It was very noticeable that when White Llama stopped being a long distance commuter her blog activity seemed to vaporize with it. Now that I have a significant amount of daily ‘train time’ to kill on my laptop I suspect I’ll fill the vacuum.
Today was actually a very weird day. I was heavily delayed in the morning because someone had inconveniently thrown themselves under a train just before rush hour. Inevitably the delays caused a bit of frustration but what was much more infuriating was South West Trains’ complete inability to give us accurate information. I was two hours late to work. I’d have only been an hour late if they had advised us to simply take the slow trains (which take a different route and were unaffected). Instead all they did was put up "delayed" on the platform indicators. Had I not jumped on a slow train, out of instinct, I could have been waiting until lunchtime.
At work my attention was distracted by a dark object rapidly gliding towards my window. There was a loud thud and then it dropped to the ground. Judging by the oily residue (and feather) stuck to the window it appears it was a kamikaze pigeon.
This evening I got to Guildford station to find that there was apparently a tree under the line and so significant delays going back to Waterloo. These were accentuated by some train crew being missing (and in the case of one announcement, an actual train having gone AWOL!). Again, South West Trains proved unable to provide good information. After being told there would be a wait of up to an hour we all suddenly had to rush to another platform for the unexpected arrival of a non-stop train to London.
Much work needs to be done on Britain’s railways to achieve the modal shift required to both beat congestion and climate change. Funnily enough I was watching recorded coverage of the House of Commons Transport Select Committee on BBC Parliament last night, but I shall write my thoughts up another time.
I see South West Trains are still as reliable and helpful as when I used them to commute!