I used to commute regularly from my home town, Swindon, to the nearby city of Bristol. And I had a choice of two routes. I could either go from Bristol Temple Meads in the city centre or Bristol Parkway up in the north of the city.
The route from Temple meads takes longer and stops at two other towns on the way, it also passes though another two stations that it doesn't stop at. The point being, there are landmarks aplenty and I have a clear idea of how far along on my journey I am.
But the route from Parkway is, from my point of view at least, a "featureless wasteland". I'm exaggerating for dramatic effect obviously but the point being there aren't so many obvious landmarks that I can time my journey by.
The one clue I did have that as I was closely approaching home, the train would go over what I called "The Wootton Bassett Wobble" which was a section of track that was so damaged that it caused the whole train to vibrate like a car driving over a cattle grid.
My commuting days are long over (hoorah for remote working!) but I was recently returning home from a trip to Wales and I noticed (or rather didn't notice) that they have finally repaired The Wootton Bassett Wobble and I no longer got my signal that we're very nearly home.
For all those years that really bad bug in the system provided me with useful information and now it's finally been fixed... I miss the thing that had become a feature of my journeys.