I planned to travel by train and tram, so I joined a long queue at the booking office at Ballarat Railway Station and presented one of my seniors travel cards to get a ticket and then proceeded to the platform to await the 11.31 to Spencer Street.

It was packed.

There would have been about 300 people waiting for the train. In the 10-minute wait for the train to arrive there were a couple of announcements made but no one could understand what was being said.

Anyway, the train eventually came and pulled up.

Can you imagine the astonishment of all those assembled to find that the train consisted of only two carriages and had come from Wendouree and was already nearly full?

When the doors opened, there was a mad scramble to board and I found it impossible to get anywhere near the train.

I watched as all the seats filled up and then saw people starting to stand in the aisles. I could not possibly stand for one and a half hours.

Eventually, someone to do with the railways said that anyone wanting to travel to any of the stations before Melbourne would have to get on the train otherwise the remaining 200 or so-plus intending passengers would have to wait for motor coaches that would run express to Melbourne as soon as he could organise them.

Confusion and panic reigned supreme.

Bewildered and edgy, I made my way to the bus station only to find a queue of about 100 people already waiting to board the one bus that had, so far, been put into service.

One railway employee said the problems had been caused by overnight vandalism to carriages.

Would this not have been spotted sometime very early in the morning when the first trains were running and measures put in place in the five hours before the 11.31 train was due to depart?

As nobody seemed to know much about anything and the whole scene was one of mayhem and total confusion, I decided that the only way I could assuredly get to Melbourne was to get in the car and drive.

So I went back to the car park and filled up the car with half a tank of petrol I'm a pensioner so every dollar counts.

I'd like to think that the railways will compensate me, but I know they won't.

Everything's been downsized these days so there probably isn't any money left to employ night watchmen, let alone give me some money towards petrol.

Speaking of empty coffers, there has also been the enormous expenditure on implementing the myki system.

If that money had been used in other more erstwhile directions it could have given jobs to hundreds of unemployed to man railway stations, sell tickets and be conductors on trams for at least a decade.

But who am I to criticise? I am only a poor suffering taxpayer.

We have been promised a better service with the railway between Ballarat and Melbourne, but it has a long, long way to go.

Not only was Saturday's fiasco an example of what plagues it, there is the lack of warranted trains.

Who decided that Friday night was the only weeknight that Ballarat folk might like to have dinner or see a show in Melbourne?

Why isn't there a train that leaves Melbourne about 11pm every day?

We should all be asking the candidates at this year's state election what they are going to do about fixing things up.