Monday, January 31, 2011

Chiltern Railways - Update

Chiltern Railways have just been given the OK to run trains through the South Ruislip area after the over running engineering works.

It's going to take a while to get things back to any sense of normality - a train has just left my local station on time, so they are obviously trying their best. I suspect a fairly important contingency plan has leapt into place this morning!

Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work I go.

Sooner or later, it was going to happen

Chiltern Railways are currently going through transformational engineering works. Generally this means that weekend trains are significantly affected. Between now and the end of February, for example, there is only one Saturday or Sunday where there is going to be a normal train service running on the line through High Wycombe..

It's horrible, that is the disruption is horrible, but hopefully the pain will be worth it in the end.

Up until now, with the exception of a tiny number of very early morning trains, the months of weekend engineering works have had no knock on impact to the weekday train services.

No so today.

Currently Chiltern Railways have over-running engineering works, South of High Wycombe, with the line not expected to reopen until 0730. Services from Aylesbury to London over the Metropolitan Line are not affected.

I think it is going to be one of those days!

Friday, January 28, 2011

The end of an era

I am currently on the last ever Southbound Wrexham & Shropshire service. It's rather full, with a strange and rather mournful atmosphere.

I wonder what the welcoming committee will be like in London?

I know that there are some Chiltern Railway, big cheese, train buffs on board - oh, if only more train services were like this!

A sad day.

More later ........

Thursday, January 13, 2011

High Speed Broadband for Wendover

Crikey! This is only the fourth time that I have mentioned Wendover since I started this blog five years ago, and it is the second time this week. This post is nothing to do with trains.

Yesterday, BT announced that Wendover is to be one of 41 market towns that will receive high-speed fibre broadband connections of up to 40Mbps by spring 2012.

I suppose that it is good news. I can't immediately think how high speed  broadband would change my life, but I suppose it will be a bit like widening a motorway -  many people will use it more and more. For the avoidance of doubt, my home is not connected to the Wendover telephone exchange.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Better than expected

Happy New Year!

For reasons I won't bore you with, this evening I travelled out form Marylebone to Wendover, a small town in the Chilterns, just South of Aylesbury.

I caught the 1716, which runs fast to Great Missenden. There has been a bit of on-line grumbling recently about overcrowding and short-formed trains. So, as I wandered down to Platform 4, I groaned to myself when I saw that the train was to be formed of only two carriages.

It is however pleasing to report that nobody on the train had to stand (they may have stood, but there was no need to), and it arrived at Wendover only 1 minute late - not bad given that Chiltern Railways trains run the gauntlet of sharing track with the Metropolitan Line for much of the way.

All in all quite a pleasant journey.

Oh, and I've added a Twitter feed to the right - I hope it doesn't distract too much.