A wet lunch

Today, I'd arranged to meet a friend so I got up nice and early, giving myself plenty of time to sort out the cat litter and so on. After getting through all the morning chores I had to do, I left the house into some rather unpleasant rain. The weather's been horrible all day actually. Anyway, after battling through the wet and the rain I arrived at ROV to find that my luck was improving and that there were only 2 minutes to go until the WOO arrived. By the time I'd touched in and made my way over the bridge it was fast approaching and I virtually walked straight onto it. That took me to WOO where I had an 11 minute wait for the WER. I like to think I didn't waste it, though - I had a good look at the signalling while I was there, trying to find out more about how the sidings are signalled.

Eventually the train arrived and took me along the rain-sodden eastern end of the Central line to LES (in Coded, I believe), where we were routed into platform 1. Hardly worth mentioning it happens so often these days. From there (after a change of T/Op, I think), we were taken to LIS with little real fuss. Some slightly obnoxious teenagers shared my carriage for much of the ride, but oh well.

The Met was suffering from severe delays Aldgate - Wembley Park (I think it was Wembley Park) due to a signal failure at Baker St. Minor delays rest of the line. This didn't really affect me, though, and I boarded a Circle line train to Hammersmith after only a small wait. I'd expected to see at least one Met line train in the Moorgate bay roads, but there wasn't one there when I went through. I noticed at Farringdon, though, that the one which had just left on the east was Moorgate bound. Before I got to Farringdon, though, I had a novel experience at Barbican westbound.

As we were approaching the brakes come on pretty hard. I thought maybe the draw up signal at Barbican (A2320, for anyone who's interested) was at danger and we were slowing for it. I thought maybe the T/Op had overcooked it a bit and needed to get stopped sharply, but no, it was nothing like that. I discovered the true cause when the T/Op came over the PA:

"Ladies and gentlemen I am aware that the passenger alarm has been activated, I'm going to get the train into the platform and then I'll come back and see what's wrong."

Or words very much to that effect, I can't recall precisely what he said, but it was that or close to that. Now, when the alarm is activated on the S stock I do believe it applies the brakes automatically, not just when leaving a station (although it may only do this if some part of the train is in the station, I don't know, but I doubt it) and this can be cancelled by the T/Op with the press of a button if needed. That would certainly explain the heavy braking. When we did make it into Barbican westbound the T/Op made his way back down the platform. I decided to walk along the train to see what I could overhear (although I was cautious not to get involved in any crowding round or anything else unhelpful - I resolved to watch at a distance). All I heard, though, was someone saying thank you and we were on our way soon enough. I've never been on a train where a handle's been pulled. I've been on plenty of trains delayed by a handle down, but that's the first time I've actually been on the incident train (as it were) itself.

After that we made King's X without any further delay and I was dismayed to find that the rain hadn't eased off, as I'd hoped, but had become torrential. Nasty, nasty walk to the campus, where I arrived soaked. Ah well, it was worth it, I had a lovely lunchtime, during which we migrated to Russell Sq in mercifully dry weather. Well the rain had temporarily stopped falling at any rate. London was obviously nevertheless soaked.

From Russell Sq I walked to Euston Sq station and boarded a Barking train that took me down to LIS. Changed for a Central line train to LOU which took me all the way to WOO. As we were approaching LES on the east I saw a freight train heading over the bridge on the GOBLIN. Made a very nice change - haven't seen that before. Occasionally I see a London Overground train on there and I always mean to mention it, but usually forget. This was something new, though. After around 10 minutes of waiting at WOO I boarded the HAI and it took me to ROV on its way to EAB. The rain started to come back as I headed home :(