When to ignore

My morning train today was one of the shiny new "S" stock but our driver wasn't happy. Coming into Harrow he warned us that there was trouble ahead and advised everyone to take the fast train that was coming in alongside us. I thought about it and stayed put. I don't know why, other than that I had a comfortable window seat and didn't fancy the crowded, standing, alternative. And they would save little more than a couple of minutes anyway.

We left and the fast train remained. We went more or less normally down to Wembley Park, where it was rumoured there might have been a defective train, but all I noticed was that we overtook another train on the fast track, empty and forlornly waiting outside Preston Road. And at Wembley Park we continued normally. So anyone who had left my train at Harrow was still stuck way behind, going nowhere. Possibly the train we had passed was the defective one. Or maybe it had decided to join in the fun and become defective as well.

As if that wasn't enough raw excitement for one day, at Baker Street on the homeward leg they were dispensing with trains for Watford and telling passengers inclined to go in that general direction to take the first train to Harrow. And as if to compensate there were plenty of Uxbridges. Mine pulled in to Harrow and then onward, with quite a fair sized crowd on the Watford platforms left behind to wait. Ah me. Plenty of times I've stood awaiting an Uxbridge whilst the other lot sailed through. But the stumper is this - the explanation for the problem was a defective train at Farringdon. And it is mostly Uxbridges that come up from that neck of the woods. So where did all the Watfords go?  And was this defective train any relation of this morning's casualties?