It was all going so well last week, with no major delays apart from the odd safety inspection causing 10 min delays. A tweet from GA even went up proclaiming no short formed trains one evening. All was well with the world. Then on Friday Mother Nature said oh no you don't and stepped in with a vengence. And it's your fault you know. All of you who leave your tv's and x-boxes on standby overnight, who leave the microwave plugged in with the clock on, who need a nightlight on because you're scared of the dark it's your fault! That's what we are told is responsible for the increase in extreme weather anyway. And so it came to pass, in fact it passed down so hard that it turned Manor Park into a paddling pool bang on 5pm Friday. God has impeccible timing - clearly doesn't run anything to do with public transport - and as we know from 153314's experience at Lowestoft last years trains don't do paddling. GA posted this pic to show what was going on...
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| Manor Park Station Friday afternoon with a class 315 going "ooh, ooh that's cold"!! |
Now you would have thought completely buggering up the afternoon peak on a Friday would have been enough divine retribution but no, Saturday morning saw a repeat performance, this time at Witham. Although it didn't have quite the same magnitude as the Manor Park flood it was still impressive enough to cause considerable inconvenience to those travelling Saturday morning.
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| Witham Station Saturday Morning pic by itv |
I defy anyone to blame GA for these incidents. Not even Notwork Rail can be held responsible for the weather - except how the network copes with light snow obviously, so for the sake of rail passengers PLEASE turn those little red lights off at night!!
PS This morning Southeastern services through the Medway Towns were in utter chaos due to overunning engineering works at Strood. Sure I've heard something similar around here in recent weeks...........
Comforting to realise, though, that our Victorian forebears were just as addicted to the quick fix as we are. Saving money, time and effort they ploughed the railways through all the low-lying land they could find, where of course the houses weren't . More haste, less complaints! Have you noticed how modern developments always get the worst of the weather, too? The cost of democracy, do what you can get away with.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was working on Southeastern 15 years ago Strood tunnel was closed for nearly a year while they tackled flooding and roof problems. The link was made to a new housing development which had led to the draining of a stream that ran parallel to the tunnel - thus taking water away from the tunnel. At least the Victorians had the excuse of not nearly as much technology or experience as we do now. In fact, considering, they did rather well. It's future generations that have failed to build on the foundations they left us.
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