SouthEastern Trains

South Eastern Railways are con artists. Their first action on being granted the franchise to run rail services in Kent was to increase all journey times by three minutes. That was their solution to the poor punctuality record of their predecessors Connex South East.
Rail services in Kent are probably the worst in the country, the network is congested and antique. It suffers from its location in the most populous area of the UK, which makes it extremely difficult and expensive to expand. The Victorians built the railways in Kent as cheaply as possible. Successive governments starved the railways of investment and we suffer the consequences.
The South Eastern timetable hasn't changed for the better in the 50 years since the lines were electrified. Electrification dramatically reduced journey times for everyday travel, from Deal to Charing Cross, from an average of over 3 hours, before 1959, to less than 2 hours by 1967. The improvement has been whittled away until it now takes 2 hours 9 minutes, or more, unless one pays extra and uses the HS1 service.