Inventive station announcements
Commuting at the moment is really irritating. There’s a limited strike on the trains, so while they are still running a service, there are cancellations and delays every day. Instead of taking me less than an hour each way, for the past week the journey has taken more than 90 minutes for a distance of about 12 miles as the crow flies.
Last night, travelling home, I was feeling like it might be my lucky night. The train left on time1, and I settled back enjoying the feeling that I might actually get home at a reasonable hour. Obviously this was a bad idea, and I was enraging the gods of the railway. We waited for ages at New Street station, until the conductor came on the intercom to explain that the train didn’t have a driver. I’m no expert on railway systems, but I’m guessing that having a driver is a big help. There followed a period of a fun game of ‘train musical chairs’ in which people switch between trains because of a rumour that there might be one on the adjacent platform which might be leaving sooner than the one they are on. They then find out that there’s a different problem with that train, and come back again (rinse, repeat).
