The trials and tribulations of train travel using a wheelchair...

Since June 2022 until the present time of writing (August 2022), the lifts at Cambridge station have been mostly out of service. Occasionally they work for about 20 minutes, before breaking again, sometimes trapping people inside. Due to this, the prebooked journeys that had been confirmed on the passenger assist app, could not go ahead as planned. Sometimes, I would turn up at the station to find that I was unable to travel to Cambridge as planned, and instead had to go to a different station and take a taxi from there. Other times, they would put me on the regular train, take the wheelchair off at Ely or Cambridge North and then hurriedly push me onto the Stansted airport train, intended for a platform at Cambridge which did not require the use of a lift. This worked fine, until they changed the platform at the last minute from platform 4 (no lift required) to platform 7 (lift needed). As I tried to exit the train at Cambridge, the station staff did not wish for me to exit the train, but as the guard stated - I could not go all the way to Stansted Airport just because Cambridge's lift was broken. Therefore I had to sit on the platform waiting for the lift to be fixed. They would not carry my wheelchair, nor find any sensible method for me to escape their station. Thankfully, after some time, a helpful member of staff requested the lift engineer to fix the lift as a matter of urgency, and I was able to leave the station over an hour later than I arrived at the station, and over two hours after I would have left if I had not been in a wheelchair and had been able to stay on the train I had prebooked confirmed assistance for. It is part of the disabled experience that people do not consider - that your time is considered less valuable by the train staff, you are often treated as an inconvenience or an afterthought for wanting or needing to travel to places, even if you have prebooked this assistance. My chair does not limit me, lack of access does.