Context: fairly busy, but not overcrowded train I take every other weekend to see my gf in a city. The train ride is about 2 hours long and has 6-7 intermediate stops. There is a woman in the seat next to the bike rack playing with an iPad while her kids are screaming and running around the aisles. All three bike racks are taken up by her stroller (which is folded flat).

Me: ma’am is this your stroller?

Her: *stares at me blankly*

Me: ...

Her: so what if it is

Me: it’s in the bike rack and I need to mount my bike.

Her: *immediately begins getting super agitated and defensive and acting like i had just threatened her* it’s my stroller and I need it why the hell am I supposed to do with it?

*this is the part where I start to question my temper in hundsight* It was a very long day and my bullshit tolerance was at a supreme low.

Me: I don’t care what you do with it. It’s not a bicycle and there are luggage racks in every other cabbin. I will help you move it if this is too much to ask you. I’m not leaving my bike in the doorway where anyone can just take it on their way off the train.

Her: you have no right to tell me what to do! I was here first and I have a ticket just like you

Me: look lady, you obviously don’t give a damn about raising your kids the way you’re letting them run up and down the train and you’re just using them as an excuse to act lazy and entitled. Move the stroller or I’ll find the conductors to move it for you.

She calls my bluff and I’m honestly not willing to go through the trouble so I just say “fine, relax. I’ll put my bike in the doorway”. She freaks out more and tells me not to tell her to relax and I just shrug it off and sit down in a seat where I can watch my bike so it doesn’t get stolen. She spends the next two stops glaring at me before making one of the older kids carry the stroller off the train. 

Obviously I was in the right on the grounds of what the rules are, but part of me feels like I could have done better with the last thing I said and prevented it from becoming a scene.