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Old April 22nd 08, 12:04 PM posted to uk.transport.london
Patrick Osborne Patrick Osborne is offline
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First recorded activity at LondonBanter: Apr 2008
Posts: 18
Default Bakerloo Line 21st April 2008

Or, why, when things go wrong, do they go so disastrously wrong?

Got to Charing Cross at 0650 on Monday 21st April to find that the
Bakerloo Line was suspended between Paddington and Queen's Park.
Fine, I thought, I only need to go as far as Paddington. Got down to
the platform, not many people waiting, assumed that things would be
all right. Sign on the indicator showed a train due in 3 mins.

After waiting FIFTEEN minutes with no announcements, a train finally
turned up. This then crawled to Piccadilly Circus, waited there
another ten minutes, crawled to Oxford Circus, waited there about
another five minutes, then crawled again up to Regent's Park. All
this with no announcements at all, and with fifteen minutes worth of
clear tunnel in front of it! Then when we got to Regent's Park, the
driver suddenly said that the train would be terminating at
Marylebone.

Now, I know things do go wrong from time to time, but why was there
any need for things to be like this? They had isolated the line south
of Paddington. Presumably the controllers knew how many trains they
had to deal with, so could regulate the frequency and provide
information on how long it would be between services. There hadn't
been a train for fifteen minutes, so why did the one that finally
showed up run so slowly and then (even more) short run? And of course
there were no announcements at all. Surely this situation could have
been handled better, with at least a skeleton service running south of
Paddington, and running properly rather than crawling and short
running. Or am I being unrealistic?

Trying not to rant...would just like to understand what happened and
why it wasn't dealt with better. It does seem to be a common issue
with the tube; when something goes wrong, they're singularly unable to
quickly arrange the alternative service (in this case, just running
trains between Paddington and Elephant & Castle).

Patrick