The 4 hour journey that should have been 2.

'How long will it take us to get to York from Liverpool' 'ah only 2 hours you'll have ages before your connection' was the conversation that I had with my friend before boarding the train in Liverpool lime street. Little did we know how disastrous one journey could be...

Upon entering the station, I recieved a text from my friend who was leaving York to go home for the weekend, warning me that there are issues at Huddersfield so I may want to check that my train is running as it takes that route. I walked in and didn't even dare to look up at the screen, but my friend had and informed me of the first bad news, our train had been cancelled. After our initial sigh and thoughts of 'just our bloody luck' we seeked out a helpful train worker who informed us that the best thing to do would be to head to Manchester and get a train from there. Perfect, no problem at all, so we headed to platform 1, eagerly awaiting our replacement journey. 

As more and more announcements were being made of cancellations and extreme delays to pretty much every service leaving the station, we began to get a little wary of the advice from Mr train worker so we decided to get a second (and third) opinion. Having done this we were told that trains from Manchester to York were not running and were to be replaced by a bus service that would take 4 hours, and I quote, 'if it ever turns up'.  Bloody (and that's being polite) brilliant, we thought, panicking more now and giving up hope of me catching my connection home that night. We were told the best thing to do would be to wait for the Sheffield train which would get us to York at 8:30pm, missing my connection but getting us to somewhere in the north where I actually have a place to stay other than a freezing train station. So we waited. 

While waiting and seeing every train that got close to departure time turning to 'cancelled', we lost more hope and scanned for any more options. We spotted a train that would take us directly to York that wasn't cancelled (nope, only 40MINUTES DELAYED!!) ...at least not on the board, train line had informed me of its cancellation half an hour ago. We decided to ignore train line however and stick to our guns. 

So we waited...

And waited...

Still waiting...

And finally, we saw the lights of the most beautiful thing on earth. A bloody train yay! We literally dived in through the doors and planted our bums and cheered and sighed and smiled and thought thank f*** we are going to make it!! It even started moving...forward...in the direction of York! 

About an hour later having arrived in Manchester, just as we had been given so much false hope, the train decided to stop for longer than needed to let people off so we knew that there was a problem. We were told, after 20 minutes at stand still, to get off the train as it would not be running and head to platform 3 to go to Piccadilly  and figure it out for ourselves (much appreciated). After running for our lives and almost being trampled by a stampede of equally frustrated people, we saw others get on to the train we had got off. Due to the incapability of communication from the workers we had to find out for ourselves that the train was now running. Fuming, we headed back on and waited, along with what felt like millions of others all cramped down the aisle. It jolted forward for about a minute and then stopped. We were informed that we were waiting 'for the relief driver' so I asked myself who the f*** was driving the train just then?! The caretaker?! Or just a frustrated passenger eager to catch their connection?! 

Eventually we did start moving and after constant reminders from the crew of how delayed this train was and how I won't be going home that night because my connection had long gone, we arrived in York. A 4 hour hideous journey that should have been 2.