Our old friend "signal failure" made another unwelcome appearance tonight, at Moorgate for a change, causing severe delays on the Metropolitan. Or did it? The departure boards appeared to show a normal service and when I arrived at Baker Street around 6:25pm there was an Uxbridge train waiting for me and ready to leave. So far so good. And it was one of the new "S" Stock. But not so fast, Inspector. It was jammed almost full and the internal indicators said "Not in service".
Hmmm...if it was really out of service then why were so many of my fellow commuters aboard? I decided to go with the majority for once and ignore the message. And I was right for we did leave pretty shortly, with the driver assuring us that the indicators were wrong. I must admit that when he started his announcement I thought he was going to say that, as the boards were faulty, the whole train was going out of service. That would indeed have been loads of fun. Or not.
So I was not, in the end, delayed at all but the price of a fast journey home was having to stand all the way to Harrow. Plenty of people left at the intermediate stations but the train was so very full, and as I have commented on other occasions, these new trains have markedly fewer seats than the "A" stock that they are replacing, so standing room only it was.
Wouldn't it be nice to have a new signalling system as well as the new trains?
No comments:
Post a Comment