An Unexpected Journey

At about 11:30 I got aphone call, could I deputise at a meeting tomorrow.

Yes no problem. Well actually there is a problem its at HQ in the outskirts of Birmingham and starts at 9:30. A quick visit to a well known train ticket website confirmed I could get down provided I left by mid afternoon. So a quick lunch, a dash round the house packing an overnight bag CC organised for taking me to the station and I was off.

It is a journey I am familiar with, however usually I have time to choose which train I will travel on and book my seat. This time I didn't have the luxury of choice so I was going to have two changes of train rather than just the one. The first was at Preston where I snatched this shot between trains.

The next change should have been at Birmingham New Street where I would catch
a train into the suburbs. When we were drawing near Wolverhampton the usual announcements started. "Passengers for destinations X Y & Z leave the train and go to platform one. Passengers for A B & C go to platform 3". Then the surprise announcement. "If you are in a hurry to get to New Street leave the train and gotoplatform 2 as we will be stopped here for about 20 minutes". Needless to say I wanted my journey over quickly so I went to platform 2 where a train arrived almost immediately and off we went again.

The rest of the journey out to the suburbs and taxi to HQ went with out a hitch and I arrived 5 minutes before they started serving the evening meal. Phew!