Why dont you buy yourself some decent kit? Mine works fine.

Or if you cant afford it then back to the Beano sonny.

I was sitting next to a young guy on the train last week. He spent the whole journey downloading music from FrostWire onto his laptop. He must have downloaded at least 100 songs - no brainer compared with rip-off iTunes!

Hello there. Well, I've spent a very interesting day with our former colonial cousins on the Indian State railway. They've put on a damn fine show, demonstrating how Virgin/Stagecoach could carry 43% more passengers per annum on the East Coast mainline, simply by utilising some little used roof space.

They took me to see the 4:17PM commuter Mail to Jogeshwari, about the same distance as London to Peterborough. They had a very fine system of seperating the coach class from the lower price roof class with the use of turnstiles. They estimate that they tend to lose about fifteen passengers a month off the roof, but taking into consideration how many people they carry on a daily basis, that figure is regarded as an acceptable loss. Plus the family of the unfortunate commuter can claim a refund on his or her season ticket, less a 3 rupee admin charge.

While we were stood in the concourse of the Central railway station, notices were chalked up that services would be slightly delayed due to a passenger wrapped around the overheads. However, I was very impressed to note how quickly staff were on site to poke him back down, and the message came through that services were running normally again.

I have to say, I found the Indian railways to be very overstaffed. Porters, cleaners, Coolies and goodness knows who else wearing an Indian Railways badge. They could do with pruning a bit here and there. A spiffing system they do have though, is that passengers can telex for food to be brought to the train at stations further down the line. I've emailed Richard and Brian that it's something they could consider too? Get rid of all the on board catering, and outsource it to different providers who could deliver it to the train. Richard could save a small fortune !

The directors at Indian railways treated me to a slap up curry dinner before I left. It was rather too hot for for my taste, and now I'm back at the Sheraton, it isn't half burning the old tail pipe as it comes back out.

Well, that's my short fact finding mission over, before I return to Blighty tomorrow. Certainly given Richard, Brian and Jonathan something to think about? Don't know what you commuter chappies feel about roof class and outsourced catering?

By the way, that Diesel chappie has been damn quiet lately. Is he alright?

Toodle Pip !

It's too bad the elite club did not functiom smoothly after paying for access during your trip.

I've paid three times and had awfully slow access each time - like an old fashioned 9k dial-up.
When I complained the first time I was told it wasn't normal and got a credit back - didn't bother the other times and haven't bothered using it again.

My own experience of the wi-fi is mixed. It can work ok but can be troublesome. I wouldn't pay to use the service in standard as I don't think it likely that I would get my money's worth. It can be worthwhile if you are in first class as it is free in there nad pewrhaps if youdon't have something to do which is too urgent. You never get the sort of speed that you would at home but I would hope that in time the connection will improve. You get a faster connection if fewer people on the train are using the service as the modem uses four 3G sim cards for its connection which then has to be shared between every user.

I have traveled a lot in the GNER, mostly in first class, and I have to say it is just dissapointing to use the wifi in there. Even if it is free, I just cannot cope with such annoyance. It takes ages to open up even simple pages. I don't know what the problem is, but I don't think it would cost anything significant to them to put a proper wifi service in place. A phone connection with a 56k modem is faster.