July Challenge - U - Useless

Today was my second day of travelling in to London by train to avoid the Olympics traffic.

Yesterday, trains in and out of London were delayed, wrong platforms displayed, all the usual failures you expect happened.

Today, you had more chance of seeing a G4S security guard at the Olympics than seeing a running train. Stood on Platforms 1 & 2 at the station the departure board was showing only 1 train as delayed, the other 5 displayed were cancelled.

A train heading north (away from London) pulled in to Platform 3, and was terminated there.

Did they send it south?, no of course not. The excuse - they had no driver, if they used the driver who should have been taking it north to Bedford and then returning south, then he would be in the wrong place and that might cause delays. (Do they really think I look stupid enough to accept that as an excuse?)

Advice from the staff there, get a train to St Albans, and change there for my train to West Hampstead. The staff seemed a little puzzled when I asked when there was going to be a train to St Albans before the only train showing on the boards, since that one was stopping at St Albans and West Hampstead!

Every now and then I need to travel by train, just to remind me how pleasant it is to be stuck in traffic on the North Circular, or M25/A40 going in to London, compared to travelling by train. As I have a 7 day season for a week this is only costing me twice the cost of travelling by car, if I were doing it on individual daily tickets, it would be 3 times the cost of the same journey by car, but then worked out minute for minute, they cost the same as the train takes so much longer.

Thank you First Capital Connect - you provided me with my second U this week, by being so useless.