Why oh why no 4 revisited

Yippee! It's happened!! Let exclamation marks be brought up from the stores, unwrapped, given a fresh lick of paint and deployed at will!!!  I have finally had a trouble-free journey both ways 'twixt beautiful Ruislip and downright ugly Finchley Road.  No signal failures. No stalled trains. Not even a wayward guard's hat on the track [er, is that a wayward guard or a wayward hat? Anyway they don't have guards any more, haven't had 'em for years. Ed]

So my previous why, oh why can be marked "case closed" and salted down for long-term storage.  That's a relief. But will this be the mark of things to come or is merely a chimerical phantasm [that's the worst kind of phantasm. Ed:], a dream of what may befall, a cruel mocking mirage to be swiftly replaced by severe delays, service outages and advice to use alternative means of transport? I think I better pack up those exclamation marks and put them safely away, just to avoid tempting fate.

Transport catastrophes

First there was a train crash in France on 12 July
Then a very serious derailment in Spain on 24 July
Yesterday a coach disaster in Italy  on 28 July
and now another train crash, in, of all places, Switzerland  is reported today.

This is becoming worrying for those of us who prefer public transport whenever possible and especially on holiday. And these four countries are certainly in my top 10 holiday destinations. I have written in this blog about travels in each of them. I hope and intend to go on holidaying in these countries and will use trains as an automatic first choice of transport. Let us hope this is the end of this horrible sequence and Europe's trains and coaches resume normal, safe, operations.

Why, oh why... (number 4 in this surprisingly durable sequence)

...can I not have a trouble-free commute for a change?

I don't know what is going on. Regular readers [?? Ed:]  will know of the times I have bemoaned the delays whilst commuting, especially on the Piccadilly Line. Nowadays I  travel into town only about once a week. Last week my journey was affected by delays. Today there were severe delays on the Metropolitan due to signal failure at Baker Street which screwed up the line for about 5 hours.  The notice on the LU website advised passengers to use a different line, not too helpful for my plan to go from beautiful Ruislip to Finchley Road for which only the Met is suitable. Fortunately the worst of it was over by the time I had to leave home and apart from a forced detraining at Harrow, the journeys to and fro were OK.  But most days are trouble free. Why (oh why) do these problems hit on the very days that I choose to travel?

The Watford Link

I have seen much expansion of the London Underground network during my lifetime but never on the main line that I use and have used most of my life - the Metropolitan. The changes include the all new Victoria Line, the Piccadilly extension to Heathrow, the Jubilee gaining its independence from the Bakerloo and pushing out via London Bridge to Stratford, the Docklands Light Railway - a brand new system running over many disused mainline tracks and now the Overground line that provides a sort of outer-Circle through the suburbs. But nothing on the Met - indeed it shrank because services beyond Amersham to Aylesbury ceased in 1961. However it is finally expanding again because the Watford branch is to be extended to run up to Watford Junction, with two new stations on the way. The old Watford station will close. Work will begin next year and since nearly all of the route uses a disused mainline, should not take too long, although some spectacular new bridges will be needed.

Hitherto Watford has only been easily accessible by car from beautiful Ruislip. It will be nice to have the option of taking the Met there.

Smug

Chris Froome wins the Tour de France
England obliterate the Aussies at Lords
Heatwave subsides to a perfect afternoon. No plans to commute into central London next week when it may move up a few degrees back to the hot and sweaty.
Nobody seems to be lighting a barbecue anywhere near us in beautiful Ruislip.

That's enough to be going on with. Ed, take the rest of the weekend off. [Thanks awfully. Ed:]