As a non-driver, I rely a great deal on public transport and have done since starting secondary school in 1990. I'm therefore more interested than most in the state of the national railways post-privatisation.
This section contains two major rants at the moment, although this will no doubt increase as the railways continue to irritate me.
I have, in my life, written exactly three letters of complaint. One was to a furniture retailer who had messed up delivery repeatedly. One was to the Advertising Standards Authority about an advert that breached no less than four of their guidelines but was never censured. But the most interesting letter, by far, was to South West Trains, who so aroused my ire that I poured out two pages of angry prose. In response, I received a form letter that didn't even make grammatical sense. That's life.
More recently, I kept a two-month railway diary with the express intention of determining whethe the railways are really as bad as they seem, or whether I just get irritated easily. I'm still not sure what the answer is, but I think the results are interesting nonetheless.
Update: I've added a brief epilogue at IWroteThis.co.uk Live.