The imaginary Avanti queue in Glasgow Central

Queues for London Euston service in Glasgow central station - an observation.

I get the train from Glasgow central to London Euston fairly regularly, and every single time, without fail, a queue forms for the train.

As far as I can tell this is not something which has been enforced/determined by Avanti staff or the station staff. Folk just do it.

And whilst this is innocent enough, though very British, on more than three occasions I have witnessed someone MISS their train because they were stuck in the queue, unknown to them they were surrounded by people queueing for the FOLLOWING service. Mental.

Also it slows down the entire process of boarding the train. Usually the Avanti staff open up the gates once the incoming train has been cleaned/staff changeovers occured, and since a train is by nature, quite long, it naturally forces people to spread out, and makes the boarding process pretty quick. Not like a plane with only two ways in. But because of the huge queue (which sometimes stretches out onto the STREET (the STREET!!!) it takes a long time for everyone to even get to the train in their self-imposed Noah's ark formation. I don't mean to come across as some enlightened individual who looks down on those in the queue, BUT, once they open the gates it literally doesn't matter if you are in the queue or not...

I have also had people make comments, ranging from snarky to quite rude, regarding my non queue conformance. Am I the asshole for not joining the queue? Why has everyone decided this is necessary?

It feels reminiscent of an ant who thinks they're trapped by lines of ink on a page and whilst there are certainly better things I can do with my time I seem to spend at least a bit of being utterly confused at this practice.