Transport Issues: Strikes, Engineering Works, Bad Weather, etc.

[Ian Macmillan]

As a general reflection, the Times had an article some days back about changes to rail travel arising from the increase in 'working from home' - significantly fewer season tickets being sold and engineering works being allowed to go on into the week, especially on Mondays. 

[LinMM]

Well I didn’t realise that they were actually building a new station in South Cambridge. I imagine this will be useful for you Dawnstar in the future. 
It will certainly be nearer to Sawston where my friends live but  just hope bus connections to it will be good too!! 
If Thameslink doesn’t serve it though then might not be so useful. 

 

[Dawnstar]

@LinMM Cambridge South is for Addenbrooke's hospital & the associated biomedical campus so it won't be any use to me (unless I happen to have a hospital appointment). I don't even know if many trains will stop there late at night or if it'll just be for during the day. It's being built before the lines diverge, hence why both lines keep on being closed at the same time, so it should be served by both Great Northern/Thameslink and Greater Anglia.

[alison]

District and circle lines currently suspended.

[Dawnstar]

I was thinking only a couple of days ago that at least leaves on the line aren't going to currently be a cause of train delays. Except today they are, only the leaves in question are still attached to a tree branch that is currently blocking the Liverpool Street line! I hope it gets removed before I need to travel down to London in just under 4 hours' time. I really don't want to have to get a lift into Cambridge to get the Kings Cross line as there are currently at least 3 sets of roadworks en route so the traffic will be even worse than it usually is during the rush hour.

[alison]

Best of luck, Dawnstar.🤞

[Dawnstar]

My train turned up only 5 minutes late so as long as it doesn't get significantly more delayed during the course of the next hour then it should be okay...

[alison]

One of the best things about early-start performances is that you can get home that much earlier, and still have some evening left.  Except when you can't   

 

I'd already resigned myself to missing my early train this evening, but had assumed that I could make the later one easily enough, possibly fitting in a very quick bit of shopping before I did so.  As it was, I ended up having to run for it, and just squeezed in (I use the word advisedly) before it left.  My bus app indicated that I could get off at my office and conveniently pick up the bus home from there.  It lied: I got to the bus stop to find it had already gone a couple of minutes previously   Never mind: just time to pop into the shop and do that bit of shopping I'd missed earlier, before it closes.  I then end up waiting 30 minutes for a bus which is allegedly every 20.  The irony is that I could just as easily have waited for what would have been my "early" train from a 7.30 start and still made that same bus.  And it was running so late that it got me home less than 10 minutes before my "late" late train+bus combination half-an-hour later usually does!

 

At the end of an unusually stressful week, I really could have done without this.  I hope it hasn't totally taken the gloss off the after-effects of tonight's Ashton performance.

 

To add insult to injury, as I was hurrying towards the station I suddenly had that nasty feeling that I might be starting a blister on my heel.  Sure enough, when I checked later I realised that a hole had indeed appeared in the lining of my sandal.  Another pair for the bin, then