All is calm, all is bright

Actually, it's not that bright, but all is calm.

After last night's storm, Chiltern Railways have managed to run most trains, albeit with some quite long delays. 

My train of choice this morning was cancelled - where I live we are often the first to be sacrificed. However I am now sat at the back of the six carriage loco-hauled Chiltern Blue & Grey set. Yes, we are running late, but there are only seven people sat in the carriage, so it is rather soporific. 

Mind you, there is one grumpy old man who ranted that 'They've had all year to check the lines'. Eh? Some people!

South West Trains are running no trains before 10.00 am and other Train Operating Companies are operating very limited services due to various safety / infrastructure issues. 

By contrast, Chiltern started to time and have tried to run the best service that they can. 

Commercially (unlike other TOCs), Chiltern Railways are enforcing ticket restrictions today. Given the paucity of passengers and the worry caused by the Christmas Eve weather, this decision appears Scrooge like, and hopefully will be reviewed as the big chiefs get to work. 

I'll be on a de-restricted Advance ticket this afternoon, on an East Coast train. 

Anyhow, to my reader wherever you are, have a very Happy Christmas!

The view from Canary Wharf this morning

London City airport had a few problems with fog this morning.

This picture was taken from Canary Wharf by a colleague - Usually the runway at the airport is visible. Not today!

Chasing the Rainbow

In my experience, it is fairly rare to get sight of a complete rainbow. Even more so to get a complete picture.

Late this afternoon, there was a fantastic complete arch of a rainbow in the Wendover area of Rural Buckinghamshire. 

At the time I was sat on a Chiltern Railways train. The windows were fairly grubby and trees and bushes a plenty, as we bimbled along. This was the best I could do, and not even with a proper camera. 

Darrell Jordan has a much better picture of the same rainbow taken at nearby Little Kimble. 

A Busy Time of Year

Today I have been running round like a blue arsed fly.

The day started as usual at about 0510. I've lost track of the number of meetings I've had and have just finished travelling.

Hopefully the days ahead will be more enjoyable, though it is currently raining - and it's cold.

Missing in Action

On Saturday evening I suggested that Chiltern Railways might have a problem this morning with their Silver Trains.

Here is exhibit number one:

Hopefully all the Princes Risborough passengers will be able to board the extra train at 0755 (the 0749 from Haddenham & Thame Parkway). It is usually packed to the gunnels, but a lot of people are not travelling today due to the icy roads.

I shall now slink back to my work and carry on. Stay safe.

Racing Metro 28 - Saracens 37

A week ago I was waking up to the morning after the night before. That was when Saracens had beaten Racing Metro in the Heineken Cup by 37 points to 28. The match was on 12th January 2013. Certainly a night to remember.

I am no expert on rugby but can say that it was probably the second most exciting rugby match that I have ever seen. No prizes for guessing which match takes the top spot!

Before leaving the bar the night before, I had said that I would post a few photographs of the match on-line, so here they are.

I should say that my experience of taking sports photographs is extremely limited, so this is the best you get from me. Enjoy.

Oh - Today is Saracens last ever match at Vicarage Road in Watford. As I look out of the window it is currently snowing, so hopefully everyone can get to the match safely, to say goodbye to Chateau Grim in style.

National Mills Weekend

Today (Sunday, 13th May 2012) is the second day of National Mills Weekend.

It has the making of a beautiful day - Currently there is not a cloud in the sky in my neck of the Chiltern Hills.

If you are anywhere near Princes Risborough, I recommend that you visit Lacey Green Windmill which is open today from 11.00am to 5.00pm.

It's a big day for the volunteers at Lacey Green. The weather forecast is for 8 mph winds today, so all things being equal, today is the day to see the sails turning.

For more information, please visit the windmill's website, or see my blog post of last August. The photo above / to the right is from last year - currently it's a blue sky day.

Travel information, including directions, is available here. Chiltern Railways are operating a normal Sunday service today to Princes Risborough.

What a load of tosh!

The Transport for London Press Office has just put out a press release saying how well TfL coped with last night's snow.

I have copied the text at the foot of this note for posterity.

• Please note that late yesterday evening. the Central and Jubilee lines were totally suspended.
• Thousands of of people struggled to get home from an Olly Murs concert at the O2 Arena last night. Roads in the area were log- jammed and, as I say, there was no Jubilee Line.
• A Chiltern Railways train was stuck behind a Metropolitan Line train for over an hour, I think out in the Chorleywood area. The Metropolitan Line was stated as being suspended North of Wembley Park, late in the evening.
• Annie Mole has captured the status of the London Underground as a whole, as at 11.30 pm yesterday evening. It was not good.

Personally I think that a piece of PR puff should include an acknowledgment of what real people actually experienced, rather than just stressing the the things that didn't break. If you read TfL's version of the truth, one might gain the impression that everything went swimmingly well with transport in London last night. Hmmmm.

---

**********************************

TfL works to keep London moving through snow
05 February 2012

Leon Daniels, Managing Director of Surface Transport, said:

• "We have worked tirelessly from Saturday afternoon and throughout the night, gritting the Capital's main roads every few hours and running de-icing trains along the London Underground network"
• "Around 2,000 tonnes of grit has been spread by TfL and boroughs and all main roads and the vast majority of local roads are open and traffic running smoothly."
• "Bus routes are all operating this morning and there were only a few curtailments on night bus routes overnight."
• "Tube services have started well this morning, but with some issues on the outer reaches of the Central and Jubilee lines. We are woking hard to get these sections running as soon as possible."
• "So London is open for business today, but clearly people should take care on the roads and allow plenty of time for their journeys."

Every cloud has a silver lining (or two)

Cloud

Yesterday afternoon I blogged briefly on the personal impact to me of the effect of over-running engineering works in the Leamington Spa area. Or it was also described as a 'broken down train'.

I was on what should have been the first Chiltern Railways train to venture North of Bicester North after the end of the blockade at about 14:15. The train was the first one, the problem was that it left Bicester 50 minutes late, with the following Stratford-Upon-Avon service attached to its rear end. Both services were then terminated at Banbury.

It appears that the train that broke down was an engineering train. To be precise, a tamping train. It had a major mechanical defect and had to be rescued by a locomotive sent down from Coventry. The problem was that the rescue train was apparently sent in the direction of Birmingham International first (ie the wrong direction). This meant that the line was not cleared for quite some time.

My understanding is that single line working was implemented between Banbury and Leamington Spa. This meant that many trains were cancelled and all that remained were seriously delayed for much of the afternoon.

Replacement coaches were laid on, but they were seriously deficient in number. Hardly surprising, because the engineering works should have finished and the coaches should not have been needed. The picture above shows the scene outside Banbury at 16:00. There were lots of seriously delayed people. Shortly after this picture was taken, I think Chiltern Railways managed to run a Birmingham bound service, so hopefully many of the people shown managed to get on the train before it left.

Silver Lining

After a short but seriously heavy downpour at Bicester North, on the return journey, this rainbow was spotted from the platform.

Many camera phones were brought into use by the hordes of designer shoppers, who were all as delighted as I was to see such a bright rainbow.

An otherwise dreary afternoon was considerably brightened.

Second Silver Lining

During the course of the afternoon, I managed to take this picture of a Chiltern Mainline Class 168.

The train was thundering down the new Fast Up Line (towards London), at Princes Risborough, at what would have been the line speed of 85 mph.

Chiltern Railways - Snow

The trouble with running a railways is that (a) Drivers and other staff have to get to work themselveand (b) Snow and ice do not do much to help improve the reliability of the infrastructure.

As a consequence of this weekend's snow, Chiltern Railways are today running an emergency timetable.

The problem is that the train I am on has another eight stops before it reaches Marylebone. The aisles and vestibules are completely jammed with people already.

It's going to be a fun day. Stay safe.

Chavs breeding Chavs

I've previously mentioned Chavs on the trains.
Well, I am currently sat near two, with an accompanying gaggle of screaming Chavlets.
Said one of the bigger ones "Look - when you shout, they all turn their heads and look at you. Shout ('Shaart') as much as you want."
Charming. Roll on Marylebone.
By the way, it is bitterly cold today in Rural Buckinghamshire, with freezing fog. Well done Chiltern Railways for keeping the trains running bang to time.
Edit: OMG - one of them called "Sky". Aargh.

Boris Bikes Go Casual

Tomorrow, 3rd December 2010, the Barclays Cycle Hire Scheme (aka 'Boris Bikes') becomes available for casual users.

I hope the launch goes well and that everything goes well technically. There should be plenty of bikes available as during the current inclement weather, fewer bikes than usual are being used. Yesterday afternoon at Soho Square there were about 15 spaces available in the docking station - the most spaces I have ever seen at that time of day.

Be safe!

By the way, I'm back, but still with a small backlog of holiday posts.

Please stick fingers in ears and shout "La La La"

Repetition... Boring.... Repetition..... Boring......

The train is short formed again today. Grrr.

Still, at least the Chiltern Railways driver has apologised.

Beautiful morning. Not a cloud in the sky. A bit of ground frost at 6am this morning. Could turn out to be the warmest day of the year so far.

More of the white stuff

I spoke to my Grandmother last night. She lives up in the Yorkshire Dales and is now 93.

She told me it had been snowing heavily all day. She agreed (!) that she wouldn't try to clear the snow and would stay inside. I was also told that food stocks were good.

At six o'clock this morning, it was chucking it down with rain in my neck of the woods, the North Western edge of the Chiltern Hills, in Rural Buckinghamshire.

By 6.45 the rain had turned to big white fluffy snow flakes.

I doubt it'll amount to much as the heavy rain means the ground is simply too wet and warm.

How deep can we go?

Over the last few days I've done quite a bit of driving around the bottom half of Buckinghamshire.

The state of the roads is quite shocking. There are potholes everywhere, some of which are quite big. Big as in some are wide, big as in some are deep and big as in some are wide and deep.

The potholes are on busy roads and on quiet roads. They are in the towns and in the countryside.

The potholes will have been caused by the recent long cold weather. Combined with the modern cheap and cheerful way of patching up roads, their really is an epidemic of them.

Last week the Bucks Free Press quoted the Leader of Buckinghamshire County Council as saying that the authority would not be borrowing money to fix the road network stating "Borrow £10million and look for another £1million cut in frontline services".

I totally understand where the Council is coming from, but it doesn't help to fix the roads. If we have another cold snap, some roads will be virtually impassable at anything more than 20 mph.

On a separate but related matter, I was chatting with a fellow commuter last week. I know what he does and where he works, which is in the public sector. Most people would probably want what he does to continue, and to a high standard.

In the upcoming financial year, his department / team / function is facing having its £2.5 million budget cut by over 80%. That means job losses, site closures and significant challenges in the future.

These two examples of public finance problems are what I have heard of in the last few days. Many people simply have no idea of the scale of the economic problem that this country faces.

We are all going to have to face up to a challenging future for public finances. Please do not underestimate the scale of the problem.

Preparing for the weather

Nowadays, there are lots of different sources of information for the weather forecast.

Generally I think the forecasts on BBC Television channels are pretty good.

During the current inclement weather I have come to base a lot of my actions on the Severe Weather Warning pages of the Met Office website.

They consist of four colours:

• Green - Behave as normal
• Yellow - Behave as normal, make sure I am wearing a coat
• Orange - Whatever happens, it's quite likely I will notice the weather
• Red - Eeek. Could be a problem. Don't go to the supermarket, because the locusts will have beaten me to it

I must stress that these are my own interpretations. You may need to adapt to a slightly different scenario. I can walk to my local train station and Chiltern Railways seem to be unable to contemplate me not getting to work, so I go.

Except for today, because I had a day of pre-booked leave, just because we are approaching the end of the holiday year. Use it or lose it!

Long time no see...

So I'd better talk about the weather!

There has been quite a bit of snow in the Chilterns this evening. More is forecast.

High Wycombe is currently grid-locked. Apart from one central valley, as the name implies, the town is a series of hills. Two wheel drive vehicles cannot currently get up any of the hills. No sign of any police or gritters.

The temperature briefly rose, but a sharp frost is now due, with more snow forecast. It will be bedlam in the morning.

Chiltern Railways have had a small number of cancellations this evening, but are generally running a good service. Trains are busy as people have abandoned their cars and are letting the train take the strain.

I have spoken to two friends who are having to sleep at work tonight - one in Camden and one in Slough.

This image of the local Tom Tom traffic report grabbed just now speaks volumes.

You know it's Autumn when...

You get up and go outside, it is your normal time but the sky is still pitch black, except for the moon and the stars.

The only sound is that of a neighbour scraping the first frost of the season off their car windscreen.

Brrrr... It's a bit chilly out there.

Music in the Rain

During the early part of each Summer, the Royal Military School of Music in Twickenham hosts a series of open air concerts titled "Concerts in the Park".

Tonight was the series finale, attended (along with maybe a couple of thousand others) by three generations of my family.

The theme tonight was 'Last Night of the Proms'. Whatever the theme, the concerts are always excellent and tonight was no exception.

Having checked the weather forecast yesterday, we decided not to eat al-fresco. Instead my sister fed us all beforehand, dessert provided by our mother. food move.

Waterproofs came in handy, though fortunately the rain was not persistent enough for the concert to be curtailed. The bands soldiered on and a good evening was had.

I suspect that a bit of elbow grease would have been used afterwards drying all the instruments - pity the bandsman responsible for the three xylophones!

Hopefully back to the same venue in a couple of months for the Rhythm Force Rock & Pop Concert, including an appearance by Jools Holland.

For no particular reason

Should it be holiday time for you, I hope that you had a good time and a very Happy Easter. Here in the UK we have had a four day weekend, so it is, thankfully, only a four day week at work for me before another weekend begins.

It has been quite busy - I spent a couple of days with family, had a good result at the rugby yesterday and have been just pottering today.

While looking for a particular picture, I found this image that I took last August. I didn't even walk out of my fromt door to take it. I like it and hope you do to.

The weather in rural Buckinghamshire has been a bit changeable over the last few days, but it has got out quite nice this afternoon.

There really isn't much going on, though trouble may be brewing a couple of miles up the road. Maybe more on that to follow....

The long weekend draws to a close.