Why State Rail sucks

Last week (first week in July) I had a week in Canberra working from FrOGTech's worldwide headquarters (the FrogglePlex). The Froggies graciously paid for my flight down to Canberra and I was going to travel by train back to Sydney on the Saturday so I could catch up with Lisa, Mark, Emma, Tim and Michelle and go and see the Rugby test.
So far so sweet.
I turfed myself out of bed at 6am in order to get ready for the anticipated train journey scheduled to depart Bungers at 7:14am. I knew the train was fairly regular as I had heard the bloody thing leaving at this time every day during the week.
Brother in law Keef and I sat chatting in the car waiting for the conveyance along with another bunch of potential travelers in a car next to us. Shivering on the platform but out of our view were a bunch more people (about 5 or 7) all eagerly awaiting the Carriage of Destiny to whisk us away to Sydney.
40 minutes past the allocated time there was still no train.
Someone on the platform put the call to the rail guys in Canberra to find out what was happening. It transpires the train was canceled and they were going to provide us with coaches instead.
Fine, I thought. As long as I'm in Sydney by mid afternoon, I don't care how I get there (as long as its before kick off).
Another 20 minutes elapsed and again the call was put to the rail guys in Canberra. Oh, they remarked, the coach driver couldn't see anyone at Bungendore so he's moved on to Goulburn!
Now I'm all in favour of positive discrimination but giving bus driving jobs to blind people can't be too good for business, even one with as poor a reputation as RailCorp's.
There were at least 10 people at the freaking train station in various stages of hypothermia. How could he not see any of us!!
Even if he were totally blind he could have heard us from the chattering of our teeth due to the aforementioned hypothermia.
I say 'he' because dare I say it, no woman would have been so cavalier in the commissioning of her duties.
Let's just say that blind, ex-truckie bloke bus drivers tend to take things a little easy!
After the shock of being abandoned by our erstwhile rail friends wore off, we hightailed it back the the Young residence where I hit the web and hastily booked a flight on QANTAS to Sydders.
Another hour and $270 later I was Sydney bound. Thank god for the flying kangaroo and VISA card!
This might sound like a cheesy advertorial but if it wasn't for some regular flightage out of our National Capital, non-car bound travellers would be screwed. If you had the misfortune to be relying on the flimsy non-service of State Rail but without the wherewithal to have ready cash in the form of a credit card, then you'd be screweder and probably still stuck on the frozen platform of Bungendore Rail station.

I sent our RailCorp buddies an email requesting that they refund me the $270 buckaroos I had to drop to make up for their incompetence and now I have to wait 5 to 7 working days for them to get back to me.
I don't hold out much hope.
If ever you're tempted to take a train to our national capital, don't.
RailCorp's website says they're "Safe Clean and Reliable".
Safe: sure if you can't see it or touch it or it doesn't exist, it can't hurt you.
Clean: Yup, same again. You can't get cleaner than absolute nothingness (very Zen).
Reliable: Ah, not quite. Unless they mean Reliable not to turn up.

Nightmare Update

Thanks to support from the Independents, the development at Blamey Avenue will now go ahead. Yes, you read correctly, the Independents along with a bunch of other myopic dimwits that are our elected representatives on the council, have decided to become pro-development! (I originally thought it was the Greens but they're OK.)
In a 8-5 decision, the developer has been given the go ahead to violate the unique character of the street. This doesn't bode well for the opponents of the Nightmare on Freyberg.

It'll only be a matter of months before the new owners are smugly sidling up to us at the street christmas party and whispering in our collective ears: "See, I told you so!"
Will I be offering them a congratulatory beer and shaking their hands to celebrate the birth of Jesus, the Boy Wizard? No siree. They can osculate my hail damaged rear end as far as I'm concerned.

All that is required to get these things through is a dithering planning approval guy on the council who takes his advice from an "independent" consultant who also dishes out advice to development applicants. Can anyone spell "conflict of interest". I don't think the council planning department can!