I've Gone Off Chiltern Railways

On a number of occasions in the last few weeks, I've dashed up to Marylebone to find that Chiltern Railways have cancelled the 18:37 High Wycombe service.

It's quite annoying when this happens as my next train is not until 19:03.

Chiltern Railways don't seem to make a habit of cancelling many other trains. Just the 18:37.

It was particularly annoying today as I'd had to go to Cardiff today and had left London Paddington at 7:00 am. After a long journey back to London, to say that I was peeved at having half an hour added to my journey unnecessarily would be an understatement,

Grrr.

PS Cardiff was good - I even managed a side-trip to visit Llandaff Cathedral.

Airport Security Checks (Part 1)

For reasons I won't bore you with, I have travelled through four UK airports in the last week or so.

In alphabetical order, those airports are:

1. Durham Tees Valley (Teeside)
2. Edinburgh
3. London Heathrow
4. Newquay

Now, see if you can match the following descriptions of my experiences of the security checks at each airport:

• a) Hi-tech (digital photo taken, barcode placed on boarding pass). Small queues. Efficient.
• b) Massive queue but well managed. Loads of tourists getting stuff confiscated. Grave danger of missing flight if extra time not allowed.
• c) Ten Minutes from getting off bus to being in departure lounge. No queue. Efficient and effective.
• d) Officious. Over the top. Plenty of staff.

I'll provide the answers in a day or so.

I Like Chiltern Railways

Baker Street London Underground Station was closed today between about 09:30am and 6:00pm due to a major gas leak outside the station. Trains were running through (but not stopping). Baker Street is a major interchange so this will have been a major pain for many people.

When I got home tonight I noticed the following on the Chiltern Railways website. Chiltern operate from nearby Marylebone Station:

"Baker Street LUL station closure:

Due to temporary closure of Baker street station we will be operating a shuttle service during the peak to run between Marylebone & Harrow.

Marylebone - Harrow departure times: 16.10, 16.50, 17.35, 18.30 & 19.10.
Harrow - Marylebone departure times: 16.27, 17.07, 17.55, 18.50 & 19.27.

Update 18.20 hrs: Baker Street station has reopened, we will still be running the shuttle services as advertised."

I think this is a great example of Chiltern's approach to customer service. I have no idea of the economics of doing what they did, but it can have been no mean feat finding rolling stock and track capacity like this during peak hours.

Credit where credit is due!

Time to take a Chill Pill

Ealing Broadway... Again. West bound Central Line, wait 4 minutes outside station. Departing train goes past in opposite direction. Pull forward into station- both Central Line platforms empty... grrrrr.

Then, half an hour later, First Great[?] Western decided to cancel my train from West Ealing although at least this time they did announce the cancellation. I think the hot weather must be getting to me.

Central Line - Trainee Controller in Evening Peaks?

Sorry about the gap, almost as big as the one between the train and the platform at Bank.

Ealing Broadway, end of the Central Line. Two platforms.

Imagine... train in one platform. Another train arrives into second platform, train in first platform departs. New train arrives in first platform, train in second platform departs. And so on. It is not difficult and it's how any four year old child would organise their toy trains.

So [rant] why can't the Central Line Control Centre get it right?

In the last two weeks I have travelled into Ealing Broadway on three occasions in the evening peak. Twice, our train has sat outside the terminus while BOTH trains in the platforms have been allowed to depart. When it happened this week, not only did I miss my connecting train, but may I point out that standing for five minutes in direct sun, with an outside temperature of over 30 Degrees is not my idea of fun. [/rant]

Even the train driver mildly rebuked the line controller for causing an unnecessary delay. Ho hum.

Queensway Station- Two sides of a coin!

Central Line users will be well aware that Queensway Station has been closed for over a year for refurbishment work.

The station was due to reopen last month. The reopening date was then put back to today- the station has not reopened.

Now I am not too bothered by the further delay, as the closure has meant slightly quicker journeys in and out of London. I do however accept that the lengthy closure will have been a pain for some. By the way, no sooner will Queensway reopen than Lancaster Gate will close, I think for three months. Oh dear.


Anyhow, back on topic, your homework for now is to compare and contrast the following two press releases. The first is from London Underground, the second is from Metronet...

Enjoy!

1. Queensway station opening delayed again
2. Metronet completes Queensway Station

Leprachorns in South Ruislip

No Central Line anywhere west of Marble Arch for three days. Replacement buses out west are usually fairly good- except yesterday the entire London ex-pat community from the Emerald Isle seem to have descended on South Ruislip for a football match. I don't do football, but I've found this article (might as well be Double Dutch). Google news here (will dry up after a few days). Mayo? I don't even UNDERSTAND the score!

I ended up catching a train to High Wycombe from West Ruislip, bumped into a couple of friends while I was there but otherwise had a fairly quiet day (the first with no rain for a while).

I'm off work this week, so will nip into the office later to drop off some papers. To bed early tonight as I have to be up and out by six tomorrow morning. Explanations in a week.

From London Underground Life: Email From A Friend (Cab related)

Have a read of this post:London Underground Life: Email From A Friend. It made me think and suspect it may cause you to as well.

Clarification: What is a Chav?

A short while ago I made a post entitled 'Chavs On The Line'. It has since become clear that I have a greater working knowledge of some modern useage of the English language, than many of my friends and acquaintances. This surprises me.

Anyway, click here for guidance from Wikipedia on what constitutes a Chav. Summarised as:

"Chav is a derogatory slang term in popular usage throughout the UK. It refers to a subculture stereotype of a person who is uneducated, uncultured and prone to antisocial or immoral behaviour. The label is typically, though not exclusively, applied to teenagers and young adults of white working-class or lower-middle class origin."

Just to carry on the theme, I chortled and chortled when I saw the attached on one of District Dave's Message boards. There is a perception that Chavham ought to be posh- it isn't!

The Opposite of Rant?

Apologies for the delay in posting anything. The reason?.... Everything has been going just too well.

Over the last couple of weeks I have experienced numerous journeys using:

• London Underground (Central, Piccadilly, Jubilee, Bakerloo and Northern)
• Docklands Light Railway
• South West Trains (Waterloo to Andover and back)
• First Great Western
• Chiltern Railways

And in all those journeys, not a single delay. Not a sausage. Not a second lost. Pretty good.

This weekend no Central Line at all west of Marble Arch. Not a delay, as such, but still a pain.

BTW, hope you had a happy Easter and have recovered from any chocolate poisening. Toodle-pip.

Rant: The Art of Communication (First Great Western)

First Great Western (until last week 'First Great Western Link' and previously called 'Thames Trains') operate a service from London Paddington to Greenford and back. The service runs twice an hour for about 15 hours a day, Monday to Saturday.

Having previously checked posters for any mention of engineering work, I went to catch the 09:56 Greenford to Paddington service yesterday morning. The train never arrived. At about 10:05, I decided to proceed with my life and left the platform.

Please bear in mind the following points:

• No announcements were made at Greenford station
• At no time did the departure screen show any train times
• Engineering works posters made no explicit reference to service altertions to the line
• Despite extensive searching, I could find no reference on the First Great Western website to any amended service patterns. I am not saying they weren't there, just that I couldn't find them.

For those who have been bothered to read this far, the reality was:

• Due to weekend engineering works affecting the main lines between Hanwell and Hayes, the services to/ from Greenford were reduced to one per hour, departing Greenford at xx:43.
• The only place I could find any indication of the revised service was on the National Rail Live Departures page.

While travelling on the line later in the day, there were people waiting on 'opposite' platforms at most stations (ie they didn't know that there was only one train per hour).

I hope that ignoring the effect of service changes on Greenford branch line passengers from publicity material is not a sign of the new Franchisee's attitude to the line and its continued existence.

Chiltern Railways Celebrate Centenary with Steam

Having seen off the Spring downpour at lunchtime today, it turned into a pleasant afternoon.

Chiltern Railways were celebrating the centenary of the line through Gerrards Cross and Beaconsfield by running a series of steam trains over the weekend.

West Ruislip is a convenient viewing point for me and a couple of the resulting photographs are shown here.

Despite the general tone of this blog, I am not what would generally be called a Train 'Enthusiast' (!) and these are, to the best of my recollection, my first attempt at train photography. That cannot be said for all the other people crowding the platforms!


Edit: October 2009. The pictures appearing on this page have always been hosted on a Yahoo Geocities webserver. For some reason the page is the most popular on this blog (to date), which is a bit unfortunate as Yahoo are shutting the Geocities servers down at the end of the month. The pictures have therefore been moved onto the Blogger platform - hopefully Google will still manage to find them!

Chavs on the Line

Well done to the Chiltern Railways' Ticket inspector on the 14:00 train from High Wycombe towards London Marylebone this afternoon.

A couple of female teenage Chavs got on the train at Beaconsfield and proceeded to play rap type music from a mobile phone and generally acting in a loutish manner.

Challenged by the Ticket Collector for their tickets they came up with the biggest bunch of lame excuses one can imagine for not having purchased any tickets. The best line from him was "Where are you going to?". They said "Denham". He said "Oh no you're not, you are getting off the train with me at Gerrards Cross". Class!

Baggage gets an extra day in Geneva

And the reason for another break in entries.... yes another holiday. This time to the 'La Marmotte' hotel in the great ski resort of Les Gets at the end of the enormous 'Portes du Soleil' ski area.

We had a huge amount of fresh snow while we were there, no really blue sky days and one day of sleet and rain. However over all we had a fantastic time because the skiing was so good.

As for the travel:

• London Underground to Victoria, then the Gatwick Express (five minutes late, which shouldn't really happen at £14 a go).
• British Airways Flight from Gatwick to Geneva (15 Minutes late arriving). Emergency aisle seats (good), one bolshy stewardess (not good).
• Shared Airport Transfer Service transfer from the airport to resort. Good value, but with a scheduled pick-up of 17:40, we eventually left the airport at 19:45. Motto: "Book a private transfer". Still driver James got us to the hotel in time for dinner.

The return journey was, shall we say 'interesting.

• The transfer back was booked with 2 hours to last check-in at the airport. Following a delayed start (bad traffic from Morzine), horrendous queues, snow chains and a side road, driver David got us to the airport with four minutes to spare. I think more by good luck on his part than good management on the part of the transfer company. Some of our fellow transferees will most certainly have missed their flight. Thank goodness for the BA Self-Service Check-In service. It helped us to catch the flight, bypassing a line of about 50 people in the process.
• The flight back was great- we had our own little row of seats at the back of our Boeing 737. We got a choice of sandwiches, chatty and friendly crew and generally rather enjoyable.

• Unfortunately it all went a little awry at Gatwick. After a few minutes it became apparent that only two of our bags had made it onto the flight, but my main luggage was missing. Gill had a taxi waiting so after ticking off her luggage receipts and us saying our goodbyes after a great week, I had to initiate the 'Lost Luggage' process. I have to say that we only just checked in on time at Geneva. By the time I got home, I was able to tell online that my bag was having an extra night's holiday in Geneva. By 9.45am this morning, I received a telephone call from Gatwick Airport to say my bag had arrived. I then had two automated calls- the second was at 2.45pm to say my bag would be delivered by 3.30pm. A man in a little white van delivered my bag at 3.05pm.

• I decided to get a Southern train back from Gatwick to Victoria (£4.60 with my Goldcard)- it took the same time as my outward jorney on the Gatwick Express (£14), the train was cleaner and less crowded.

Oh and a little footnote to my underground journey home- what looked like a gang of steamers boared my carriage one station from home, moved from the rear carriage to the next (pity the 'Danger of Death' notices didn't work) and proceeded to act with menace at my home station. I was able to leave the station without incident, but there were BTP and Met police vans and cars whizzing up the road within minutes. "Welcome home", I thought to myself.

Thameslink & Midland Mainline (Oh - and a bit of skiing!)

I was fortunate enough to be skiing last week in Kitzbuhel, Austria. This involved charter flights between 'London' Luton Airport and Salzburg.

The Thameslink fast service I caught was great and bang on time. The Midland Mainline service back to St Pancras last Saturday was even quicker (21 mins) and very comfortable. With my annual Gold Card, it was only £9.75 return. Bargain!

Mind you, I didn't think much of the station layout at St Pancras which is in the middle of a major redevelopment.

The skiing in Kitzbuhel was great. Claire, Elaine, Colin, Pauline, Frances and Zoe, thank you for putting up with me. It's been back to work with a bump this week.

A while to the next blog. Sorry.

The Crossroad of the World

An early trip to Heathrow Terminal 4 this morning to meet my father who was returning from a five week visit to Delhi in India. He was well and was pleased to see my mother and I, though I suspect he will be glad to be home. There will no doubt be plenty of pictures and stories to see and hear over the coming months.

For those who don't know, London Heathrow is the World's busiest international airport and early morning is when a huge proportion of the long-haul flights arrive. You certainly see all sorts of people and every emotion!

For stalkers, the route today was:

• Out: Bus 140 to LHR123; Heathrow Express (free) to Terminal 4.
• Back: Rail replacement Coach to Hatton Cross, Piccadillly Line to Northfields, E2 bus to West Ealing, to Greenford on First Great Western Link, then the last leg on the Central Line.

Not a single hitch either way, so having got up at 5.30am I can now go for a snooze before I get on with my weekend tasks.

Too good to be true?

I've done a lot of travelling around this week. By way of example:

1 Day: Central line to Bond Street, Jubilee Line to Waterloo, South West Trains to Portsmouth Harbour, Fast Cat to Ryde, Train down Pier, Train back up Pier, Fast Cat to Portsmouth Harbour, South West Trains to Clapham Junction, South West Trains to sister's house, bus to Hounslow, tube home. On time all day. Fantastic! The reason for the journey was less happy.

2 Day: Bus to Heathrow, Plane to Glasgow, Bus to Glasgow City Centre, Bus back to Glasgow International Airport, Plane to Heathrow (left 20 minutes late, but landed on time), bus home. On time the whole day.

The above were on Wednesday and Thursday. On other days I have been using the Underground, Chiltern Railways and First Great Western Link. All without a single delay or problem all week.

Today I'm off down to Hampshire via Reading and Basingstoke. It usually works well, but I've no doubt just put a jinx on it.

Have a good weekend.

It's all going too well

My experience of the Central Line this week:
No delays, no gaps in service, no passenger action. Fantastic.

Don't tell Bob Crow.

A Sad Day

My sister called today to tell me that her Father-in-Law had died this morning. He had been unwell for a while and died while playing golf at his local course on the Isle of Wight. Geoff was a busy man and lived life to the full.

I last saw Geoff on Christmas Day when my sister had eleven for lunch. An enjoyable day to remember him by. My Brother-in-Law with my young nephew spent Boxing Day Tuesday with Geoff at the rugby, so they will have happy memories.

My thoughts are with Pat and all her family at this sad time.

Now is not the time to go into my latest game of Travel Roulette while returning home.

Link added much later:

• Old Rydeian Association

The Cumulative Effect of a Number of 'Minor Delays'

Public transport in London's suburbia is extensive. However, unless you are very lucky, it is highly likely that when traveling any distance you will need to change bus, tube or train at least once to reach your destination.

Sometimes the number of possible route combinations between A and B are so high that choosing how to make any particular journey can be like playing a game of Travel Roulette.

Last night I played.... and lost.

1. Bus towards Hounslow bus garage. Driver: "There's an incident at the Bus Garage and I'm not allowed to go there. I'm only going as far as the Treaty Centre. I got off at the Treaty Centre, walked an extra half mile past the Bus Garage (noting absolutely nothing out of the ordinary) and joined the Piccadilly Line.
2. When a London bound Piccadilly Line train arrived, all seemed fine. The train moved off and then crawled the whole way to Acton Town. The only announcement was made by the driver at Northfields when, after a three minute wait, he said 'I apologise for the delay. This is to allow the train behind us to catch up.' Total of 10 minutes added to timetable train running time.
   
3. At Acton Town the wait for a Rayners Lane train had been so long that I decided to spin the wheel again and take a District Line to Ealing Broadway to catch the Greenford Flyer from there. Twenty minute wait in all.
4. All was well at Ealing Broadway- my timings worked well and I changed onto the Greenford train within a couple of minutes. Then we stopped (presumably at a red signal) for seven or eight minutes before we even got to West Ealing. Other than a signalling failure/ blip I can think of no logical reason for this. No announcement.
5. The interchange at Greenford back onto the Central Line was good- a train arrived within a minute.
6. Ninety minutes door to door. My record on a similar variant to this route is 40 minutes,

It was the first time I had thrown the Greenford Line option into this particular route home. I was unlucky as I wouldn't usually need to consider it. On this occasion, maybe I should simply have caught the 120 Bus from Hounslow- the trouble is I have previously been delayed so much on that route that I only use it as a last resort.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing!

[Memo to Central User: Find something more positive to say]