[sandraoh]

I think it is a joke really. People were freezing cold and standing for over an hour in a queue that was going nowhere. They was an air of "any minutue now" so people were afraid to leave to go to the toilet or to buy a burger or a paper on whatever. At the very least they should have made a staff presence clear and passed out refund forms. They should have kept people in the loop by telling the truth when it came to us boarding the train on platform 5 from platform 6 the guy that you passed at the ticket gate told us the platform - they didn't announce it. I would be interested to see it Steve will ask for customer versions of what happened in his invesigation or it he will believe what he was told. I saw a heavily pregnant woman in the crowd - she could have been offered a seat or assistance with her bags with all the different moving between trains etc. Instead it was down to passengers to look out for eachother. After all the queuing to mind your place we moved train so many times that people who were at the top of the queue the first time could have been left without seats so they should have just told people to go and sit down or let us sit in the train while it was being fixed. Customer service is not really something that I would have commended irish rail for in the past but last night was the worst I have ever seen. Where was the train manager on the train? hiding in the dining car. I'm very surprised things didn't get violent in the end - even with all the stops people were standing until a big crowd of us got to Portlaoise and people with reserved seats throwing their weight around with no staff to supervise things....