Dom Davis (The Blog)

After the incident yesterday I was faced with a conductor this morning who looked at my ticket, looked confused, then went “ah!”, smiled and moved on. I checked my ticket, I’d put it back in upside down yesterday. So it’s acceptable and readable upside down.

To avoid any future problems though I riddled to the ticket office and got my replacement. While she was filling out the required forms (by hand, love this modern age we’re in) I mused about the plastic tickets.

“Our machines won’t print on plastic” was the reply.

“Yes, but you could print a temporary one and send a nice plastic one by post later”, I suggested.

“Our machines only print on plastic.”

Giving up I waited for the form filling to be complete and then enquired about a refund for yesterdays ticket.

“Oh dear, you leave your ticket at home yesterday?” was the slightly condescending reply.

“No, I’d have a return then”, I said, “The conductor wouldn’t accept it. Made me buy a ticket.”

“Really? Why?”

“Claimed he couldn’t read it.”

The lady actually got the ticket out from the drawer looked at it and said “Well I can see it’s faded, but you can still read the date.”

“Exactly!” I replied, “But I was told that if you can’t read the station names it’s not valid.”

“Really?” she said.

“Apparently so.”

And so we started filling in the refund forms. By hand. Joy.

Still, I got my new ticket, got my refund and was only 15 minutes late for work. God I hate NXEA.

I needed to get to work early today so got the 06:46 instead of my usual train. That time in the morning is rush hour for Cromer station because both platforms have a trains at them.

Look at the TV screen, Sheringham service on platform 1, Norwich platform 2.

Look at the train on platform 1, says Norwich on the front. Train on platform 2 doesn’t have something on the outside to tell you where it’s going but the display in the carriage says Sheringham.

So which is which?¹ It’s little wonder the last time I got that train I got on the wrong one.

¹The correct answer is Sheringham platform 1, Norwich platform 2 (as per the TV screen). Barring incident the trains always leave from those platforms except for the first one where a big (i.e. 3 carriage train) comes into platform 1, divides and the rear carriage heads to Norwich and the front two go to Sheringham. But you need to know that, it’s not stated anywhere.

I, like most people, commute on autopilot. Arrive at station, check departure board, head to platform 4, wait for train, get on train, wait for train to depart. If anything is even slightly off it throws the routine quite jarringly. Take, for example, today. Arrive at station, check departure board, head to platform 4, wait for train… train not there.

Now usually this is due to one of two reasons. The most frequent is due to train being delayed. A quick check on the phone (there’s an app for that) or the departure board will confirm this. This also sorts the other problem: that I never checked the departure board in the first place and was just thinking I had from the umpteen million¹ times I’ve done it before and the train is actually going from platform 5 or 6. Sometimes² the departure board lies and the train is marked as on time despite clearly being late. Today was such a day… or so I thought.

Turns out the train was cancelled… due to breaking down… over half an hour earlier. Needless to say this information was not shared in a timely fashion. Not that it would have made much difference, but it’s the principle of the thing. Next train 18:49, enjoy your hour long wait. Joy.

Five minutes later and there is a new twist. A bus replacement service will run at 18:00 and we can find this “in the front carpark”, a vague reference which could, thanks to the layout of Norwich station, technically be either of the car parks depending on how you define “front”. Surprising and welcome as this development was it also worried me. My line is a shuttle service. Train breaks down? Tough. Wait for the next one (or more correctly the other one since there’s only 2). Why the deviation today? Could it be that the train has broken down somewhere that blocks the line meaning later trains won’t run, or won’t run to all stations?

By this point a gaggle of us had formed outside the front entrance of the station (“Excuse me, are you trying to get to Sheringham? Is this the right place for the bus?”) and rumours started cropping up as to where the train had died. Sheringham was given to us by one person, which was OK because the trains can pass there. Cromer was what another person had heard, again, trains can pass there… assuming the train made it to the station. The NXEA website, on the other hand, said Roughton Road area. A single tracked part of the line that would see everything terminate at North Walsham (only half way home) if it wasn’t cleared. Meanwhile, no bus.

Now we start to get organised. People are dispatched to the other carpark (no bus), the station concourse (no bus replacement service listed any more), and to harass members of staff: and I quote “There is a bus, it’s due to be hear at 6, we just don’t know when that is”. Tiny hint: when the big hand touches the 12 and the little hand touches the 6. Hard to miss, divides the clock face in half with the hands. We were also assured the next train would run on time to all stations. No, we didn’t believe them either.

18:20 and the bus arrives. Now the dilemma. Do we get the bus, which should get us where we want to go, but down country roads, or do we get the train, which may or may not get us home on time? We opted bus which, thankfully, was going to miss out all the stations people didn’t need so hopefully a quicker journey. Time will, of course, tell (currently we’re beating the train by 10 minutes)

Update: Bus proved to be the correct option. I’m not even sure if the train is going to make it past North Walsham. Still home an hour late

¹ OK, closer to 100, but who’s counting?

² And by sometimes we mean frequently.

My commute into work involves the use of a very rural railway line. Two trains ply the route, much of which is single track, pass at North Walsham where there is a handy bit of doubled up track for precisely that, get to the end of the line, turn round, come back. Lather, rinse, repeat. This setup has some advantages; except for a tiny bit at the Norwich end, there is only ever one other train that can get in your way (and they can and do turf everyone off to wait for the next train and send the empty train back if things get too out of whack); similarly signal failures aren’t a massive problem as there are only 2 trains to co-ordinate; also it’s a quiet line so I always get a seat, often by myself. The downside is when things go wrong you can easily get delayed an hour waiting for the next train and if a train goes out of service all he’ll breaks loose. Especially if it breaks down on a bit of single track, unable to move so nothing can get past.

This morning the train glided [glode?] into the station without the usual rumble of it’s diesel/electric engine. This is never good. 10 seconds later there is a roar, the engine restarts, all appears to be well. 5 minutes later the engine cuts out again, we glide into Roughton Road station, I start to wonder if we’ll leave. Lo and behold the engine restarts, big roar, we pull off…

200 meters outside of Gunton engine dies. Coast in. Restart…

And so on at every station. Most disconcerting. So the question is was this a defective train which limped from Cromer to Norwhich; a novice driver who kept stalling the engine; or some new operating procedure to save money?

It was with some trepidation I left the office this afternoon and checked the train times. I had visions of a failed train blocking the line, or one train out of service meaning chaos and me getting home late. Thankfully all appears to be working fine. The train has arrived, the engine is running and (touch wood) in 45 minutes or so it’ll disgorge me onto Cromer station, platform 1.

Since my records began (over 3 years ago) I have handed over somewhere in the region of £15,000 to the rail companies, mostly National Express East Anglia, formerly One. At the end of my London career I was handing over £361 per month for the privelidge of sitting on the floor in the foyer of London bound intercities and a further £40 a week to get to and from Cromer and my Tai Chi classes. Tot that lot up and it comes to over 6 grand a year. Even when I was working from home it was costing me £80+ every time I went to London (thankfully only a few times a month).

Between stopping work and now I must have spent £50 on the trains tops (which actually equates to quite a few trips as it’s only £6.20 return to Norwich off peak) which is a much better state of affairs. This changed yesterday when I handed over £1436 for an annual season ticket. It’s the cheapest season ticket I’ve had since I lived in Zone 2, something I was quite pleased about… which just goes to show how numb I’ve become the cost of rail travel.

The last few months I’ve been working The Zozos shift patterns and working from home, with the last couple of months being self employed. Weekends, as a concept, dissapeared and there were just days working and days off. Days working were 8-3:30 with zero commute. Mondays were a thing of the past.

All that came to an end this morning when a Monday suddenly hoved into view and I had to go rejoin the commuterate.

Thankfully I’m being eased into it. 3 day week this week with a nice 4 day weekend… although there’s a Monday lurking behind that. I can tell.

It’s going to be odd. I’m used to being able to potter about, nip to the shops, do my shopping on a daily basis and cook for The Zozo when she gets home to a warm house with a lit fire. Poor old Zo is now going to be comming back to a cold house where she’ll have to build and light her own fire and then either eat alone or starve until I come home. At least with this job I’m not being woken up at 5:45, I’m getting home well before 19:45 and I don’t have to fight for a seat

So today I went hunting for the most mythical of beasts: The cheapest advance fare National Express East Anglia ticket. For those not familiar with this operator (although I suspect all UK train operators are the same), when you log onto the website to buy advance fare tickets it helpfully tells you that you can get the tickets from ‘as low as £6′. This is a special online only price which is never available. Whenever I’ve booked tickets the cheapest has often been £9, but sometimes they’re even more depending what time you want to travel*.

Today, however, I managed to get that very beast. The cheapest of the cheap tickets, and all I had to do was book a ticket 3 months in advance on an off peak service. No doubt I got the only two tickets for that price so everyone else will have to pay the higher price (with the price getting higher and higher the closer you get to the day).

*there is the lunacy of the Monday morning Cromer to Colchester advance fare ticket which is more expensive than a first class ticket bought on the day, and more restrictive since you can only use it on the train you’ve booked it on