For the second time in two months I’ve found myself turfed off the train at Stratford. What the problem is, of course, they don’t actually tell you, but you can tell it’s coming when it takes you close to 20 minutes to crawl that far from Liverpool Street. It should take about five minutes at the most.

This time we had the added bonus of a fitter travelling out to fix us, but it seems the problem was more serious than expected, and so after another 20 minutes of waiting we were turned out onto the frigid platform to wait for the full-to-capacity replacement trains to roll in.

No chance of getting on one.

Of course, I’d learnt my lesson last time not to try and get on one of the all stations stoppers that pulls up – it takes a couple of hours to get home that way as you roll to a halt at every station down the line. The only alternative was to ride back to Liverpool Street and start again.

It’s galling, and ironic, to be turfed out at Stratford, the station that serves the 2012 Olympic site, from whose platforms you can see the quickly growing stadium and swimming arena.

Will it ever be able to cope with the sudden influx of millions of spectators and competitors from right around the world? I doubt it. Not if tonight is any indication.

But then, it isn’t only this line that needs improvement. Tonight’s Evening Standard reports on a Europe-wide survey that puts the London fourth (out of 23) from bottom in public transport provision. Only Budapest, Zagreb and Ljubljana came out worse.

I’ve been to all of those cities, and frankly they have excuses. London does not. All are found in ex-Soviet states, none can boast the riches of London, pretty little Ljubljana is so small it really doesn’t need much in the way of public transport, and Zagreb has excellent buses and trams.

Admittedly Budapest could do better, and I got horribly ripped off by a taxi driver acting out an apparently common scam that I won’t fall for again, but let’s not forget that it is two cities united by a a river and doesn’t profess to be the world’s financial capital.

Transport into and out of London – on this line at least – is really rather shocking.

It isn’t the first time this has happened. Neither will it be the last, I’m sure.

How out of touch are our MPs? Sir Nicholas Winterton, a Tory MP for Macclesfield, and standing down at the next election, argues that MPs should still be allowed to travel in first class because the rest of us, who travel in ’standard’ class, are a ‘totally different type of people’.

Really?

Talking on Radio 5 Live today he said:

If I was in standard class I would not do work because people would be looking over your shoulder the entire time, there would be noise, there would be distraction… There’s lots of children, there’s noise, there’s activity. I like to have peace and quiet when I’m travelling. (source: BBC News)

Well don’t we all, Nicholas. Lots of us – myself included – work when we’re travelling. Lots of us would like peace and quiet and no distractions, but we have to make do with plugging into an iPod to block out everyone else.

MPs are the only people in any position to really do anything about the state of the railways in this country, and they should be forced to travel like the vast majority of us – in so-called ’standard’ class. Perhaps then they’ll see how most of their constituents (a ‘totally different type of people’) live their lives.

I want to be represented by someone who is the same ‘type’ of person as me. How else could they ever fight for those things that interest and concern me?

Like seats on trains, quiet coaches and a service that runs on time.

Image courtesy of M. Holland

A terrible, terrible journey home tonight. It was obvious something was wrong when we stopped at Bethnal Green, about half way between Liverpool Street and Stratford.

For quite a while.

Eventually the driver diagnosed the fault: the train had lost power. After 20 minutes or so he rebooted the whole thing (lights out, power down, power up, little effect) and we eventually crawled on to Stratford where we were all turfed off.

The most frustrating thing about that, apart from the fact that it meant we were thrown onto a platform that was already full of people waiting to get on, was the fact that our train had actually started to go quite quickly after a long, gentle ramp-up.

Nonetheless, the driver was (quite rightly) not prepared to take it any further, so it sat in the platform for ages, blocking the line.

We took an all-stations back to Shenfield and changed there, eventually getting home two hours and 40 minutes after leaving work. That’s not good on a 30-mile journey.

Points failure at Chelmsford. The 07h49 wasn’t going anywhere, so of course they had no choice but to turf us all off. A 12-coach train, full, with 70-odd seats in each coach. That’s 800 commuters plus.

Queues on the stairs from the platform. Queues in the tunnel beneath the lines. We had to let the next six trains go without us due to short formations and overcrowding, many of which were running late. We eventually took the 08h29, running five minutes late, and departed 48 minutes after our arrival.

How curious that the staff policing the ticket barriers had disappeared when we first came down from the platform. Coincidence? Who knows. It does seem to often coincide with delays or disruption, though.

The most infuriating thing was’t the poor service but the announcements. There’s a perfectly good, reliable automated system that tells you what’s coming, what’s late and what’s cancelled, and even which trains are departing from unusual platforms (there are only two, but even so). It’s timely, just the right volume and spoken in a pleasant female voice.

The guy in the office, though, interrupted her every time with ear-splitting repeats of what she was trying to say. It’s at its most frustrating when she starts to say something and then he jumps in with exactly the same thing. And then repeats it. And then repeats it. And then repeats it.

I know people want information, and it’s great that we’re getting it, but please – leave it up to the recorded professional, and TURN DOWN THE BLOODY SPEAKERS.

Arrived in London to find a dusting of snow had crippled public transport into the city. Great Portland Street tube closed due to flooding (it was yesterday, too, but they didn’t announce that on my train until it had already sailed straight through it), and team members arriving late.

After a week of ice and sub-sero temperatures, the snow is starting to melt, not that you’d know it from the way my bike was skidding around on the ride to the station this morning.

Sadly, though, the trains were still struggling. At least on National Express East Anglia. We arrived in good time for the 07h49 to find it had switched platforms. Fine – we can cope with that – except that platform one, where it was due to arrive, was still waiting for the 43. It came and it went, but there were so many people we couldn’t get on. Ditto the 49 when it turned up. Ditto the 53, which had been reduced from 12 to eight coaches.

We eventually got on the 57, and to be fair it was a good run in, but as with past years 2010 hasn’t had a good start for commuters across the country. The heavy snowfall has happened the smooth running of the trains and left plenty of passengers either crammed onto overcrowded services or waiting on frozen platforms.

That’s why we, like many others, spend three days last week working from home.

It’s been a poor start to the commuting year. Let’s hope it’s not a portent of things to come.

First up, delays on all lines running into Liverpool Street, including the Stansted Express and trains from Cambridge and East Anglia. Not National Express‘ fault, but whoever was managing the Christmas works for Network Rail.

Disappointing, yes. Unexpected? Not entirely.

There is a tedious inevitability to over-running engineering works, and so reports of hour-long delays on all lines running into London Liverpool Street didn’t come as a shock. This is the third year in a row that the return to work following the Christmas break has been troubled.

Network Rail was fined £14m by the regulator for over-running works affecting the return to work in January 2008.

Strikes on Virgin West Coast

Virgin West Coast passengers, meanwhile – and particularly those who have held off on renewing their season ticket until the first working day of the year (never a good move) – have been affected by a one-day strike by TSSA against the closure of ticket office windows in favour of increased use of automatic ticket machines.

You have to sympathise with their sentiments, even if you don’t agree with their actions. Strikes are rarely welcome, and timing them for the first day back at work isn’t a good way to get commuters on your side.

However, the fact remains that automatic ticket machines can’t offer help and advice and can only follow a set script rather than hunting down low fares on your behalf.

Ticket office windows are a vital resource, but claims by TSSA union leader Gerry Doherty that ‘this is all about defending a vital service to rail passengers’ have a hollow ring when the strike is clearly timed to cause the maximum disruption to those self-same commuters.

I can’t help wondering how the cable thieves that have been plaguing our line over the last few months know when the power is switched off. Granted there was one death back in the summer when the lines were still live at the point of being cut, but whatever the value of scrap copper it still strikes me as far too big a risk when you know there may be 25,000 volts running through those cables.

Are they getting information from someone on the inside?

Over ten days this month there have been four thefts, in Chelmsford, Marks Tey, Kelvedon and Boreham. The most serious resulted not only in the loss of 100m of cable, but also signalling and communications equipment, which was destroyed by a subsequent fire.

Since April, according to Network Rail’s own figures, the East Anglia region has seen more than 50 thefts or incidents in which cables have been damaged by would-be thieves.

The compensation costs alone, paid to disrupted travellers, amounts to £2m taken from Network Rail’s coffers, but that doesn’t take into account the cost to business. With 500 trains cancelled and a further 2000+ delayed on a line running into London, one of the world’s financial capitals, the economic impact is difficult to judge.

The sooner all copper cabling is replaced with aluminium alternatives, the better – for commuters, for rail companies, and for the thieves who are routinely risking their lives.

There’s an irony. No coppers around when the copper is being nabbed from our train line.

It’s not like it’s a new phenomenon. Every couple of weeks we’ve had delays because vandals have dug up and stolen copper cables from our line because of the high price they can get for the metal when they sell it as scrap.

Most recently (before today) it was Saturday morning. That messed up the service for the whole morning. Then it happened again this morning. Much more serious this time, as it resulted in a lineside fire, and no trains at all passing through.

The advice, understandably enough, was not to travel if at all possible. So, it was another day working at home for both of us. Usually I wouldn’t mind, but this is the last week before the Christmas break so I could really have done with being in.

It always happens in the same place, so I don’t know why they can’t send out patrols to keep an eye on that stretch of track.

Or, even better, get on with the job of replacing those cables with aluminium, which isn’t nearly so appealing to the thieves.

It’s not been a good few weeks. The 07h49 that we catch has regularly been leaving at 07h55, and on Thursday evening last week I had to drive out to Epping to give Rich a lift as the whole line had shut down due to yet another fatality in the Ilford area. It seems a bit of a favourite for those with suicidal intent.

A horse on the line this morning. It made a nice change from leaves and snow but the upshot was the same: it took us 55 minutes to get to London and for the first half hour of the delay the only information we had was a recorded apology that promised to give us more information when it had it.

We’ve had some crappy days on the trains lately. Last night I was on the 19h02. I could have been on something much earlier, but a tree fell down on the line and blocked it. Not the train company’s fault, of course, but annoying nonetheless. The upshot was hordes of people at Liverpool Street waiting for trains, and just as many at Shenfield waiting for a shuttle bus to take them on to their destinations.

When we did get back to Chelmsford there were no ticket inspectors in evidence. The barriers were wide open and they’d been replaced by police in fluorescent jackets, no doubt to discourage any rioting.

Tuesday was a day spent working from home. Not through choice, but because of a fatality on the line near Stratford. That’s code for suicide. Again not the fault of the train company, but the broken down level crossing that scuppered the rest of the afternoon pointed to lack of investment in the infrastructure.

Last week, on the 9th, there was a fault on a train in Norwich and problems with the signals between Norwich and Diss, which made me late in the morning, for the second day in a row.

How can a daily journey of 35 miles be so difficult?