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I’d say more with the demise of people working from home. Commuter numbers are rising again at quite a rate. Monday-Thursday peak services serving Stratford/Liverpool Street are suffering overcrowding already and that’s with much increased seating capacity on the new fleets introduced since 2019/20.

Not much can be done about fixed formation trains. You’ll find this a lot with Thameslink now they are all 8/12 car 700s on certain parts of the route/times of the day. It’s quite nice having all this additional capacity. The cost of electricity isn’t really something I’ve ever heard mentioned...

What can XC do about it glibly or not?

That attitude has always frustrated me. I was even once told by a driver manager that it doesn’t matter if we are late as it wasn’t our fault.

Oh I don’t mind travelling with them but then I do carefully select what trains I use on the busiest routes and can be very flexible. If it’s the quickest route then I use it even if I have to stand for a certain amount of time. The short notice is always going to happen if that’s when the...

I don’t think any operator can legally stop selling tickets.

I wonder if they were cranks? Bonus for them if they were.

Agreed. I was just comparing. It seems this occasion caught many out.

Speaking as a driver, if there is severe disruption as this yes we might question it but thats about it. We have no sway whatsoever and just follow orders from Duty Traincrew Managers with some input from Control.

Was interesting listening to a woman speaking on R2s Jeremy Vine lunchtime show yesterday. She said that both her and her friend felt quite unsafe in the city centre and feeling that the event had far greater attendances than expected. Little or no toilet facilities were available and she felt...

Nice one mate. Shame we won’t work together. Im a DI there but chosen to take early retirement in a couple of months time. 1748762447 Not sure if the upcoming change into GBR on 12th of October has any bearing, but the recruitment of more DIs at GA has been put on hold suddenly. This may affect...

Very appropriate name for that location. Are you local?

We don’t actually have that many that are sitting there for hours. It’s normally 30 minutes or much less. It’s never really been an issue and GA guards (and some proactive drivers like me) will make a quick announcement onboard to make sure any non regular passengers aren’t in the wrong train...

Platforms 1-6 are all numbered A & B at Norwich and have been since the early 1990s.

And that's without mentioning the 153s. Chatting with a duty manager the other day we find it hard to believe that every day started off with what are we cancelling today and what's going to be a late start. Failures where commonplace too. All consigned to history now thankfully. And we even...

Do you mean IET kitchens?

Oh yes of course. I was thinking more of passenger services. The HABDs should do their job if provided. With freight it often seems to be a handbrake left on that causes problems.

Hot Axle Box Detecters (HABDs) do that job pretty well. The traincrew would hopefully notice or smell something was wrong. Thankfully a pretty rare occurrence these days. I’ve only twice in 27 years driving had to use a temple stick.

It was a Bank Holiday rather than a Sunday, so just a normal day on the railway.

Depending on the ongoing situation it is not always possible to hold trains indefinitely. Other trains are waiting to get into the station and you are going to have crew members refusing the enforced overtime. It comes to a point where you just have to get rid if the passengers are not being let...