Disruption last night (Monday 18th Oct)

I actually wrote this entry 24 hours ago, but owing to some kind of problem with blogger, which has now cleared, I was unable to post until now. Lucky I saved what I had written...

This incident was the "final straw", prompting me to start this blog, though how much blame should actually go to wagn or the rail operators in general is unclear. My evening was completely screwed up, as I had to wait in for a guest I was expecting. She should have arrived soon after 8pm, having come from Brussels on the Eurostar (now there's a half-decent service - though not perfect) arriving at Waterloo at about 6:30. With strict instructions to take the Bakerloo line from Waterloo to Oxford Circus, joining a carriage near the middle of the train, from where she should, on disembarking at Oxford Circus, be able to walk 20 yards through a tunnel to the Victoria line platform to board another tube to King's Cross. 20 minutes, tops, Eurostar to KX mainline (& it also works in reverse). Sometimes the Victoria and Bakerloo line trains can even get synchronised at Oxford Circus, so you can nip through the tunnel and hop on the next tube just before it leaves. See how useful this site can be? But I digress.

My guest finally arrived around 11pm, a good 2 1/2 hours late. Naturally I wanted to know what happened. She'd arrived at King's Cross to find the Cambridge service delayed, and of course gone to the information desk to ask how long she would have to wait. He advised that "it would depend how long it took them to clear up the blood and bone". She's mentioned this several times so I expect those are pretty close to the actual words spoken. How professional is that? First, it was unnecessarily alarmist. She mentioned it to her husband - she happens to come from peaceful Estonia - who, no doubt wondering what violent country she was visiting (remember July 7th?), and, like her, envisaging mass carnage, said something like: "Thank God, you're alive". Second, as I realised when I heard all this, what had actually happened was a regular occurrence, i.e. a "fatality on the line", usually a suicide. I confirmed this later at the information section on the useful national railway site, on the cleared service bulletin list:

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THIS INCIDENT HAS BEEN CLEARED
Fatality on the line at Hadley Wood, between Stevenage and London
Kings Cross / Moorgate

Time Reported: 19:32
Route Affected: All services to and from London Kings Cross and Moorgate
TOC/s Affected: GNER, Hull Trains, Wagn
Description: Train services between Stevenage and London Kings Cross
(GNER & Hull Trains), and Stevenage and Moorgate (WAGN) are being
disrupted due to a fatality on the line at Hadley Wood. Short notice
alterations, cancellations and delays can be expected. There is
currently no estimate for normal services to resume
Updates: 20:41 Train services have now resumed through Hadley Wood
with ongoing delays
Time reported cleared: 22:10
-------------

This is so regular an occurrence (I was held up by "a fatality on the line" a few weeks ago, on one of my typically eventful rail journeys to watch Southampton FC), that there are procedures for dealing with it. I know this because there was a programme on the BBC about the poor bastards who have to deal with these incidents. An hour's delay should be caused. So what KX Information should have said was something like: "Services should get back to normal in an hour." He might also have discussed with her the option of going to Liverpool Street, although this would probably not have been worth doing (KX to Liverpool Street by tube takes forever, it seems to me - though maybe I should time it sometime! - and the Liverpool Street services to Cambridge take longer).

It's still a mystery to me why my guest was 2 1/2 hours rather than just one hour late. I assume that trains were all stuck behind each other. What she's also told me is that the train she'd been trying to catch (I was expecting her to get the 19:15, but if the of the incident - 19:32 - above, is correct, she must have already been delayed and been trying to get the 19:45) showed as DELAYED on the departure board for some time. As soon as it stopped saying DELAYED she went to the platform to find it had already gone! So poor information provision played a part.

I'm of the view that we don't need more staff on the network or even at the station - since they cost money - just to deploy them more efficiently (no doubt I'll have more to say on this another time), but I can't help noting that wagn have started employing huge numbers of ticket-inspectors on trains. Shame they are not trying to help their customers with the same enthusiasm.

The 19:45(?) was probably over-crowded by the time it left, anyway. Running trains full (or from about 17:00 to about 19:00, over-full) may be efficient for wagn, but amplifies the effect of any disruption to the service.

It may also have been that my guest took a stopping train to Cambridge rather than a fast train en route to King's Lynn. The platform level signs at King's Cross are unforgiving to anyone unfamiliar with the service. It's not easy to work out which is the fastest train to Cambridge, for example. And unlike everywhere else in the world our train information displays never mention destination times.

So the train operators may be (moderately) happy that they apparently cleared the problem in 1 hr, 9 minutes (19:32 - 20:41 in the report above). Their target for getting services going again, is, I believe 1 hour (I will try to confirm this some time). But the wait I experienced for my guest was considerably more. It's time the rail operators started focusing on the customer experience, not internal targets of no relevance to customers.