Choo choo!

UPDATE: a seven minute delay to the train from Wimbledon to Hampton Court coming home this evening.  £17.50 more for the coffers.


Made it onto the 08:24, thanks to better traffic conditions than yesterday, and aggressive (but accident-free, at least in my immediate vicinity) driving.  That train was delayed by eight minutes for no particular reason, which meant I had to get a later Bakerloo Line train than planned.  This one, however, ran on time, so I ended up 'only' eight minutes late at my final destination, Edgware Road.  Or, as TfL likes to call it "on time".

In other news, if you're a retailer in Holloway, TfL is trialling the latest endeavour in its evil master plan to choke commerce in the entire city of London: fining people for shopping.

When is a delay not a delay?

Quite an adventure this morning: traffic problems made me miss my original train from Hampton Court, so I had to wait half an hour for another.  In the absence of any advice to the contrary from my previous post, I'm going to continue not charging for this form of delay.

However, I am going to charge for the three minutes' delay arriving in Waterloo on the train I did take, which was due to being held at a red signal outside Vauxhall because of overcrowding.

I'm also going to charge for the reasons behind this, which were chaos caused by the suspension of the Victoria Line (irrelevant to me) and an earlier signal failure on the Bakerloo Line (which I needed to take), the latter causing a further minute of delay.  I suspect that these delays worked in my favour, because given TfL was advertising 'severe' delays on the Bakerloo Line this morning, I think the 09:37 I caught was probably a very delayed earlier tube - and it's only my final delay that counts.  You lucked out, TfL!

Or did it?  I make this three new strikes for this week's Tube Bingo card: overcrowding, red signal, and signal failure, to be added to yesterday's sitting in a tunnel for no reason.  My card for the week is below, and I'll add another 4 minutes and £10 to the tally.

Finally, I note at Hampton Court station, South West Trains has removed its poster asking you to vote for their employees in National Customer Service Week.  Do we think this is:

1. Because of reading my earlier post?
2. Because they realised the absurdity of the proposition?
3. Because they decided they were too cheap after all to offer those first class tickets?
4. Because they'd already received so much abuse from passengers instead of nominations?

UPDATE: total of five minutes' delay on the way home.  No reasons given.  £12.50.