I left the office tonight at 17:54 looking forward to a relaxing weekend.
As I got to the ticket gates at Canary Wharf Jubilee line they shut half of them - very annoying. When I got onto the platform I could see why - it was packed. A train came in a few minutes later but there was no way I could get on. The next train wasn't advertised until the first one had left and then it was not due for 13 minutes! Three minutes later at 18:17 it was still showing 13 minutes. Apparently a passenger had been taken ill somewhere. Probably hay fever.
So I decided to go and catch the DLR south to Green which which I did and arrived at 18:31 and got onto the mainline platform to find that the next train was at 18:46 but was delayed. at 17:41 I looked up to see that the 18:46 had disappeared from the screen and it was now showing the 19:01 - which was delayed. "Sod this for a game of soldiers" says I and promptly got onto a Bank DLR train.
At about 19:00 I was basically back where I started in Canary Wharf but I kept going through to Bank where I got the Northern Line down to London Bridge and arrived at about 19:20. And what did I find there?
Huge signal problems. I got onto platform 5 to get the 19:25 to Brighton and then they announced that the Hayes train would be going fro platform 5 so all the people on 4 had to cross over the footbridge. As they were doing that they announced the 19:25 from Brighton was cancelled and passengers could get a train from Platform 12 to East Croydon. Mayhem ensued as several hundred people tried to get up the stairs as several hundred people tried to get down them.
As it was there was no train on Platform 12. So I decided to get the Caterham train so I had a look at the departures board and there were no trains at all to Caterham - none and not even a cancelled sign. Loads of trains were cancelled and loads of people were wandering round aimlessly wondering what to do - some of them were passengers.
So I got the 19:30 Epsom Train to West Croydon and from there I said "sod it" and walked the last 25 minutes home arriving at 20:10 - thats 2 hours and 16 minutes instead of about 55 minutes of my life they have stolen again. Give it back!
Our bloody transport system is rubbish.