A bad day for travelling back

You'll remember the "fun" I had getting down to Euston yesterday morning. I thought I'd struck lucky with the return journey though. My rescheduled 3pm meeting finished earlier than expected and I arrived at Euston in time to catch the 4.35. Woohoo! I should have realised that my original title was going to hold true for the whole day.

Prior to departure the train manager announced that, in common with other trains today, we would be diverting via Stafford and Crewe on the way back (the 4.35 normally only calls at Macclesfield, Stoke-on-Trent and Stockport) owing to a gas leak in the Macclesfield area. The train was still expected to meet all of its normal arrival times though, so everything still looked pretty good. Except for those travelling to Macc and Stoke of course, who were now going to have to change at Stafford onto a local service.

Laptop deployed as before, game of Spider Solitaire successfully concluded, I noticed that 4.35 had come and gone and there was no sign of movement. After a few minutes the tannoy crackled into life once more to apologise for the delay in departure which was caused by a fault on an external door. It refused to close properly, with the result that the automated system wouldn't give the driver the all-clear to leave, or release the computerised lock on the brakes. An engineer was, we were told, on his way...

We finally departed Euston at 4.55 and delays en-route meant we were a full 30 minutes late back to Piccadilly. I guess it could have been worse. I could have been travelling today and incurred the snow-instigated delays. We don't normally deal with snow very well in this country. Public services are disrupted out of all proportion to the amount of snow, and most drivers take one look at a white pavement and engage overcautious mode, refusing to take corners at anything above a walking pace.

This time round though, Virgin Trains were prepared. They announced during the journey home that owing to the expected snowfall, they would be running a reduced service! The wonders of modern weather forecasting - now companies can cancel services before a single flake has fallen!