I was overjoyed to see the new March 22nd First Capital Connect Thameslink timetable, which seems to have a straight flush of 8 car trains from St Albans into London in the morning rush hour! There are also more 8 car trains coming back out in the evening than there were, but they don't seem to have managed to cover all services.
That would have been it for this post, but my wife told me that she'd had a letter from FCC saying that the new trains required to do this are actually four months late (cue obvious jokes) and so we'll be lucky to actually see this working out in reality. Either that or they will try to manage it with yet more borrowed stock from Southern, but cunningly setup such that the first minor problem wrecks everything through lack of contingency capacity. Brilliant.
I still find it highly amusing that there's all this talk of 12 car trains when they still can't run anything better than 4 car trains for many rush hour services. Let's get to 8 first!
Incidentally, is there an even more disgruntled commuter somewhere in the deep South wondering why they now have 1 car trains, by virtue of all Southern's stock having been sent to FCC? Or did they just have all these trains sat in a shed waiting for their calling?!
Well if the overcrowding on the southbound platforms at Blackfriars this evening is anything to go by there may well be quite a few extra people now having to use FCC to travel south from there than there used to be following the withdrawal of all the other train services from the station! I’m pretty sure it won’t be very long before the lack of trains causes pain to commuters.