An all fired disaster

On Tuesday I set of for home to get the 1745 from Cannon Street.   I had had an alert from South Eastern saying that trains were subject to delay and cancellations due to ‘problems on the line’, but these arrive regularly and rarely mean anything.   The live departures board said the 1745 was scheduled on time, so as I headed over Southwark Bridge I presumed that this alert was just another false alarm.

However, it wasn’t.  

When I got to Cannon Street it transpired that there had been a fire in a signalling control room at London Bridge and, as a result, no trains were able to pass through London Bridge, either from Cannon Street or Charing Cross – a situation that was likely to last for several hours.   So we were all directed to go to St Pancras.

Cannon Street had been a disaster, but a reasonably well run disaster with decent information.   St Pancras, on the other hand, was the opposite.

It often looks as though High Speed is a totally different company from South Eastern and the High Speed staff clearly resent it every time they have to accept ordinary tickets without a surcharge.   The acceptance is, at best, grudging.

This evening they clearly knew they had problems so kept all passengers downstairs on the concourse to prevent platforms from becoming overcrowded.   That had a semblance of sense (though some disadvantages which we will see shortly) but sense left the room after that.

A sensible approach would have had two queues leading one to each of the up-escalators, one for Faversham line trains and one for Ashford line trains.   But no, there was just one queue and a disorganised one, at that.   It snaked here, there and everywhere with no clear start or end.   As a consequence, when they announced a Faversham train, the whole disorganised mass surged forward.   Even if anyone had wanted to, there was no prospect of any ticket check.   One man dropped his Blackberry which was then trampled under foot – he was wise enough not try and pick it up, otherwise he could have been trampled on, too.

I was washed along with the crowd and found a Dover train waiting, empty, for passengers.   It should have been twelve cars, with one portion going to Dover and one to Canterbury – and the announcements kept saying that it was – but it was actually only 6 cars and no-one knew if it would go to Dover or Canterbury.   The best thing was to get on and change, if needed, at Ashford.

We left about 7.10 – very late – and the driver clearly did his best to make up some time, running as fast as I have experienced on those trains, only to be held for 10 minutes just outside Ashford.   Why, no-one knows.   It was hardly other train movements as there were none.

When we got to Ashford it transpired that this train would run through to Dover.   The platform scene was chaotic, as might be imagined.   Most of the platform staff were hiding in their office (though one woman did her best to try and help passengers) with the result that when a train did appear out of the dark, nobody really knew where it was going to go.

The good news is that all the trains would stop at every station, and I only had to wait 15 or 20 minutes before another High Speed train came in, bound for Canterbury and Margate.   Arrived at Chilham at 9.00 – nearly 2 hours late.

Storm Warnings

St Jude’s storm was the most severe storm in the South East for many years and the winds were especially strong in Kent.   So some form of disruption on Monday morning was inevitable.   Warnings started to be given on Saturday and by Sunday morning most of the train companies in the south had said there would be no trains before 9am.  SouthEastern did not say this but, rather later in the afternoon, said it was possible that trains on some lines would not start before 9am.

On Monday morning, therefore, my first call was to the SouthEastern website, which still gave the conditional message of the previous afternoon.   And, under train cancellations, it listed half a dozen trains to and from Sheerness, and nothing else.   Specifically it said no cancellations on the Ramsgate – Canterbury – Ashford line.

How naiive anyone would be to believe this as, much as expected, on the National Rail live departures site it showed every train before 0900 cancelled.   Far more believable, I thought.

As the morning wore on National Rail started to show a train at 0959 – a bit later than 9am but I suppose a 0930 start from Ramsgate just about counts.   I needed to get to the office so I got ready and drove down to the station.   At 0950 I checked again and the train was still running, albeit about 10 minutes late.  Along with half a dozen other aspiring passengers we waited for the train and about 1015 it appeared in the distance.   Only to run through the station without stopping!

I pressed the enquiries button who told me that there was disruption this morning (I might have missed this) and then said that it probably didn’t stop because the train was full.   On asking about the next train I was told it would be at 11, but they could not confirm whether or not that train would actually run or, if it did, whether it would actually stop at Chilham.   Pretty much worse than useless I thought.

As the day wore on I monitored the train and though South Eastern claimed to be running an hourly or half hourly service on all except a very few minor lines by early afternoon.   As is often the case, this was not true.   In fact no trains were going through Ashford at all except the high speed services to London, and they were not venturing east of Ashford either.  In fact, there were no trains running in East Kent at all until late in the evening when two trains came through from Charing Cross.

Once again SouthEastern has proved wholly incompetent and unreliable on the information front.   It is so dishonest that they publish optimistic statements which then are wholly unfulfilled

Victorious?.

Overrunning engineering works mean that this morning’s train is diverted from Cannon Street to Victoria.   Leaving aside the question as to why a City train is diverted to the West End (Blackfriars would have been better), what makes it worse is that the train is timetabled to go so slowly – with more than an hour allowed from Sevenoaks to Victoria, giving an overall average speed of less than 30mph.   Even the all stations train from Ashford to Victoria via Maidstone East gets there nearly 15 minutes sooner..

Poles Apart

I have to go to Poland, to a small town called Zakopane in the far south of Poland, not far, in fact, from where I met with the Slovaks last autumn, but just the other side of the Tatra mountains.

Flying to Krakow, there is only a choice between Easyjet and Ryanair.   Easyjet has only one flight a day which would have been suitable for going out but would have needed me to stay a further day coming back.   I will not fly on Ryanair so that left me with connections.   The best looked to be via Vienna, using a similar connection to the one I used going to Kosice last year.   This time, however, I would use Austrian all the way partly because it was cheaper and partly because there is a shorter transfer time.

Indeed, outward, there is only a 30 minute transfer time but Austrian advertise this and the flight from London has a good timekeeping record so I thought I would give it a go.   I know Vienna Airport reasonably well so that, too, would help.

The flight from London was 0915 so I caught the 0605 from Chilham.   This was on time, though there is a long wait at Ashford - about 25 minutes.   I also got my high speed upgrade tickets on the train and was offered a gold card discount for the return journey.   We'll see how that works coming back.

A very smooth trip to Heathrow meant that I arrived at 0755 - pretty good, I thought, and was quickly through security.   Then the problems started.

Fog was the issue and the flight to Vienna was delayed by one and a half hours so I certainly wouldn't make my connection and went to change the ticket.   Mine was not the only delayed flight.   Two or three Lufthansa flights had also been delayed or cancelled so there was a long queue.   Fortunately the business class queue was not too long.  I say fortunately, but there was little they could do.   I had to go back through arrivals to the ticket office outside.

Here, after another wait, I was rebooked through Warsaw, and would only be an hour late and had a slightly longer connection time in Warsaw - about an hour.   But, checking in with LOT, their flight was delayed by an hour, too, so that was no good. 

Another wait in the queue led to a third ticket, with a two and a half hour connection in Warsaw.   This should be possible, but it means I will be nearly four hours later than planned.

I was slightly dreading going to Poland today in any case, after England beat Poland 2-0 last night at Wembley.   Going via Vienna would have avoided all the football fans but going via Warsaw will not.   We'll see how things go.

We were eventually called to the gate at about 1120 – 25 minutes before the flight was now due to depart, though it was clear that the incoming plane had only just arrived.

Getting to the gate displayed another aspect of the paranoia that infects both the security and immigration departments over the prospect that arriving passengers might come into contact with departing passengers.   In most other parts of Europe the jetty opens up onto the departure lounge and arriving passengers must make their way through departing passengers into a one way system which takes them through passport control, customs and out.   Automatic gates ensure that there are definitive one-way gates at key points, so that you cannot avoid passport control, if arriving, or security, if leaving.

But the British are so obsessed that there must be a hermetic seal between arriving and departing passengers.   I don’t know what they think might happen.   Perhaps a departing passenger would use duty free to buy something to give to an arriving passenger?   Perhaps a terrorist could carry a bomb on one plane and the, having arrived, give it to a departing passenger?   Frankly it all beggars belief.

What it means in this case is that, as the pier is only one storey, whenever a plane arrives, the passage for departing passengers must be closed off to allow the arriving passengers through into the arrivals area.   When they have all arrived then the passage for departing passengers can be opened again.   With a delay of 10 minutes or so – so don’t be late for your plane!

One aspect of being re-routed is that I have a new airline and another new airport to sample.    The airline is LOT from Poland and the plane was, as I expected, full of returning football fans.   But they were quite quiet – either dejected or respectful, and, frankly, I didn’t mind which.

We eventually pulled away from the terminal just over an hour and a half late, then took another 25 minutes before we took off.   This means we will arrive in Warsaw, between an hour and 40 minutes before my connecting flight leaves.   Fingers crossed.

LOT business class does not, I’m afraid, particularly impress.   Like most business class flights in Europe, it’s basically the same economy seats with the centre seat left vacant and a curtain dividing it from the economy section.   So the seats are no better or worse.   Catering though, was slow to get going, and while they nicely gave us a linen cloth for the tables, the food was not particularly appetising and the portions smaller than most.  Nor was the wine that good, but it passed.

We arrived in Warsaw with about an hour to connect.   This was a reasonable time, with no queue for passport control.   There was about a ten minute delay for security and then another ten minute wait at the gate before boarding a bus to the plane.

The plane to Krakow was a Q400 so, as with the flight from Wien to Kosice, I had to put my bag in the hold and collect it on leaving the plane.   We left a few minutes early and arrived in Krakow about 15 minutes early with a packet of cheese biscuits and a glass of water to while away the short flight.

Tomasz collected me and we had a two hour drive to Zakopane through driving rain – not nice.

Zakopane is a rich and historic ski resort, with its own style of architecture – known as Zakopane style – which blends log cabin with arts and crafts. The result is quite spectacular with gables on every side and carved wood everywhere.    In the morning I had about 20 minutes after breakfast to walk through the town centre and see some.   I wish I had had longer.

I did my presentation first thing and when we broke for coffee at 11, Andrszej introduced me to Jack, a student who would take me to the airport at noon.   I said we had no need to wait and left immediately – or almost immediately at 1115.   It was a dry morning, misty but with the sun breaking through and it was far pleasanter than yesterday evening.   The autumn colours were glorious here, though it was the tail end of autumn in Poland, not the start as in Kent.

The Polish side of the Tatras is far more developed than in Slovakia, with far fewer remnants of communism.   The buildings all seem to be either pre-war or post 1990, though the styles are very similar and it is hard to be precise about their age.   No traces of the serried ranks of 1960s flats you can see in Warsaw.

It is only 100km from Zakopane to Krakow airport but even with good weather it took us nearly 2 hours, which did surprise me.   Jack has very little English so I dozed most of the way.   It still meant that there was a wait of just over 2 hours before my plane left so I had a beer in the outdoor café before going into the lounge.    Krakow is a very small airport and sadly had only a very small range of shops.   I had hoped to see knitwear because all along the road from Zakopane there were roadside stalls selling sheep and cowskins and beautiful jerseys and socks.   I expected they would be relatively cheap.   But I had no cash to stop and buy. Only if they were for sale in the airport did I have a chance.

The lounge in Krakow is no great shakes.   They had drink but only crisps and snacks to eat so I had to buy a sandwich from outside.

We boarded the plane early and left early.   Another Bombardier Q400 rather than the Fokker 100 I had expected.   This time the flight had business class, even though it was no longer a flight than from Warsaw to Krakow.   I was the only person in it which was quite nice.   They served a reasonable lunch, which was better presented than in LOT and a nicer quality.   The wine was better, too.

We landed about ten minutes early in Wien which left a reasonable time to connect.   Even then I had only time in the lounge to have a bowl of soup and to ring Tom before the sign came up saying ‘go to gate’.   I waited another five or ten minutes (just time for a glass of prosecco) before going to the gate, even though the flight had not yet started boarding, because most of the later flights had.

It was a long walk to G31 and just after I got there, business class passengers started to board, so my timing was quite good.   A row of seats to myself was nice and we left Wien about 10 minutes late.  

As with the flight from Krakow, presentation and quality of the food was good – a bit better than BA I would say, the wine, though, is dished out by the glass rather than by the bottle, which effectively reduces consumption.

Arriving on stand at 1855, I stood no chance of getting the 1900 Heathrow Express which, in turn, meant that I wouldn’t catch the 1940 from St Pancras and so wouldn’t catch the 2035 from Ashford.   Half an hour later from St Pancras onwards would have to do.   At least, I thought, I wouldn’t have to hurry between Paddington and King’s Cross.  

Surprisingly the Heathrow Express was nearly 15 minutes late arriving in Paddington so I did have to dash across to the Underground and just made the 2010 from St Pancras.   The good news was that the 2035 from Ashford was running 20 minutes late, so I wouldn’t have got home any earlier even if we had been on time