@thefab444: I note your location and suspect you have yet to enjoy the delights of FCC travel on the Thameslink route. The problem was that a train had gone twang between City Thameslink and Blackfriars. Since the Moorgate Branch was closed, FCC cannot run a service into Moorgate and turn trains there, so the "core" would have been jammed with trains trying to head south. There are a few crossover points, but their use would have been restricted because of the relatively high frequency of trains heading north through the "core". I suspect the decision was taken to terminate the train in question at Cricklewood, because of its proximity to either a crossover or simply to run empty into the depot. The problem is that the train would have been full of people simply trying to get to work who have to put up with failures, late running, short notice cancellations, lack of information, lack of staff and trains turning from fast into stopping services on average more than once a week. They would have been mightily ******ed when told to get off and wait for the next train, which would definitely be full with little hope of getting onto. Cricklewood is not the most pleasant of places to be turfed off a train and told to make your own way to work, when most of the passengers would have had little idea where they were and could not turn to a member of station staff for help because Cricklewood is unstaffed.
FCC has no regard for its passengers, read a few of the threads on here or Google Firstcrapitalconnect. It is only concerned with making profit and if it could get away with running all its trains empty but on time it would happily do so. If the sit-in caused FCC to rack up any delay charges, I'm sure it can afford to pay, since its coffers are regularly topped up by franchise guarantee payments from the Government. In any case, the mess was caused by failure of one of FCC's own trains, which are, in the case of class 319s, mobile dustbins with every form of unreliable electrical equipment known to man, or in the case of the class 377s simply made up from the parts that Bombardier could get hold of at short notice, hence their dismal MPC figures.
There have been calls for FCC to be stripped of its franchise, but it would still mean the same surly staff and militant drivers as well as the same tired and/or unreliable rolling stock pounding over the same worn out track and feeble signalling system. In any event, I wouldn't be too hopeful of any improvements in management if the franchise passed to non-Arriva, Stagecoach Fail or any of the shyster organisations currently destroying our railways.
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