First Capital Disconnect - a traveller's tale

I was eating my breakfast, paying half attention to the news on the telly, when they came up with one of those “who'd credit it” stories, a bit of a laugh after all the war and recession stuff. It seemed that there was this railway company who couldn't run their railway today – not at all, not a single train. It wasn't a strike, but they didn't have seven-day contracts for their staff and depended on volunteers to run the trains on Sundays. Since the company don't pay overtime rates for this overtime, the drivers had decided, very understandably and not for the first time, to enjoy their Sundays with a lie-in. And the service involved was the one I had been planning to use, to Hatfield. I'd even got a ticket!

Because I'm an “information professional”, I was able to hunt down further information on the First Capital Connect (the incompetent train operators) and Network Rail ('nuff said) websites – nothing obvious, of course, you had to look really hard. I could, they were graciously pleased to inform me, able to catch a train from St Pancras to St Albans (First Capital Connect's other service - alarm bells should have rung), and then a bus to Hatfield. So no tragedy, just a bit of a nuisance.

I polled up at St P in good time for the 8.34. 8.34 came, but no train. The poor guys on the front line (the yellowcoats), had had the “standby for the train” message from Network Rail, so they were surprised when it didn't appear. An increasingly-large straggle of people, including many with huge cases as they were expecting to be taken to Luton Airport, were taking it in turns to question one of the yellowcoats, who were unfailingly polite but had to admit that they know nothing.

Then the call came: the trains were starting at Kentish Town, and everyone would be taken there by the buses which were outside the station. The yellowcoats raced over to the window, while I asked myself, if “they” knew  the trains were starting up the line sufficiently well in advance to lay on buses, why didn't “they” tell the blokes on the ground, It began to seem like an academic question, as there were no buses, but it turned out that they were lurking shyly up the street. We all – me with my little rucksack, almost everyone else with tons of luggage, struggled down the escalator and went outside to the waiting buses. Very slowly, the buses remaining in strict convoy, we made our way to Kentish Town, where they were ready for us – oh no, sorry, I made that bit up.

There were a couple of trains there, but nobody to tell us which to catch. A helpful man (a passenger of course, not a First Capital Connect person) told us all that he'd been informed (who by?) that the train on platform 3 was for Luton. So we jostled our way down the narrow steps to platform 3. Ten minutes or so later, the friendly driver (no irony intended) informed us that the train was indeed going to Luton, but stopping at every stop; a faster train was about to depart from platform 4. Panic – cases were unshipped in haste, All the would-be flyers (and I) clambered back up the steps, across the bridge and down to platform 4.

The alleged departure time of the train had just passed (I looked at the information board, which also said “Bedford only”), and all the doors were closed – except one, which was being held open by a beckoning woman (no, of course not – she was another passenger). We all duly filed through the single door, with me leaning back out again to bark, interrogatively, “St Albans?” to the driver, who shouted “yes”.

It did indeed go to St Albans, and the bus connection went like clockwork – luckily the bus was run by Arriva, not the First Group!