Sadley I caught my usual 17.20 tonight only to watch the 17.30 and 17.50 pull out before us. I eventually arrived in Tinsel Town 30 minutes late.
The cause of todays distaster was firstly due to our driver still driving an inbound service which was late due to an incident in my home town of Wakefield. I usually bristle with Yorkshire pride when I here my home town mentioned but not today. Today I just cursed the place. The announcement said he had just passing through Potters Bar and was due in to KK at 17.27 and we would be leaving at 17.30. I decided to stay put as I thought we were moe likely to move before the 17.30. Wrong.
I watched the 17.30 leave and gave a glum wave at a couple of mates as they passed. We started to pull out 3 minutes later. I say started to pull out becasue we moved about 50 feet and stopped. The Guard came back on the tanoy and told us a passenger had attempted to leave the train just as we started to pull out and they had triggered the auto stop thingy. An engineer had been called and we would be moving soon. If you call 20 minutes soon then you'd have been happy. I wasn't because we were constantly told to remain seated becasue were off in a minute. How I wish I'd listened to my gut instinct to get the hell off just as soon as we were delayed.
For those of you that don't travel regularly it's always a conundrem of what to do when your delayed. You know some of the things the announcments tell you are acurate but you can't tell which ones. My advice is to follow your gut instinct. Im convinced that our guts learn each time we travel and over time, it learns to interpret the evidence a lot better than our brains. Sure they get it wrong sometimes but thats usually because there is so much miss-information flying around, you'd need to be a super computer to solve the puzzel of what to do next to get you home as easily and as quickly as possible. That or a GNER employee.
Finaly I saw what some of the money GNER raised from Parking fees, has been spent on. Remember? I mentioned a few days ago that new uniforms for crew had been ordered. Well they've obviously arrived because the train crew were all decked out in their new togs and they looked very smart too. With the exception of the fact that I'd sooner have seen them spend the money on keeping ticket prices down, the only other negative comment I'll make is that GNER are trying a little too hard to be an airline. I'd sooner have seen them put a little effort into them developing their own identity. Still, that's just my view.