Argh! Trains!

[hmmm_tea]

Just got back from IVFDF, which must make it now around 9.30 - 10pm judging by the time I was expecting to get home.

OK, getting stuck on a train outside Kettering for 3 hours was frustrating. The fact that the "train manager" didn't know a lot about it other than it was some fault in the signals was also frustrating. However, neither were really the train companies fault and can be coped with.

What really really annoyed me was when they decided to terminate the nice fast (if late due to sitting outside Kettering for 3 hours) train to St Pancras at Bedford without any explanation other than "because we're late". This left everyone waiting 25 minutes for the stopping train into London (there didn't appear to be any attempt to get the one 5 minutes before that to wait for the whole train full of people wanting to go to London).

Is there some unwritten rule that once a train becomes late enough that all the passengers are disgruntled, the train company should cease to care about them as there is no one left to stop liking them? Surely, once delays have occurred to your paying customers, you want to minimise these to make there impact as small as possible? I'm not sure how train punctuality is measured, but perhaps the focus is too heavily on the proportion that are on time rather than the mean delay (or something else that takes into account how late trains are when they are late).

As it was I narrowly caught the last train home, after the lack of tube/thameslink through London forced me to either risk there not being a bus in the narrow time frame I had to find the stop and catch it or get a cab (I did the latter not fancying a nightbus adventure after a weekend away at IVFDF).

Aside from that, IVFDF was fun.

Comments

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Perhaps if it had gone to London it would have been late turning into another service and picking up all the people on the way back as well?

[hmmm-tea.livejournal.com]

Yes, that would have been understandable, but I think given the situation, if that was the case, the least they could have done was to say that was the reason.

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

Ooh, IVFDF. I should go again one year :-)

I just keep forgetting it's on because it's not in the summer with all the other festivals :-)

[hmmm-tea.livejournal.com]

It's at Exeter (http://www.events.ex.ac.uk/ivfdf2009/home.php) next year.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Another annoying thing is when they suddenly make a stopping train into a fast one ... desperately annoying when you live in one of the intermediate villages.

[hmmm-tea.livejournal.com]

I think it depends on why they do it. If there's another stopping train not far behind and they warn you, so you have chance to get off and change train, then it makes sense.