Another fine mess someone got me into

At the considerable risk of beginning to bore Rusters – for which I now apologise – today I return to the travails of travelling by the “Great” British railway system as I experienced them yesterday.

I would like to preface my account by asking readers to note that, firstly, I used italics in the above paragraph in order to apply a touch of irony to my description and that, secondly, in what follows, I shall use my best endeavours to keep strictly to the facts rather than add too much unnecessary colour and detail, of which (in the actualité) there were plenty of both.

Yesterday morning I was driven by my son to have lunch with my daughter who lives in Oxfordshire. My intention afterwards was simply to return to the south coast by pre-booked senior citizen’s off-peak rail travel.

To this end my son dropped me off at Richmond Station and I then caught a train bound for Waterloo and left it at Clapham Junction, this in order to wait on Platform 13 for one of the regular trains travelling in the direction of Southampton from which I would have to do no more than alight at Chichester.

At about 3.45pm, having joined the train and found a seat, my first/next stop would ordinarily have been at East Croydon.

Dear readers, we never made it.

In my youth – when my family lived in Surrey commuter land – I occasionally visited Croydon to attend concerts at the Fairfield Halls, but generally passed through its then grey, drab and unappealing architecture and landscape with a glazed expression. My school friends and I used to joke it was the sort of place one wouldn’t voluntarily stop in case your car tyres were nicked or you were set upon by hooligans.

It appears that Croydon may not have changed much in the intervening fifty years.

Our train came to an unscheduled halt at the platform of a station called Thornton Heath where, after about ten minutes of nothing, the conductor came on the intercom to inform us that – as the result of a “passenger on the line just short of East Croydon” – a major incident had been declared and it was likely that the train would not move for a minimum three hours.

[I shall not make a “big thing” of this next piece of information but simply mention that this was the second occasion during my last three train excursions to London (and back) that someone had thrown themselves under a train close to East Croydon station. There, I said I wouldn’t make a big thing of it and I haven’t.]

He then offered to open the train doors so that anyone who wished to might seek to travel on to their destinations via other means would be able to do so.

Several – e.g. those en route to Gatwick Airport – immediately disembarked but I opted to stay put (rather then step out into the unknown), just in case we moved on within say the next half hour.

We didn’t.

Instead after fifteen more minutes the conductor ordered us all off because – within the next 15 minutes or so (his estimate) the train’s batteries would run down and it would be impossible to let us out after that.

And so I first emerged from Thornton Heath station, which to me looked just like Croydon did when I was last there thirty years ago, armed with the helpful suggestion of a rail staffer that I might try taking a bus and changing twice in order to return to Clapham Junction.

Ten minutes standing on the pavement convinced me I’d never make it alive.

I went back into the station and after twenty minutes, on a different platform, a train stopped bound for Victoria which would stop at Clapham Junction on the way. I took it.

At Clapham Junction I returned to Platform 13, where (as I have said) Southampton trains habitually stop off on their way.

All services in all directions were running between forty and ninety minutes late but eventually a Southampton train arrived.

I did my best but the platform by now – rush hour being in full swing – was literally so rammed that, though I made it as far as a carriage entrance, there was no physical way I could force my way on. Tinned sardines wasn’t in it. I wondered at how those on board were able to breathe at all without immediately preventing others from doing similar – and/or without sexually assaulting each other.

Fifty minutes later the next Southampton train hove into view. I couldn’t get on that one either – and for the same reason(s).

To cut a long story short, I eventually caught the third Southampton train that came through – but even that wasn’t the end of it.

At Horsham, where traditionally the Southampton train splits into two – the first four carriages going on to Southampton and the last four instead going to Bognor Regis – after a ten minute wait we received another announcement from the conductor – someone had decided that the train wasn’t going to split at all … but, instead, all eight carriages were going straight on to Bognor Regis!

Those of us bound for Chichester and beyond e.g. to Southampton were to alight at Barnham and wait for a Fareham train which would take them past Chichester but (even then) not as far as Southampton!

Dear Reader, I then had to stand for thirty five minutes on a Barnham station platform waiting for said Fareham train, which I then boarded for a nine-minute trip to Chichester, my final destination.

I finally reached home – exhausted, exasperated and frustrated (but resigned) – some three and a half hours later than I would have, had the person who jumped under a train just shy of East Croydon station chosen instead not to do so.