...deserves its poor reputation.
London Bridge British Rail station is one of the major stations serving (?) the South of London and destinations proceeding South.
Well that is the theory.
Tuesday 2 June I had to go to a meeting in Redhill (Gatwick airport area) by train. I had checked various routes and the most straight forward seemed to be...
Stanford-le-Hope to West Ham...C2C rail.
West Ham to London Bridge...Jubilee Line (London Underground).
London Bridge to Redhill...Southern rail.
I caught my first train at 7.32am and all went well until I arrived at London Bridge.
Due to a fallen tree all services were subject to delay and/or cancellation. Having arrived at about 8.40am (plenty of time to catch my planned 8.52am) I was still waiting for a train to be announced at 9.10am.
Information was sketchy, tannoy announcements were lacking and the few staff that were around really didn't seem too bothered whether there were going to be trains or not. When I questioned a staff member about the two 'Redhill' trains showing on the indicator board as being delayed, his response was..."shouldn't think they will run. You'd be better off trying from Victoria station".
Great...there isn't a direct connection and the underground was now having to cope with folk being turned away from London Bridge in an attempt to complete their journeys.
I arrived at Victoria to the same chaos.
I bumped into a colleague also heading for the same meeting and we proceeded to play musical trains & platforms. Each time we thought we were about to leave they announced that they were missing a member of train crew (probably unable to get to work due to the chaos) or " due to the late running of this service we will not now call at Redhill". When we finally set off, they terminated the train at East Croyden and we again played musical platforms - told to go to the other side of the station only to be sent back again and almost miss the train we needed.
We finally arrived at our meeting at 11.48am (my planned journey should have got to the destination by 9.30am). Not a good start to the day.
Luckily the return journey was better. We timed it just right and caught a train a few moments after arriving at the station (very lucky because if we had missed that one the next two were showing as cancelled).
So Tuesday was not a good day and I was hoping Wednesday was going to be better. I should have known better...
The journey was fine but I got in to find stacks of work waiting to be allocated to what I have left of my team and ended up pitching in to help get some of the more urgent stuff cleared.
I do hope today (Thursday) will be a bit better...if not, at least I can console myself that I have Friday off. Let's see how things go................................................................................
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1 comment:
i definitely DO NOT miss my commute to the city. it was a 2 hr commute and there were constant problems. now they say UNION STATION is falling apart. well duh!
anyway, glad you made it safely.
thank you for your kind words on the doggie upset. she (my neighbor) is gonna put her down on 6.15. she doesn't want to take the chance of her going to someone who will abuse her or keep her locked in a cage. she's way too hyper anyway. it's the best decision all around but it's killing all of us inside. my poor neighbor continues her daily routine with the dog but boy, she's aged in just 2 days. but then, it would kill me too if i had problems with neenah.
however, GOD does things for a reason, so something better will come of it, i'm sure.
have a great weekend.
hugs :)
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