This time we had the added bonus of a fitter travelling out to fix us, but it seems the problem was more serious than expected, and so after another 20 minutes of waiting we were turned out onto the frigid platform to wait for the full-to-capacity replacement trains to roll in.

No chance of getting on one.

Of course, I’d learnt my lesson last time not to try and get on one of the all stations stoppers that pulls up – it takes a couple of hours to get home that way as you roll to a halt at every station down the line. The only alternative was to ride back to Liverpool Street and start again.

It’s galling, and ironic, to be turfed out at Stratford, the station that serves the 2012 Olympic site, from whose platforms you can see the quickly growing stadium and swimming arena.

Will it ever be able to cope with the sudden influx of millions of spectators and competitors from right around the world? I doubt it. Not if tonight is any indication.

But then, it isn’t only this line that needs improvement. Tonight’s Evening Standard reports on a Europe-wide survey that puts the London fourth (out of 23) from bottom in public transport provision. Only Budapest, Zagreb and Ljubljana came out worse.

I’ve been to all of those cities, and frankly they have excuses. London does not. All are found in ex-Soviet states, none can boast the riches of London, pretty little Ljubljana is so small it really doesn’t need much in the way of public transport, and Zagreb has excellent buses and trams.

Admittedly Budapest could do better, and I got horribly ripped off by a taxi driver acting out an apparently common scam that I won’t fall for again, but let’s not forget that it is two cities united by a a river and doesn’t profess to be the world’s financial capital.

Transport into and out of London – on this line at least – is really rather shocking.

It isn’t the first time this has happened. Neither will it be the last, I’m sure.

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.

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.

There was a fatality on the line somewhere north of Ipswich. Not much the train operator could do about that, in all fairness, but it could have remedied the knock-on. It meant that the Norwich InterCity wasn’t running, and so everyone was being crammed onto our train, terminating at Ipswich, from which they’d have to pile onto buses or find some other way home.

That would be fine except for the fact that they’d only put on four coaches, to hold all of the Ipswich train’s regular load, plus the people that would have filled a 12-coach InterCity.

It was full to standing, with the entrance vestibules full to bursting and other people all the way down the aisles. We got two of the last seats, fortunately, but it was still a cramped, noisy, unpleasant journey home.

Except this week it’s run late every day, which as an added bonus means it’s that little bit more crowded as people who would otherwise have missed it further up the line – or at Chelmsford – get there in time.

Only seven minutes late this morning, but late nonetheless, and for no given reason.

The move comes after passengers in the First Class dining car complained that they were being annoyed by the noise of spoons making tinkling sounds as they sit on saucers. 

If only rattling tea cups was the worst thing to assault our ears in standard class. You’d be lucky to hear a teacup over the cacophony of mobile phones, clattering keyboards and leaky MP3 headphones.

Based on a model that last ran in 1966, the Peppercorn class A1 Pacific locomotive should eventually run on mainline tracks, carrying passenger on charter trips, much like the Orient Express does today.

Full details can be found on the A1 Steam Locomotive Trust’s site.

The latter point is particularly interesting, as faster trains will undoubtedly attract more ecologically-focused passengers to switch from taking short-haul flights. This would previously have led to overcrowding, which could only have been overcome with longer trains, which in turn call for further infrastructure investment in the shape of longer platforms. That wouldn’t happen.

By running on standard tracks and working with existing platforms, the AGV can be slotted into existing fleet and track set-ups with little expense beyond the cost of the trains themselves.

It looks like the TGV’s days of being the darling of European rail travel could be finally coming to an end as the AGV achieves what even Spain’s AVE, and Germany’s ICE couldn’t do.

Technorati Tags:
train, agv, tvg

Just two minutes after leaving St Pancras, the train enters the beginning of what will be 19 miles of tunnel along the route. First come the two parallel tunnels, divided by a new station at Stratford in east London.These ‘twin bore’ tunnels pass under 2,600 properties, seven miles of surface railway, 12 existing tunnels – including four London Underground stations – and 600 gas, water and sewage pipelines. For most of the way, engineers had to send ahead 10 pumps to remove millions of gallons of water in front of the tunnellers. The misleadingly named Thanet Sands were so hard the stretch wore out six £10m boring machines. Special vents will allow excess pressure to escape from the tunnels so the trains can go at 140mph.

See the full story here.Technorati Tags:eurostar