Everytime I haved used the trains in the last 8 months they are fine. You are getting at the engineering that is nessescary for the continued SAFETY of passengers using the service, that has to be carried out every few years. If it didnt, you would then be slating Serco and Railtrack for not maintaining and replacing tracks when there is an accident (remember the crash in Cumbria - that was caused by lack of maintenance).
The only time they have scheduled bus replacement services, its on a Sunday, which doesnt affect 90% of these "9 - 5 workers" as you mentioned.
I think you need to have used to trains reguarly before you can slate their service Mark. Me and Joe have both done this due to lack of cars at some time, and nether of us have had problems.
Im not saying there is never problems with the service, there is going to be, they are serving approx 100,000 customers every single day over 75 miles of track.
And there are plenty of problems on the roads as well, what with traffic conjestion, a terrible amount of roadworks lately, rising fuel costs, tunnel tolls,and you were having a pop at the amount of traffic lights on our local roads not too long ago.