themodelcommuter

I knew yesterday was going to be bad when I got to the station to find two trains claiming to be the 08:3whateveritis, one at the usual spot on platform 4 and one at platforms 3 (with the indicator boards telling us that there had been a platform alteration and it was leaving from platform 3). There was some kind of announcement as I walked up the platform but I was wired into the iPod at volume 11 and didn’t hear what they said other than one of the two trains was broken. The presence of many One platform staff walking about, walkie-talkie’s in hand was not reassuring. Still, as I passed the front of the train on platform 3 I overheard one of the staff members telling the train driver to just shut the doors and pull off. Result, thinks I, that’ll move, the 08:45 will come, we can all be on our way.

No such luck. The train pulled forward from the 4 car stop sign to the 8 car stop sign and then just stopped. The doors remained closed and the signals remained red. Not good. A few minutes later the train on platform 4 began to move which was a little disconcerting. The only place it had to go was right into the back of the train on platform 3… which is exactly what it did. The station staff then repeated the announcement I had missed, that the trains were being joined to form one train as one had failed. They would form some late running earlier service calling everywhere and we may as well get on it. Figuring that the intercity would be stuck behind us and that the platform staff knew best I ignored my instinct to wait and jumped on the slow train.

All was good (or as good as it can be on a slow mainline style train) until we got to Whitam. It would seem that Whitam has more than 2 platforms and we’d been shoved on to the little used (by me at least) platform 1, whereupon we waited. After a few minutes it became obvious why we were being held there as the 08:45 barrelled through the station at well in excess of 100mph. The word ‘bugger’ leapt instantly to mind. Next time I will follow my instinct and wait for the Intercity.

~ by The Model Commuter on August 18, 2007.