Olympic Javelin Test

Today we went to St Pancras Station in London to take part in a test of the Olympic Javelin service so that South Eastern Trains could test their ability to get enough people onto the platform and onto the train. The test involved passengers being held in three holding areas before being transferred into a central holding area and then onto the platforms for the train. Today's test train was taking us to Ebbsfleet and back.

By today's outing, we fell at the first hurdle as we missed the train because the back of the train was full when we got to the platform and we were directed towards the front. However, the train had to leave as we made our way forward. This was not because we had been slow but the train had to leave on time and the timing to get people from holding areas onto the platform was clearly not quite right.

Anyway, that was the purpose of the test and why we volunteered with hundreds of others. We were allowed to travel to Ebbsfleet on a scheduled service and then back to St Pancras later for tea and biscuits. For our trouble we got some Olympic pin badges, which are retailing at £6.50 each and a load of marketing literature about the preparation for the games.

The downside of today, we went to Pizza Express for lunch to use up some Tesco vouchers and realised at the end that they had gone out of date at the end of June. Never mind, it's only money.