.  100% of the time.  Its a Smart car for Christ's sake.  It has a 700cc engine, its not some jacked up rice rocket driven by an 18 year old.

However they all seem intent on showing me how fast their car is, or if I can't pull over on a motorway then weaving backwards and forwards trying to get me to move over so they can go past.  It doesn't matter if its an A3 or an S5, its always the same.

Now I know there might be reasonable Audi drivers out there, but not in my rear view mirror their aren't.

However my best moment to date in the Little Demon was the fun I had winding up a particularly irritating Audi driver, on the way home to Shropshire one night.

I was about 10 miles from home, moving from dual carriageway / motorway onto county lanes, I looked in my rear view mirror, and there was a dot back there approaching at quite a speed.  You guessed it.  An Audi.  But not any Audi, it was an S4 Audi.  Driven by someone that looked like an accountant, who wanted to be able to boast about how many horsepowers or torques it had when he was at the golf club.  And how much better it was than the BMW M3 (in your dreams).

Within about a mile he was on my tail trying to overtake me on these single lane roads.  So I was doing my very best not to let him. :)  Now I know these roads like the back of my hand, so thought I would see if I could make him sweat a little when we got to a particularly bendy part of the road.

So I switched the gearbox to tiptronic / F1 mode, and started to accelerate through the corners.  Now as I have said it is like a roller skate, so I could basically keep my foot down at all times.  And rather unexpectedly I started to pull away from him.  On anything that was bendy or required a moderate level of driving skill to navigate, I would lose him, but he would catch up a little on the short straights.  By the time I got to my house, there was enough distance for me to stop at the end of the drive, get out, lean against the rear of the car and wave at him when he went past.


I bet he wont be telling his mates at the golf club how he was left behind by a Smart Car!  Priceless.


To my friends in the USA who have Audis, I have been in the car with you guys, and you are not like the UK guys let me tell you! :)


Cheers


Diggy.