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And most of the trains this evening were cancelled.
My brother who comes in from Welwyn Garden City said he's down from four fast trains an hour to two, my sister who comes in from Harpenden says they are now running fast trains within six minutes of each other then big gap (and there are less of them).
Bravo the British railways, even when they try to improve the service they stuff it up!
Still at least the shareholders get paid.
I'm not entirely certain that on past behaviour I trust the train companies' claims that there will be such a general improvement.
That's a long time to wait if you pay £4,000 a year for a season ticket and someone has decided the fast trains you rely on should run within six minutes of each other - before a 25 minute gap.
I'm also interested in this claim as to the benefits from Thameslink
'20 trains per hour will be put into services, and trains will run every 2-3 minutes through central London'
If there is one place you don;t need trains every two to three minutes it is through central London - there is a tube network there.
You need more of them coming at regular intervals into London - and all of the timetable complains I am hearing say the opposite has just happened.
Also, even if you just regard it as an extra tube service then... well who doesn't want a new tube from Finsbury Park to London Bridge via those central stations?
If you were commuting from half an hour by train outside London, and paying £4,000 a year for it, I doubt that after this week's carnage and the crazy changes to a lot of people's timetables you would be quite so cheerful.
The tube is so good because you can rely on it running at regular intervals.
Surely, that's how the trains into London need to be - done with regular ten to 15 minute gaps between each fast train with slow ones in the middle - not bunched together with big gaps, which is what has increasingly happened with over the years and been exacerbated by the new timetables.
I hope you are right and it turns out to be great, but the muppets repeatedly running rail franchises haven't shown any previous aptitude for achieving that.
Ghent is superb as well and a doddle from Brussels.
They promise it will get better after this transition but won't say what better actually is.
They should strip Govia of the franchise.
In fact, they should never have given it to them, as a previous incarnation was barred from reapplying for Thameslink when it came up and First Crapital Connect took over.
Just illustrates how messed up our railways are. We should give all the commuter lines to TFL rather than these corporate clowns.
"They promise it will get better after this transition but won't say what better actually is."
She can look on the website for that though, presumably?
The Thameslink programme was started in 2000. They have 18 years to plan for this change. Its an absoloute disaster. One of the previous Stroud Green residents used to work for them. I would love to know how they modeled/simulated the train services. I know it is complex as the Thameslink have to share tracks, signals and points with other lines (East Midland, Southern, South Eastern, Great Northern) but something has clearly gone wrong with their modelling and timetabling. Like TSB they have to hold their hands up and say they have got it wrong and start again.
But it's primarily due to insufficient driver training by the train operating company: https://www.londonreconnections.com/2018/the-cicadas-take-flight-explaining-the-may-timetable-changes/
There just aren't enough drivers trained to take the trans through the core, especially the canal tunnels. If there were the timetable would work.
Train operators may well suffer the same problems with signalling equipment but not being able to keep to a new timetable is beyond ridiculous, as is the goblin line being too high etc.
I have a theory that they can make more money by not running things.
Whether that is from insurance claims, not paying for diesel, power etc. or god knows what else i do not know but i cannot see why else they would not run trains with more and more excuses.
As far as I am aware they have not published this magical better promised timetable from December 2018.
If you find it let me know, I think the people paying £4,000 a year plus for their shambolic train to work might want to locate it - even if just to check if the useless shower running our railways are telling the truth for once.
This is the website:
https://www.thameslinkrailway.com/travel-information/plan-your-journey/timetables
https://www.railplan2020.com/timetables
Nothing there that I can see.
You previously claimed that now running through trains running via a known bottleneck could improve services because turning them around causes delays. Are you aware the new timetable means stopping more trains at St Albans and turning them back round? They previously used to continue on and service the stops from there to Bedford, so these things would seem contradictory.
As for train drivers who can't drive trains properly. Heaven help us.
This station-by-station guide outlines how the service will change over the course of the transition. I excerpted the bit about Finsbury Park station above. I think I've seen the full December 2019 timetable somewhere.
https://www.railplan2020.com/-/media/goahead/railplan2020/station-by-station/may-2018-station-by-station---d-to-j.pdf?la=en
Amazingly, Harpenden is the one station for which there are no details! Your sister's fury and suspicion seems to be well-founded.
I don't know the specifics of the St Albans situation, but the point holds - central London termini are at maximum capacity in the peak, and the key bottleneck in increasing the number of services. By funnelling some services away from the termini and through the core (which isn't anywhere near capacity, and won't be even in December 2019, so it's not a inherently a bottleneck) you open up platform capacity at the core stations. That's just physics.* But if you try to do that without having enough drivers cleared for the new route then you're fucked - which is where we are. Whether the final December 2019 timetable will work without a slight delay having a crippling knock-on effect elsewhere is yet to be tested.
I doubt St Albans' terminating platforms were at full capacity, and indeed that's demonstrably true if they've increased the number of trains stopping there, so that's a different situation.
*And why they just spent billions converting so many terminating platforms at London Bridge into through-platforms