Strathspey Steam Railway

I know that there must be one or two of you who think that W and I are on a permanent vacation. Well today was one of those days when I earned my money! I have 37 passengers on a rail holiday. They book with us because it is supposed to be stress free and somebody like me does all the hard work. So we are all looking forward to a beautiful train journey from Inverness to Aviemore and back in our reserved seats to transfer to the historic Strathspey stream train. All my clients have a bit of paper with their reserved seat number on it, painstakingly worked out by me. It took me hours to work out the seating plan, some can't travel backwards, some had booked window seats and I made sure that they would all sit on the other side on the way back so they would have a change of scenery. Get on a totally packed train and our seats are already occupied by others with reservations for the same seats in their names so no way could we throw them out of there. Guard shrugs shoulders, nothing he can do about it. Clients most upset. It's hot, train already packed, we commandeer first class carriage but that has only 10 seats and there are 37 of us. We eventually find seats for all of us through the entire train but couples are split up. It is the hottest day of the year and there is no air condition. We normally use this time to tell pax essential information about the day ahead so I spent the next 30 minutes running through the train trying to find my people and to let them know what to do next. Nightmare. Guard announces on the public address system: If you want to register a complaint go right ahead I've been married 34 years and am used to being nagged"! I wish I could say it was different on the way home. It wasn't!
I did of course complain to the rail company concerned but was met by a universal Shit happens attitude. We've got another train journey on Monday and they assure me that we will not have any problems because we are "in the system" When I say this is not good enough because we were in the system today they say oh well it is what it is.

Steam train was nice though but I kind of collapsed and did not do much of a blip.Sorry