ADisruptedJourneyHome


Dear diary ... (2026/08/06) ...

I'm home! The last leg of my journey was interrupted, so there was an additional delay of 15 mins, but I'm finally here, nearly two hours earlier than scheduled because of chaos in Manchester and Liverpool.

How did that work? Let me tell you ...

Firstly, here's my original schedule to come home. First, the main stations involved:

Then the timings:

However ...

Earlier in the day there had been what turned out to be a 90-second power outage in a control centre in Manchester, so the trains were disrupted. Not just the ones in that area, but also the train crew coming in from the outer darkness into London to take those trains out ... though those outgoing trains were themselves disrupted. So ...

I checked the timetable. There was a train for Chester at 18:02 (with a different company) that was running a bit late, but would be faster. Usually they wouldn't let me travel on that because my ticket was specifically for the trains above. But with the chaos I thought it worth asking.

And, dear reader, they allowed me to travel!

Direct, EUS to CTR. I did not, after all, have to change at Crewe (WOO HOO!)

But ...

We departed ten minutes late, got caught behind other trains, so by the time we arrived in Chester (as I say, I didn't need to change in CRE) we were 32 minutes behind that train's schedule. But even so, we were rather earlier than my original schedule.

So this is the train I caught:

But we departed at 18:13, and arrived at 20:40.

I'm way ahead of the expected and originally scheduled 22:45 arrival in Chester, and in plenty of time to catch this one:

So I should be home by 21:30.

Well, dear reader, it wasn't that simple.

The advertised 21:00 departure was still showing as "On time" at 21:00:28, with no train at the station. I checked the detailed train location tracker, and there it was, stationary, outside the platform, not coming in.

So the incoming train that was supposed to form our outgoing 21:00 (it "bounces" ... comes in from Liverpool, then goes back out to Liverpool) ended up being 8 minutes late. So we were 10 minutes late getting out of Chester.

That train goes CTR -- HOO -- BEB -- BKC ... -> LIV

Ten minutes late into Hooton, where it was announced that ...

... the train would make up time by running semi-express from HOO to BKC ... not stopping at BEB.

AARRGGHH !!!

Though, not to panic. There was another train:

(ELP = Ellesmere Port)

That was scheduled into Hooton just 15 minutes after our scheduled time at HOO, thus only 6 minutes behind us, as we were running late.

So I was delayed 15 minutes from the scheduled train that was 2 hours ahead of the train I should have been on according to the original schedule.

If you see what I mean.

So due to the problems with the trains, I was home nearly two hours early.

I'll take that.



Backlinks: index FourPointsTwoDistances