In message om,
" writes

This morning's painfully slow journey between Fulham Broadway and Earl'
Court at about 7.45a.m. must surely have broken the record.

Delays of several minutes at Fulham Broadway, repeated on the approach
to West Brompton. Then further minutes' delays on leaving West Brompton
and then on the approach to Earl's Court.

Here's a list of the excsues provided by the driver (in the order in
which they were announced):-

Which all sound quite plausible to me. As drivers we're expected to
pass as much information onto the customers as possible to reassure
them. We don't always receive an awful lot though.

1. Engineering works at Earl's Court which meant a delaysed engineering
possession this morning.

Often happens - more so these days since the management of the
maintenance passed to private companies under the PPP.

2. Signalling problems at Earl's Court meant that trains were "passing
through Earl's Court, but very slowly".

Which might or might not be related to the above. In any case,
'signalling problems' are so common (especially at EC) as to not cause
much reaction.

3. A train ahead of us at Earl's Court had to be "reformed" (whatever
that means - the thought of shunting maneouvres at Earl's Court
intrigues me!).

Ah, now.... jargon (which is frowned upon). What it means is that train
4 which was, maybe, going to Upminster has now been renamed to be called
train 12 which is going to Tower Hill and the driver who is booked to
drive train 12 needs to take it over. It's actually a very common
procedure on LU but is really of no concern to the customers.

4. The train ahead of us was in the platform at Earl's Court and was
awating a driver.

The aforementioned reform failed as the new driver was still having his
(late) meal relief and nobody (mainly the managers who should be
managing these things) realised?

Do readers think this info (or misinfo) was being provided to the
driver by the Department for Lame Excuses or was he told "make it up as
you go along"?

(As a driver!) I think the driver did his best to keep you all informed
with the limited information he had at his disposal. We're wrong if we
say nothing, and wrong if the information isn't 100% accurate, but we
can only pass on what we're told.
--
Steve Fitzgerald has now left the building.
You will find him in London's Docklands, E16, UK
(please use the reply to address for email)