Princes Risborough appears on track

This week there are no trains at all on Chiltern Railways, between Bicester North and London Marylebone.

One of the major pieces of infrastructure being completed is at Princes Risborough. Here a new London bound line has been built, several sets of new points installed along with a new signalling system.

 

Tonight I wandered along to the station at Princes Risborough to see how they are getting on. It was getting dark, and the pictures were taken on my phone, but it seems that the work in and around the station is pretty much done.

The other major pieces of track work this week are at High Wycombe ( a replacement crossover at the Western end of the station) and in the Northolt Park / Ruislip Gardens area, where the track layout will be totally different than was hitherto the case.

New signals at the north end of Princes Risborough station.

A view from the platform at Princes Risborough, showing the Fast Up Line (in the middle).

Only two days to go before we have trains running again - it's looking good!

Actually, it wasn't too bad

Actually my blog post of Monday evening was probably a tad unfair.

Yes, my train home on Monday evening was cancelled (and I had a further late night delay on Tuesday), but overall my train journeys this week have not been too bad.

Marylebone station has been closed and two Chiltern Railways trains an hour have gone in to Paddington (on the High Wycombe Line) and two on that line have turned around at West Ruslip.

By all accounts not many people chose to face the Central Line in from West Ruislip. However my experience was that the six or seven car trains laid on from Paddington were adequate.

As you can hopefully see from the table to the right, significant leeway was built into the timetables (every train arrived into Paddington early). The red lined journeys indicate the trains I actually caught rather than the delays incurred.

Door to door, my journeys too and from work were about ten minutes longer than normal, so really I have little cause to complain.

For some people the glass is always half empty - they will always find something to moan about. Some people will have had horrible journeys.

I like to look forward (aaarrrggh - next week may be bad!) - I look forward to the new train timetable on 5th September. I will hopefully be able to gain 70 minutes a day at home, spending 10 minutes a day less in the office. I think I may be one of the lucky ones, but here's hoping.

So far so good. Well done Chiltern Railways!

A bad start to two weeks of travel carnage

This week Marylebone station is shut, to enable the points and track layout at Neadsden Junction to be remodelled. Next week the track layouts at Princes Risborough and South Ruislip / Northolt Junction are getting similar treatment.

This means that all Chiltern railways trains from Aylesbury are terminating at either Harrow-on-the-Hill or Amersham. Trains on the High Wycombe Line are either diverted to Paddington (or Didcot), or terminate at West Ruislip, for the Central Line.

Tonight the 1645 departure from Paddington was cancelled, due to a member of staff being unavailable.

I saw no Chiltern Staff at Paddington (I am not saying that there were none, I just didn't see any).

The next train, the 1718, was formed of 7 carriages and was completely rammed.

My journey home took over two hours.

Next week will be worse, with no trains at all on the High Wycombe line.

I do hope that Chiltern Railways get their act together. The occasional cancellation is understood, but to cancel a peak time train when there are only two an hour smacks of a lack of contingency planning.

Many passengers tonight have reason to be grumpy.

Stand behind the yellow line

Can I stress that alcohol and machinery do not mix. Particularly if the piece of machinery is a big heavy train.

Should you be in the High Wycombe area to catch a Northbound train, while under the influence of alcohol, you currently need to stand well (very well) back from the yellow line. If you try to follow the yellow line, you may start to stagger around a little more than usual.

It appears that during last weekend's engineering work, as part of Chiltern Railways' Evergreen 3 programme, a couple of inches were shaved off the platform This is presumably to enable trains to pass through faster than is currently the case.

There appears to be some major track work due to take place at High Wycombe. The North end cross-over is due to be replaced, but the bits seem to have been laying around for ages. Maybe next weekend?

Rural Idyll

Sometimes my corner of Rural Buckinghamshire hides a dark pool of thieving scum.

For the second time in a month, the village down the road from us has no telephone / broadband service again.

This is apparently because some kind souls have decided to nick a load of cables (property of British Telecom) out of the ground.

Apart from being most annoying for local businesses & residents, it must be a complete nightmare for BT.

Realistically, it is impossible to alarm or truly protect every cable carrying asset that BT uses across this green and pleasant land. Assuming that the thieving problem is not very localised, these sorts of incident must have a drag in the rural economy.

As for those that buy dodgy copper, does anyone have some string and a lamp post?

A history lesson

This blog started at the beginning of 2006.

At the time I lived in West London, Along the Central Line.

I adopted the name centraluser simply because I didn't know any different - I didn't really know a lot about blogging, or (as with most people) have any idea how much Social Media would take off in the years that were to follow.

The main theme of the blog has always been about public transport. However I do occasionally meander off to witter on about anything else that takes my fancy. That is the prerogative of a personal blogger.

For the first 17 months of its life, most posts were about the Central Line - that's the long red line (well, red on maps) the crosses broadly from East to West, or from West to East, across London. My journey to and from work consisted of walking and traveling Along the Central Line.

Four years ago I moved to Rural Buckinghamshire, but continue to commute in to Central London. Rarely on the Central Line.

This means that I now rarely blog about the Central Line. Also the train company I use (Chiltern Railways) is generally pretty good, so blogging material is sometimes a little sparse. That means my blogging is also pretty sparse.

I shall however continue to post occasionally (at least once or twice a month) - Slightly more frequent ramblings may be found on Twitter.

If you wonder why I've posted this, you'll never know. If you know why I've posted this, there you are - I hope that is clear!

Pip pip!

Chiltern Railways Trains Now Moo-ving

A brief update as I currently have no Internet connection.

Following the earlier bovine incident, trains seem to now be running.

The railway company are clearly doing their best to get everyone home.

The passenger experience has been bad and there are many grumbles, particularly from those who were stranded at Gerrards Cross.

It'll be interesting to see how the overnight recovery goes. Trains will be all over the place and there is supposed to be engineering work taking place.

Chiltern Railways - Cattle Problems

No, nothing to do with overcrowding.

Trains are currently seriously disrupted / at a stand, due to cattle being struck on the line between Gerrards Cross and Seer Green & Jordans.

Not the most straight forward of incidents to recover from at the tail end of the evening rush hour.

Coaches are being rustled up between Princes Risborough and West Ruislip, to try to get people mooving.

Where possible trains from up North are being diverted via Aylesbury and then down the Metropolitan Line.

It looks as though the 'shiny new train (Class 172), which entered service yesterday, will probably not get back to London for a while, as it cannot travel down the Metropolitan Line.

It will be interesting to see how this affects tonight's Late Night engineering work.

I do hope all the people involved in the incident are - it seems that the same cannot be said for at least one silly cow.

Other train operators are accepting tickets via reasonable alternative routes.

** I am not Chiltern Railways **

Updated @ 2013 on 9 June

Slack in the timetable

Here is a classic case of the amount of leeway built into today's timetables.

This morning's 11.53 Chiltern Railways service from London Marylebone to Bicester North left on time.

It was delayed at Gerrards Cross due to a minor fault and left there 9 minutes late.

It is due to arrive any moment now at Bicester North, on-time.

Hmmmm.

Edit: For the record, the train actually arrived at Bicester North at 13.10. I think I must be a little light on blogging material at present.

The Storage of Gas Cylinders

There has been much comment recently regarding the storage of gas cylinders near public transport infrastructure.

Much of this has of course been as a result of a major fire at a scrap-yard in North London earlier this month. The particular scrap-yard is under the M1 Motorway and was so severe that the road had to be closed for several days.

Initially the major problem was that there were Acetylene cylinders thought to be involved with the incident. The London Fire Brigade doesn't like these particular types of gas cylinder as they can become exceedingly unstable and dangerous if involved in a fire. It subsequently transpired that the real issue was that the fire was so serious that the concrete structure holding the motorway up was seriously damaged. This took some serious engineering to repair enough to enable the motorway to be opened.

My local train station, which is in rural Buckinghamshire, has had lots of Network Rail engineers in attendance over the weekend. Actually, so far as I can tell, they were sub-contractors employed by Bam Nuttall. They worked hard for four days with their engineering work (though most of their work is not visible to mere mortals), and they made a fairly good attempt at clearing after themselves.

They've left just one thing. I don't think it's acetylene, but it is quite literally plonked in the middle of the car park. I wonder if it's been forgotten? I wonder if I should tell Chiltern Railways? I wonder if they'll be interested?

Democracy at work in the Chilterns

In my part of the country (rural Buckinghamshire), there are three sets of voting taking place on 5th May.

Elections to the Parish Council were due to take place. There will be no vote in this Parish, because there are fewer valid nominations than there are seats on the council.

Elections to the District Council were due to take place. The current representative of my ward (a hard working and caring individual) is not standing for re-election for family & work related reasons. Another resident of the ward has been found to stand instead of the departing incumbent. There will be no vote because just the one valid nomination has been received. A virtually unknown person will therefore be elected, with no public scrutiny, presumably because nobody could be bothered to do anything else.

The third vote taking place on 5th May is a referendum to decide on the voting system to be used for future parliamentary elections.

I suspect that few round here really care. That's a shame.

West Ruislip Depot Full

I noticed just now, while whizzing past on my Chiltern Clubman, that the Central Line's Ruislip depot is extremely full

All the trains are neatly lined up - I have never seen the depot with so many trains.
Ah! That'll explain it. Just checked - no trains West of Marble Arch

Have now just gone past chiltern's Wembley depot. That has just one 2 car Turbo (165) train and lots of Mk 3 stock. Ah! And that could be because for the first time in yonks, Chiltern are playing with a full train set this weekend.

For the avoidance of doubt, Chiltern Railways have no engineering work this weekend.

Yellow Lines

I travel from a small country station in Rural Buckinghamshire.

There will be no trains stopping at, or passing through, the station until Monday morning. This is perfectly normal - Chiltern Railways are currently spending lots of money to shave a few nano-seconds off my regular commute, so for the majority of weekends we have no train service near where I live. This ongoing engineering work means replacement buses running - we actually get more buses than we normally get trains.

Today the Chiltern Railways maintenance people have descended on the local station to take advantage of the lack of trains. They appear to have:

• Painted white lines along the edge of the platforms
• Painted yellow lines along the platforms
• Fixed lots of 'Stand behind the yellow lines' signs to the lamp posts along the platforms

I actually find this maintenance work rather sad. Yes, it makes the station look cared for and maintained, but really it is only being done for elf & safety reasons. We don't have masses of trains call at the best of times. We certainly don't suffer from over-crowded trains and the station could never ever be described as busy.

This isn't a rant - It's rather just a whimsical sigh. I like living in the country and, somehow, these signs of modern rules & regulations appearing in the heart of Rural Buckinghamshire just make me feel somewhat deflated. Sigh.

Soon, they'll be wanting to paint yellow lines down the road as well. Oh! I forgot - they do want to do that!

District Dave

District Dave (Dave Maloney) passed away yesterday morning.

Dave was the founder of District Dave's London Underground Site and the separate (but now much bigger) District Dave's London Underground Forum.

Good people like District Dave, people capable of inspiring others, are such an important part of what humanity is about. Sometimes you get used to sitting at a computer with information scrolling past and over you. News of Dave's death brought me to a shuddering stop - he will be missed.

My sincere condolences to Dave Maloney's family at this difficult time.

CU

Temporary break in service

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!

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 ........

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.

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.