On 18 Nov 2005 04:20:52 -0800, "Conductor in Charge of.........."
wrote:

There was a cable fire around 7am this morning just outside Clapham
Junction. All Southern services used the Up Slow and Down for about and
hour and then the fasts were re-opened. Southern services took another
hit with a track defect at Norwood and a signalling problem at Tulse
Hill.

Gatwick Express reduced to half hourly and South West Trains instigated
an emergency timetable of sorts (the usual story of Hampton Court
becoming a shuttle etc...) and I do wonder why Southern don't have a
similar system of reducing the number of trains trying to reach London
when these major incidents occur.

There was also apparently a broken rail at Weybridge, so SWT seemed to
put in place an emergency programme of reducing the number of trains
at Woking. I was on the 0740 from Fleet and we stopped for a while
outside Woking, when we got into the platform we were turfed off and
told the train was going back to Basingstoke.

Unfortunately when we got onto the platform all the announcements were
about a late-running Portsmouth Harbour train, nothing at all to do
with how to get to Waterloo... I know Woking quite well and decided
that any other Waterloo train would probably be using another platform
and headed off for a footbridge. Most of the other commuters
obviously didn't, and stood around getting in the way... so at least
when I got on the waterloo train I got down inside the carriage and
got a reasonable amount of standing space (and got a seat about
halfway to Waterloo as another pax had to go to the loo).

Once leaving Woking everything seemed to go quite smoothly, we didn't
actually go very fast but apart from a stop at Raynes Park and another
in the CJn area itself, we got to waterloo non-stop and I got in about
45 minutes late.

So on this occasion I'd give reasonably full marks for SWT, apart from
not having the nous to interrupt its Portsmouth Harbour announcement
for the benefit of the much greater number of Waterloo pax milling
around lost on Platform 1.