So you got a new bag for Christmas...

I can see you got a new bag for Christmas. It looks as though it might have a laptop in it. It may only contain a few manky sandwiches, but I can't tell. Your bag is well attached to your shoulders. Up in the real world it is quite cold, so it may be helping to keep your back warm.

However, the Jubilee Line at Baker Street in the morning rush hour is not the place to be impersonating a camel. Take the bloody thing off your back and let some more people on the train.

Thank you.

It's slippery out there

At present it's a chilly -3.7 C out in my part of the Chiltern Hills. I can vouch for the fact that local un-gritted roads, where the snow has been compacted by vehicles, are quite literally sheets of ice.

If you are driving or walking in the area (or indeed anywhere else experiencing similar conditions), please be very very careful as it is treacherous out there.

Edit: Tuesday morning, 06:30. It is now -7.8 C and has dropped 0.9 of a degree in the last half hour. Brrrrrrr.

What do they teach in schools nowadays?

Last night, while in Princes Risborough, I spent the un-princely sum of £1.20 and paid with a £20 note.

After handing over the note, I then realised that I had a 20p coin, so handed that over as well. In my world that is called 'making it easier' for the assistant.

The cash register told the girl serving me to hand me back £18.80. Giving her the extra 20p totally blew her mind and she could then not work out how much change to give me. Duh!

Shopping Trip

As it is nearly Twelfth Night, I thought I ought to get the Christmas present my parents had promised (and which I had asked for).

I am much more M&S than Prada, but no joy yesterday at the M&S store in High Wycombe.

This afternoon I decided to venture a little further to the new Westfield shopping centre in West London. I did pay a brief visit before Christmas, but it was then too busy for my liking.

It appears to have settled down a little now, in terms of the crowds, and I managed to purchase the coat I was looking for in the unsurprisingly modern M&S. I also latched onto a ridiculously expensive ski suit in Ellis Brigham that I first saw at the London Ski Show a couple of months ago, but fortunately managed to keep my plastic firmly in my pocket for that.

Getting to Westfield was quite straight forward. A Chiltern Railways stopping service saw me change to the Central Line at West Ruislip and it was then plain sailing to White City. I arrived at White City only two minutes after my first train would have arrived at Marylebone, so it was definitely the best way to go. Returning home was the same trip in reverse.

Edit:Westfield transport links are shown here (click image):

**Eden photo by kingpin1055**

Balanced, Secure and Realisitic

Apparently that's me - based upon the following. It may be about as accurate as a horoscope, but I'm happy with the answer!

Your result for What Your Taste in Art Says About You Test...

Balanced, Secure, and Realistic.

11 Impressionist, 11 Islamic, -6 Ukiyo-e, -7 Cubist, -11 Abstract and -11 Renaissance!

Impressionism is a movement in French painting, sometimes called optical realism because of its almost scientific interest in the actual visual experience and effect of light and movement on appearance of objects. Impressionist paintings are balanced, use colored shadows, use pure color, broken brushstrokes, thick paint, and scenes from everyday life or nature.

People that like Impressionist paintings may not always be what is deemed socially acceptable. They tend to move on their own path without always worrying that it may be offensive to others. They value friendships but because they also value honesty tend to have a few really good friends. They do not, however, like people that are rude and do not appreciate the ideas of others. They are secure enough in themselves that they can listen to the ideas of other people without it affecting their own final decisions. The world for them is not black and white but more in shades of grey and muted colors. They like things to be aesthetically pleasing, not stark and sharp. There are many ways to view things, and the impressionist personality views the world from many different aspects. They enjoy life and try to keep a realistic viewpoint of things, but are not very open to new experiences. If they are content in their live they will be more than likely pleased to keep things just the way they are.

Take What Your Taste in Art Says About You Test at HelloQuizzy

Ghost Train

A first for me just now.

Traveled one stop on a train out in rural Buckinghamshire. I was the only passenger to get on, I was the only one to get off. Other than me the train was empty.

Spooky!

As the train continued on its merry way, I did wonder whether the driver was aware that he was there for his own pleasure...

Meanwhile, Chiltern Railways were featured extensively on this evening's main 10 o'clock news on the BBC. All the Chiltern trains and platforms shown were just as quiet as I have experienced all week (well- not quite as quiet as just now).

I guess it will be back to normal on Monday when everyone goes back to work and the usual drudge of commuting resumes.

Another one bites the dust

Bumped into a fellow blogger on the way home tonight - he was working, so hope it's not too busy.

The big trains this week have been marvelously quiet. This morning my four carriages had a total of 14 people got off upon arrival at Marylebone. Not many more on the way home just now. The underground was pretty quiet as well.

I'm off to Abbots Langley now for a quiet, hopefully sedate dinner party, with bed thrown in as well. Result!

As another year bites the dust, this post marks the end of my third year of infrequent blogging - it also means that 2008 does not have the lowest number of posts. Yay!

Thank you for coming to read my meanderings, especially to those of you who take the trouble to comment.

May I wish you a very Happy New Year. I hope that 2009 brings you everything that you hope for.

CU

And the wind down begins....

Well, the Underground was particularly quiet this morning.

My 'big train' to rural Buckinghamshire (en-route to Birmingham), mid-afternoon, was packed to the gunnels.

A very Happy Christmas to my reader.

Chiltern Railways are running to a special timetable over Christmas and New Year, with no trains whatsoever on Christmas Day and Boxing Day. A copy is available to download here (walk to your manned Chiltern station if on dial-up).

London Transport Christmas and New Year travel arrangements are still available here.

Yuck...

I have a pet hate - people who file their nails on the train. I don't know why, but I find it revolting.

Today it went one worse - someone clipping their nails. Click.. ping.. click.. ping..

Aaarrgh!

Is the competition hotting up?

Over a large number of weekends this year, mainly due to engineering works in the Rugby area, Virgin Trains have been running hourly trains from London Euston to Coventry and Birmingham International, diverted up the Chiltern Railways route through rural Buckinghamshire.

According to a Network Rail press release put out today, the engineering work is now complete. Starting from next weekend the number of trains using the West Coast Main Line will increase dramatically, with journey times seeing significant reductions.

This is of course good news for travelers who will see a significant increase in seat capacity between London, Birmingham and stations north.

Hitherto, Chiltern Railways have offered the best value (ie cheapest) easily available fare between London and Birmingham at £5 each way (obviously, subject to restrictions).

In tonight's evening papers were Virgin Trains adverts offering tickets from the same price between London Euston and Birmingham, supposedly from next Sunday which is when the new timetable starts.

What a fantastic way for Virgin to thank Chiltern for their co-operation during the weekends of the Rugby blockade (see press release of 12 June 2008).

I do admire Chiltern Railways, but I've just checked with Virgin and it is possible to get a weekday mid-morning booking next month, from Euston for the promised £5 and the journey is scheduled to be as quick as 1hr 22 min.

Chiltern would appear to have some stiff competition!

Christmas & New Year Travel Guide for London

Transport for London (aka tfl) have today published a Travel Guide to getting around London over Christmas and New year.

It weighs in at a hefty 2Mb and is in pdf format. For now the guide is available here, but if they move or change the file name, please let me know.

A summary is:

• Christmas Eve 2008: Most stuff finishes early
• Christmas Day 2008: London stops
• Boxing Day 2008: London starts to get going again, except for the Jubilee Line (no service Friday, Saturday or Sunday), the Metropolitan Line (no service) and the Waterloo & City Line. There are also other station closures on the Bakerloo, Central, Circle, District, Hammersmith & City and Northern Lines.

• There are also pages and pages of guidance should you be in London on New Year's Eve.

It isn't possible to summarise here all the travel changes detailed in a 25 page guide, so I recommend you obtain a copy if you intend to travel in London over the holiday period.

I note that there is no mention of a corporate sponsor for the free late night travel arrangements on 31st December. The economy really must be in a bad way.

Edit: 2 January 2009. Tfl have removed the guide from their website. At present I do not have any suitably anonymous webspace to host the document. If you can host, please let me know - if you want a copy emailed to you, please let me know. Thank you.

Scoop...

I went to Banbury today, by train, using the ever efficient services of Chiltern Railways. One of the trains was too short (no room to swing a cat), but it was a bit parky outside- huddling together helps one to keep warm

Where was I? Oh yes - Banbury.

Woolworths, to be precise. The sadly soon to be gone, in Administration, up to 50% off sale shop that holds a strangely nostalgic piece of most peoples' hearts.

I spent a grand total of £15.56 and did pick up several bargains. The best of which was a ice cream scoop, for which I paid the princely sum of 40 pence.

The item comes with a 5 year guarantee which states;

"This item is guaranteed for 5 years from the date of purchase. It will be replaced with the same or similar item, if there is a defect due to faulty materials or workmanship, during that period. The guarantee does not cover defect occurring due to abuse. This does not affect your statutory rights. In the unlikely event that a fault should occur, to claim under this guarantee return this item to your nearest Woolworths store, together with the purchase receipt."

May I be so bold as to state that this particular guarantee is probably not worth the paper it is printed on?

Oh, and they didn't have any carrier bags, so my haul of goodies was transported home in a marvelous black bin bag.

A new world record

What? Two hours and thirty eight minutes - that's what....

The length of time it took this morning from walking out of my front door to arriving at my desk.

That is a long long time for a commute. Indeed a world record for me. To say I was a little jaded upon arrival would be an understatement.

There was a fatality at about 5.10am this morning, on the railway near High Wycombe station. The police took some time to release the line back to the railways, so the line was closed until about 7.40 am. Understandably, it then took Chiltern Railways some time to get trains running in any sort of order.

I managed to grab a lift to Great Missenden and traveled to Marylebone on the Aylesbury via Amersham line.

It would seem that a lot of people gave up, because the trains home this evening were very quiet.

Compare and Contrast

After the shambles of Saturday evening, a decent video of Tangmere passing through my local Buckinghamshire station has now been sourced.

Note the still red signal on the Northbound platform, showing how close the photographers came to having their views blocked by a Chiltern Railways service, along with the carefully positioned yappy dog - aimed at preventing any commercial sales of video footage.



It was a very strange experience (but somehow rather pleasant) to be shrouded in the swirling mass of steam lingering after the passage of the locomotive.

My camera skills are getting worse

Actually, not only are my camera skills going downhill, but things have got so bad that tonight I couldn't even remember how to use my Digital SLR.

So, I proudly present an incredibly lousy video of a steam train traveling down the Chiltern Line a few minutes ago:



Why is it truncated? Because the memory card on the spare camera was full and I didn't know!

The funny thing was when a northbound Chiltern Railways Clubman stopped at a red signal on the Northbound platform just before the steam train was due. You had to smile at the sight of all the real enthusiasts really panicking as their carefully framed photographic angles were suddenly blocked. Cruel.

Autumn Pruning

I've had a really good sort out of my Blogroll.

Should you really want to, the entry called 'My Bloglines List' may give you a wider view of my interests.

Two to specifically note:

• Flight Level 390 - As soon as I know there's an update, this is the first one I read.
• Uphilldowndale - Consistently outstanding photography.

All dead or deleted blogs have been culled.

Work, sleep or blog?

To put it mildly, work is interesting at present. Very early starts, later than usual finishes and projects that have nothing to do with my usual job. All in some way connected to the unprecedented happenings in the financial services industry over the last few months.

My use of public transport has not diminished - the only problem is that I am generally dashing from A to B to C and using the down time to think, and plan how to move forward with the various projects. Usually such in-depth use of brain power isn't required. It's great fun, but something has to give.

Decent sleep is a necessity, I need to keep my job (and I enjoy it), so blogging has slipped down the to do list recently. Sorry.

The one thing I would say is that the Jubilee Line is beginning to seriously hack me off. The other day I was traveling from the West End to Canary Wharf when I had to get off the train somewhere South of The River to join a conference call, simply because the 'Good Service' Jubilee Line was actually crap. That is just one example.

Also it has been mentioned elsewhere that changing lines at Bank is not as bad or inconvenient as tfl would imply (though there are definite issues if you want to interchange at Bank Station with the District/ Circle Line platforms. On Thursday I was so hacked off with the silver line that I decided to use the DLR for the first time in months, it was mid afternoon. The interchange was so good (two upwards escalators from the DLR platforms towards the Central Line), that I shall certainly be traveling back to the West End that way for the foreseeable future.

If you have the willpower, please read Diamond Geezer's excellent 'transforming the truth' article.

Now some sleep...

So, how was the Crystal Ball?

OK, here are the results of yesterday's informal predictions:

A number of people DID turn up for this morning's first train, not realising that a replacement bus had gone a few minutes before.

1 - 0

There were issues with rolling stock, as I thought there would be. I know of at least one early train that was cancelled.

2 - 0

My 'Fast' train (a) turned up on time and (b) still had the extra carriage glued to the back. It also had plenty of seats spare. The train did stop at a couple of extra stations en-route, presumably because of the aforementioned cancellation. Fifteen minutes late into Marylebone, but that wasn't really a surprise.

2 - 1

Tonight's train(s) home had loads of spare seats and one was also longer than usual.

Now we just have to hope that the engineering work at Aylesury is completed on time tomorrow night.

Another day beckons...

Aylesbury Parkway Signalling Works

Should you be using Chiltern Railways over the next couple of days, please be aware that there are major engineering works in the Aylesbury area between now and end of traffic on Thursday. As their main depot is in Aylesbury there will no doubt be the odd issue or two with rolling stock and anyone travelling to or from Aylesbury will end up on a rail replacement coach to/ from Wendover or Princes Risborough.

One thing that I do know is that some regulars will get caught out tomorrow morning, as the very first train of the day on Wednesday 19th November will be replaced by a coach between Aylesbury and High Wycombe. Having discovered this earlier today I contacted two people who usually catch the first train, neither of whom were aware of the revised arrangements for tomorrow. Oh well, that's my good deed for the day.

Full details available (for now) here.

Like children in a sweetie shop

Just recently I have taken to catching an early Chiltern Railways train that is non-stop to London Marylebone.

It is the first train of the day that has come any great distance and usually has three carriages. On Monday you are indeed fortunate to get a seat, by the time it gets to Friday you are unlucky if you don't get one.

So, this morning our little commuter club was standing by the designated spot on the platform - you know, the one precisely where your door opens without having to move unnecessarily to board. We had been chatting about this and that and simply commented, as the first two carriages chugged past that there were a few seats free today.

Suddenly, to our consternation, we realised as the train stopped that we were not stood at the rear most door of the last carriage. An extra carriage had been tacked onto the back of the train (not literally, but you know what I mean). So en-masse our band of happy foot soldiers traipsed along the platform, boarded the extra carriage and marvelled at the incredible choice of seats available to use.

We were indeed like children in a sweetie shop... choices, choices, choices.

I have never known a train at that unearthly hour to be anything other than three carriages long. It will probably never happen again, but one can but hope.