None of my trips to or from work have been without problems this last week or so. Yesterday’s total morning journey took an hour longer than usual, door to door, and this morning it was a good 30 minutes over the usual stretch.

Why? Well, this morning it was down to ‘poor rail conditions’, whatever that means. I only know because I checked online while we were still crawling up towards London. There were no announcements on the train itself.

Yesterday it was over-running Route Improvement Works.

I’m sure we’d have called that Engineering Works a few months ago. Route Improvement Works is a bit of smart marketing. It dresses up the delay as something that, long term, is in our own interests.

It says ‘hey, we’re doing this for you – don’t moan – it’ll all be good in the end’.

It also says ‘if you don’t want your line improved, fine. We’ll down tools and then see how you like it’.

Route Improvement Works isn’t an untruth. It is, at heart, what engineering is all about as it stops the route falling into disrepair and patches up dinks in the line, but it’s a phrase that riles me just about as much as the automated apologies you get when you train is running late.

For quite a while.

Eventually the driver diagnosed the fault: the train had lost power. After 20 minutes or so he rebooted the whole thing (lights out, power down, power up, little effect) and we eventually crawled on to Stratford where we were all turfed off.

The most frustrating thing about that, apart from the fact that it meant we were thrown onto a platform that was already full of people waiting to get on, was the fact that our train had actually started to go quite quickly after a long, gentle ramp-up.

Nonetheless, the driver was (quite rightly) not prepared to take it any further, so it sat in the platform for ages, blocking the line.

We took an all-stations back to Shenfield and changed there, eventually getting home two hours and 40 minutes after leaving work. That’s not good on a 30-mile journey.

Queues on the stairs from the platform. Queues in the tunnel beneath the lines. We had to let the next six trains go without us due to short formations and overcrowding, many of which were running late. We eventually took the 08h29, running five minutes late, and departed 48 minutes after our arrival.

How curious that the staff policing the ticket barriers had disappeared when we first came down from the platform. Coincidence? Who knows. It does seem to often coincide with delays or disruption, though.

The most infuriating thing was’t the poor service but the announcements. There’s a perfectly good, reliable automated system that tells you what’s coming, what’s late and what’s cancelled, and even which trains are departing from unusual platforms (there are only two, but even so). It’s timely, just the right volume and spoken in a pleasant female voice.

The guy in the office, though, interrupted her every time with ear-splitting repeats of what she was trying to say. It’s at its most frustrating when she starts to say something and then he jumps in with exactly the same thing. And then repeats it. And then repeats it. And then repeats it.

I know people want information, and it’s great that we’re getting it, but please – leave it up to the recorded professional, and TURN DOWN THE BLOODY SPEAKERS.

Arrived in London to find a dusting of snow had crippled public transport into the city. Great Portland Street tube closed due to flooding (it was yesterday, too, but they didn’t announce that on my train until it had already sailed straight through it), and team members arriving late.

First up, delays on all lines running into Liverpool Street, including the Stansted Express and trains from Cambridge and East Anglia. Not National Express‘ fault, but whoever was managing the Christmas works for Network Rail.

Disappointing, yes. Unexpected? Not entirely.

There is a tedious inevitability to over-running engineering works, and so reports of hour-long delays on all lines running into London Liverpool Street didn’t come as a shock. This is the third year in a row that the return to work following the Christmas break has been troubled.

Network Rail was fined £14m by the regulator for over-running works affecting the return to work in January 2008.

Strikes on Virgin West Coast

Virgin West Coast passengers, meanwhile – and particularly those who have held off on renewing their season ticket until the first working day of the year (never a good move) – have been affected by a one-day strike by TSSA against the closure of ticket office windows in favour of increased use of automatic ticket machines.

You have to sympathise with their sentiments, even if you don’t agree with their actions. Strikes are rarely welcome, and timing them for the first day back at work isn’t a good way to get commuters on your side.

However, the fact remains that automatic ticket machines can’t offer help and advice and can only follow a set script rather than hunting down low fares on your behalf.

Ticket office windows are a vital resource, but claims by TSSA union leader Gerry Doherty that ‘this is all about defending a vital service to rail passengers’ have a hollow ring when the strike is clearly timed to cause the maximum disruption to those self-same commuters.

It’s not like it’s a new phenomenon. Every couple of weeks we’ve had delays because vandals have dug up and stolen copper cables from our line because of the high price they can get for the metal when they sell it as scrap.

Most recently (before today) it was Saturday morning. That messed up the service for the whole morning. Then it happened again this morning. Much more serious this time, as it resulted in a lineside fire, and no trains at all passing through.

The advice, understandably enough, was not to travel if at all possible. So, it was another day working at home for both of us. Usually I wouldn’t mind, but this is the last week before the Christmas break so I could really have done with being in.

It always happens in the same place, so I don’t know why they can’t send out patrols to keep an eye on that stretch of track.

Or, even better, get on with the job of replacing those cables with aluminium, which isn’t nearly so appealing to the thieves.

It’s not been a good few weeks. The 07h49 that we catch has regularly been leaving at 07h55, and on Thursday evening last week I had to drive out to Epping to give Rich a lift as the whole line had shut down due to yet another fatality in the Ilford area. It seems a bit of a favourite for those with suicidal intent.

When we did get back to Chelmsford there were no ticket inspectors in evidence. The barriers were wide open and they’d been replaced by police in fluorescent jackets, no doubt to discourage any rioting.

Tuesday was a day spent working from home. Not through choice, but because of a fatality on the line near Stratford. That’s code for suicide. Again not the fault of the train company, but the broken down level crossing that scuppered the rest of the afternoon pointed to lack of investment in the infrastructure.

Last week, on the 9th, there was a fault on a train in Norwich and problems with the signals between Norwich and Diss, which made me late in the morning, for the second day in a row.

How can a daily journey of 35 miles be so difficult?

That would have been packed, so I took a Southend train, intending to ride as far as Shenfield and then change. Not so. It was full when we left Liverpool Street, and when we got to Stratford we picked up all the people who would have got on there not only to that train but also to the cancelled Chelmsford trains.

It was packed to the gunnels, so I even lost the space where I was sitting on the floor.

So I got off, and got an all-stations to Shenfield, then had to change and get on a Chelmsford train which, when it arrived, was only four coaches long. So, back to standing.

The usual promises followed about the next train down the line stopping to pick us up, but when it arrived it was full to standing. We traipsed over to platform 4 and there waited for a train to Romford (ultimate destination Gidea Park – I’ve never understood that). It arrived late, inevitably.

At Romford we had to change onto a train to Shenfield, and there change again back to Ingatestone. We eventually arrived home two and a half hours after leaving work.

I could excuse breaking down trains – these things happen – but it’s the lack of organisation and provision that infuriates. They didn’t make a good job of directing us to the right trains at Ilford, which ended up on some Shenfield people getting on the Gidea Park train and then off again, and the trailing train that was going to pick everyone up being mis-announced.

Even the announcer seemed embarrassed about it. He blamed it all on only just being told.

Not good enough.

Punctual.