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.