Yet more...

Crap from TfHell. The Jubilee line is currently f*cked up big time, and as an added bonus, they're also dicking around with the DLR.

A fire alarm at Swiss Cottage or St Johns Wood earlier has screwed the Jubilee.

At the same time,  the dopey wankers are trialling the DLR service they expect to run during the Olympics clusterf*ck.

I have news for them, it's utter shite.

Back to the drawing board boys.

On top of all this bollocks, Bob bloody Crow has called the maintainers who keep the Jubilee Line running out on f*cking strike for the rest of the week.

The question is, given the less than spectacular service we generalally see, will we miss the lazy bastards?

For some reason...

Passengers waiting at Stratford are now being regularly subjected to a bizarre tannoy announcement by some weird sounding f*cker welcoming us to "... Stratford, the home of the 2012 Olympic Park venues."

Like we need any reminders about this summer's mega-clusterf*ck.

Lies, queue jumpers...

And another f*cked up evenings travel courtesy of the tossers at TfHell.

The lies were the bullshit coming over the tannoy which was gleefully announcing a "good service" on all Underground lines.

That was shown to clearly be bollocks when the drones running the station were forced to close the barriers after the platforms became dangerously overcrowded as no Stratford-bound trains were coming through.

The first one didn't appear for almost 10 minutes. The next 4 were completely packed, I finally made it onto the sixth, a new record for unboardable trains.

Tempers weren't helped by the queue jumping cow who thought she'd slide up the inside hoping no-one would notice. She was wrong.

Finally, when I got to Stratford, the mainline was a crock of shit as well.

Within...

2 days of them appearing, the dot-matrix displays on platform 10A at Stratford are up and running.

Shame National Rail can't update the signalling as swiftly. Still no direct service from Stratford to Braintree between 5pm and 6pm.

Typically...

Greater Anglia have managed to make more progress in 6 weeks with improvements to the station infrastructure at Stratford than NXEA and National Rail managed in 6 months.

New dot-matrix displays have now been installed on platform 10A; they aren't switched on, but they're there.

Moreover, the CCTV cameras and displays used by the train drivers are now working.

You can forgive them the odd bad night when they're making this much progress.

If only Network Rail were as keen, we might already have the promised additional Braintree service...

The first bad night,

Tonight gradually degenerated into one of those classic rolling shambles which characterized NXEA's running of the Greater Anglia franchise.

First up, an overhead line problem between Thorpe-le-Soken and Clacton  meant some Clacton trains were being cancelled while others were terminating at Thorpe.

This meant a backlog of Clacton, Chelmsford and Colchester passengers at Stratford. As a result, I gave the Braintree a miss and got the 1806 for Ipswich, which doesn't stop at Chelmsford. I could change at Witham. Good thinking; or so I thought.

As it happened it got worse. There were no spare seats, the bulk of the additional passengers seem to have been for Colchester.

Next, we were held at a red signal outside Shenfield because another train was having overhead line problems. These were obviously insurmountable because as we dragged into the station there was an empty Southend-bound Class 321 on the down main-line platform.  We had to use one of the Metro platforms to get through the station. However, the line controller, whoever they are, played a blinder. They simply replaced the knackered 321 with a Metro Class 315 which left Shenfield for Southend just before we were allowed to leave.

The 1806 tonight was scheduled to make an additional stop at Hatfield Peverel. As we left Hatfield, a berk who was standing across from me wearing a parka got his hood caught on the emergency alarm handle and managed to inadvertently pull it; the train slammed to a stop. It took another 15 minutes for the driver to arrive to reset it. Luckily we were in the front carriage of the train so it didn't take him as long to arrive as it could have.

We eventually pulled into Witham almost half-an-hour later than scheduled.

Fortunately, given the weather, the Braintree train arrived within 3 minutes. We finally got to Braintree around 15 minutes late.

Given the circumstances and the way events transpired, the evening was handled by GA far better than a similar set of cock-ups would have been managed by NXEA. 

Promises, promises...

One of the highlights, for me at least, of the new timetable was the promise that the 1720 departure from Liverpool Street would finally begin stopping at Stratford from today.

However, it now appears that the useless f*cks at Network Rail can never finish anything when they say they will as this has quietly appeared on the Greater Anglia blog notifying us that the start of the new service has been postponed "...until a later date...".

Marvelous.