Usually, it's a simple seventy minute trip on Greater Anglia from Ipswich, where I work, to Liverpool Street, our London terminus. However, it isn't the most resilient piece of railway line, and when things go wrong, they can go spectacularly wrong. As a result, and because I normally have to commute from Stowmarket to Ipswich and back, I am a keen observer of Greater Anglia's Twitter feed, watching out for delays and cancellations.
Except that, on Thursday afternoon, I was distracted by that 'work' thing. You know how it is, you're in the midst of a project and lose sense of time? Like that. I had a train to catch, the 18.13, stopping only at Colchester en route to the big city for a dinner date with Ros.
And so, at six o'clock, I set off for the station. On arrival, a Greater Anglia staff member asked if I was heading to London, saying, "If you run, you'll catch the train on platform 2!"
I didn't hesitate, and threw myself onto the train just in time. But what was I on? It wasn't the 18.13 - it was only 18.10 - so I checked the Greater Anglia app. No sign of the train. We were due to call at Manningtree, Colchester, Chelmsford and Stratford. No sign of this train on their live departure boards. It was going to London though, and that was good enough.
So, what had happened? It was a lovely afternoon in Ipswich but, apparently, it hadn't been so good in Norfolk. Lightning strikes and flash flooding had paralysed the signalling systems, and the overhead lines were damaged between Norwich and Diss. Thus, trains were all over the place.
I had been lucky this time. Whilst the train was slower than usual, I was only ten minutes late into Liverpool Street and on time for dinner. Greater Anglia had got me there...
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