Travel Chaos

You often read about "travel chaos". Today was my day to participate.

It was quite rainy yesterday. That's an understatement. There was a lot of rain. Enough rain that both the East coast and the West coast main lines were blocked by landslides.

I had been booked to travel on the East coast main line. However, it hadn't yet been cleared, whereas the West coast main line had been re-opened. So I (eventually) managed to get my booking changed to let me travel on the West coast line to Glasgow, from where I would get a local train to Polmont.

All went well at the start of the day. A train from Stevenage to London, a couple of stops on the tube round to Euston, and then onto the Glasgow train.

As we approached Kendall, we were told by the conductor that there had been a problem... a freight train had damaged the overhead cables north of Carlisle. The previous train had been turned back.

Soon we arrived at Carlisle, and were told that the service would have to terminate there. We all got off the train, and joined a massive queue - todays's photograph is the rear of that queue.

After standing in a queue for replacement buses and taxis, the next train from London to Glasgow came to Carlisle. And we were told that the line was clear, and that this train would continue on to Glasgow.

A mad dash later, a walk through extraordinarily busy standard-class carriages and then into pleasantly not-too-busy first class, and soon we were arriving at Glasgow Central. A walk from there to Queen Street, and soon I was back home.

What a day!