Oh, no you don't, Rhuby! The causes of the lateness of the trains last night (20 minutes going to London and 1.5 hours going back to Wellybro) were:

(a) Going TO London. A windscreen wiper on the lead TurboStar unit malfunctioned at Nottingham. Since no spares were carried any closer than, I understand, Luton, it could not be repaired and they had to shunt the units ass about face so that the train could continue. This was, apparently, compounded by the fact that the shunters had packed up and gone home about 3 p.m. Apparently the drivers aren't allowed to operate the turntable at Nottingham. You have to have some qualified semi-moron to do it. The train had actually made up nearly 20 minutes by the time it arrived in Wellingborough 20 minutes late. I have to admit that most of this is rumour, but the source seemed good - the station master at Wellybro.

(b) Going FROM London. The train was due to leave at 2340. By the time we got to the station, it was due to leave at 0005. Why? Because the engine driver's wife had rung up to say that her husband had slept in. He finally showed up, apologyless, at 0035. My only half-joking suggestion that we should all go up front and give him a good kicking went down like a lead balloon. Then when they started the train's engines up, an oil line let go on the unit we were in, and we found ourself surrounded by a pall of oil smoke. I seemed to be able to read "incompetence" in the writhing blue/grey streamers. Instead of transferring the passengers immediately to the other unit rake standing at the adjacent platform, they TRIED TO FIX THE DAMNED THING with an adjustable spanner and a screwdriver for nearly quarter of an hour! Finally, they had to admit defeat and transfer us. One of the whatever-you-call-'em railway "workers" said, as we all trouped off the train to get onto the next-door departure platform and into the other one, that the trains shouldn't be allowed to run so late at night anyway and it was just asking for things to go wrong. Presumably, it being dark, an' all. In other words, it was all our fault for wanting the service in the first place. One woman actually seemed to be apologising to him for putting him to such a lot of trouble, but I didn't hear the whole thing. I was running at the time.

And nobody else I saw actually complained. I only found out what had happened to the driver because I did. I might add that sleeping in seems to be a reasonable excuse for the railways not to run on time.

Midland Mainline has no Plan Bs. It's actually hard to see that they have a real Plan A. This kind of thing happens all the time according to those who use the service daily.

It had nothing to do with denationalisation, grasping shareholders, replacement of track, new signals, Tony Blair's birthday, Blunkett's being a site for sore eyes, or any other infrastructural issue. It was just surnormality.






The idiot also known as Capfka ...