Grumble grumble

Southern Railway trains are crap crap CRAP! The timetable's are there purely for decorational purposes. I thought I was running late this morning, arriving at the station at 7:30, but the 7:22 train I was aiming for wasn't due for another 5 minutes.

Lately they've insisted on moving late running trains to the disused platform 3. They usually make an announcement a good few minutes after this decision has been made (possibly they need at least 5 minutes to string a sentence togther). After the anouncement is made it's a quick stampede down the stairs, then a careful hop over the rubble and mangled metal that blocks the entrance to the disused platform, followed by a crawl through the weeds and a final dash for the train; which then crawls all the way to the mainline and is overtaken by the next 3 or 4 trains behind.

But once I get onto the SouthWest trains service, oh what bliss. I got chatting to the conductor today since I buy my ticket off him (Southern's ticket offices only accept shillings and farthings). This takes a few minutes due to the complicated nature of my request which I won't go into. He recognised me from the previous week (as I had made the same demanding ticket request), and was extremely polite and sincere. Hello Nick!