Thou shalt be late

Oh back to the early starts for me today. It was genuinely bright and early when I got up this morning, though - it was a lovely morning. Still, I only got up so early. :P

Again I left the house at about 08:54, maybe later, and thought: 'y'know what? It's such a nice day, I might as well wander up to BUH again.' Now, it was a nice day, but surprisingly cold and it's a longer walk than you might imagine. I don't think I can've reached the platform until 09:10, if not later. It probably would've been better just to go from ROV but I didn't fancy the wait and I didn't really wanna be late all that much. I had a minute to wait for a WER train, during which I made sure to check on the progress of the renovation at BUH. To my surprise, all of the boarding was gone and the work seemed to be completed. It did look nice, too, and the work is 'in keeping' with the rest of the station - they seem to have built an additional wall in front of the pre-existing wall, though, for whatever reason.

Anyway, soon enough my train arrived and I was probably on the last train over Woodford junction before the 09:14 from ROV. Still, I suppose I was slightly earlier than I would've been :P When I arrived at BUH there were severe delays on the Central line west of WHC (faulty train) but all was apparently well on the rest of the line and I didn't have any problems. Well, there was a bit of a dwell at LES and we were slow out since we were following the train from platform 1, but that could easily have been timetabled anyway.

I also noticed, at LEY, that the member of staff doing SATS described the train as an EAB. I eventually managed to check at BEG, where I found that he was right - it had indeed become an EAB. Not, of course, of interest to most on the train though.

At LIS auto-pilot kicked in and I got off the train. It was a lovely day, as I say, and a trip on the old sub-surface lines would've been nice, but I wanted to be on time. As a result, I actually got back on (on the next carriage to save face :P) and continued on to HOL - taking the chance to have a peek at the crossover outside LIS and its shunt signal.

I reached the Piccadilly line platform and got on board an Oakwood train (bound for the depot, I assume) in just the right place for Russell Sq. And then, I discovered that my plans for timeliness had been scuppered - I was thwarted by a lift. The T/Op informed us that the train would be non-stopping Russell Square due to a defective lift. I could, of course, have got off and walked from HOL, but I decided to stay on to King's X - enjoying another crossover (just outside King's X) on the way :P There I changed for an S7+1 for all stations to Amersham and that took me to where I would've ended up had I not bothered with the detour - Euston Sq. Since I'd actually boarded the Amersham quite far down the train and wanted to be at the front, I actually spent most of the journey to Euston Sq making my way up the train, which I couldn't have done on any other stock. That was actually rather fun :P

I was pretty knackered after today's round of classes, but we finished Sanskrit a little early - which was very nice. This was an undoubtedly good start to my return journey home and, indeed, all was going well until King's X. At Euston Square I was able to walk straight onto an Aldgate train and that whisked me off to King's X, where we received a platforms and hold call due to a handle down at LIS. That kept us there for a couple of minutes or so, but that was the only major issue and I was able to make the eastbound Central line platform at LIS unusually early.

I noticed on the dot-matrix indicator that the train which was pulling in when I arrived on the platform was for NEP. Behind that was an EPP and behind that the coveted GRH via WOO. So I enjoyed what was actually quite a hot, tiring, long commute of taking the first train and changing where necessary. I took the NEP to LES, the EPP to WOO and the GRH to ROV. Simply no point hanging around at LIS, I might not have been able to make the GRH, or there could have been disruption or anything. It wasn't bad, though, and for the first time in ages I've completed a Monday return journey before daylight has really faded.