Is Orwell running the trains these days?

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.