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!