I must admit that I have never gone for the first class option but I once saw a first class advance fare that was cheaper than the available standard class equivalent. It wouldn’t have needed booking that far ahead of time either and I really was tempted. Even if you don’t book ahead, the weekend upgrades are too extortionate so they can be an option for the hard of planning. It might have helped on the Monday of the above episode.

Yes, the activities of passengers do can make a journey wholly unpleasant. I must hold my hands up and plead guilty to using the antisocial technological trickery that is my iPod and its noise-cancelling headphones to screen out any conversations that I’d rather not have been hearing. Otherwise, my experiences haven’t been too bad in the main but I tend not to travel at busier times and am bound for rural locations anyway (if that doesn’t help you lose the masses, what will?). I suppose that’s no bad thing with the overcrowding that I encounter from time to time…

That all sounds a bit harsh, re-reading it.
But mostly accurate.

First Class can be quite reasonable if booked a long time in advance.

If you travel first class on the Montrose to Huntingon run it is perfectly pleasant. If you travel 2nd Class you are likely to be sharing with a load of drunken football hooligans or single mothers with too many young children who wail and vomit for seemingly the entire journey.

If you are fortunate you get a business person who spends the entire journey shouting down her / his mobile phone.

Let’s face it: mostly, public transport is absolutely ghastly.