March Summary

On the whole quite good. The Hammersmith & City line only held me up 3 times and First Great Western only twice. Add to that one traffic jam. So 5 out of 23 or 78% trouble free. My measurement is greatly at odds with the official figures which rank themselves considerably higher. I expected nothing less.

March 30 - another cancellation

Once again I arrived at Maidenhead in plenty of time, only to be met with "the 07:08 to Paddington has been cancelled". To add insult to injury the H&C line decided to do its customary crawl stop, crawl stop act all the way.

March 22 - Cancelled train

Today it's First Great Western's turn to throw gremlins in my weary path. For no given reason the 07:08 was simply marked as cancelled, probably due to lack of interest or attention or the driver's inability to rise out of bed.

March 21 - Hammersmith & City Snail

Today it took me a mere 25 minutes to cover the distance between Maidenhead to Paddington but a staggering 40 minutes to cover the remaining distance to Barbican! Apparently at some undetermined time there were signalling problem in Aldgate. Stop, crawl, stop crawl, all the way.

March 19 - Adding insult to injury

Today I got a letter from First Great Western apologising for all the delays in December and hinting at further delays all the way to 2013. In compensation they gave me 1 (one) return first class ticket. Do they believe that first class gets to the destination any sooner? What use is that to an annual season ticket holder? Do they think I want to travel on their service any more than I have to? Unreal!

March 16 - Traffic

I knew I shouldn't have been so enthusiastic. It was an act of pure optimism. The morning commute went without incident and I even got a seat. On the evening commute I managed to make all the connections and was well ahead only to be brought to complete halt by a broken down lorry on the M4. Oh well, plans, mice and men and all that.

March 14 - The new route

The car journey takes a predictable 15 minutes, the same time that it previously took me to walk to Wargrave station. The 07:08 was late, which meant that I managed to catch this delayed, earlier train and arrive at my end destination a good half hour sooner. There was no seating on the train but the tube yielded me a seat at Farringdon. So far so good.

The return journey worked like a dream too and may well remain as a dream. The evil transport demons probably haven't had time to track me down and throw their gremlins under my path yet.

March 8 - The last journey from Wargrave

Today marks my last journey from Wargrave. A fond goodbye to the regulars I meet on the lone platform Richard, Peter and Ian. On the 14th my trek will start and end at Maidenhead so I anticipate that the journey will be "standing only" by then.

March 3 - Stalled train at Euston Square

Having received a glowing report in February the H&C line promptly reverted to its normal inefficient self. Quite how an electric train stalls is beyond me. Anyway, that was the reason given that the train I was on was stopped at Edgware Road and then having dumped a full load of passengers onto an already overcrowded platform, reversed its course back to Hammersmith. I managed to get onto the second train and play a very intimate version of the game Sardines for the rest of the way to the Barbican.