Public transport

I'd probably have had a quicker trip home from town today if I'd tried to travel home on this thing...

It was Maddy's parent night at school so I had to be back in Queensferry and at the school for quarter past five. I had some stuff to sort out so I got to the train station at half past four. It's a twenty minute train journey so I was assuming no problems getting there in time. My train pulled out of the station bang on time at twenty to five and got as far as the Haymarket tunnel before stopping for five minutes then reversing back to the station. They announced that, due to a points problem the train was having to be re-routed. It sat in the station for another five minutes then they announced it was cancelled.

Heading back into the station and looked for the next train. It was scheduled for twelve minutes past five, which meant I'd miss the first appointment but would be ok for the rest. About two minutes before it was due they announced it would go from a different platform. Cue a run to the opposite side of the station for the correct platform.

The train ended up a wee bit late but pulled away from the platform at about twenty past. It even made it through the tunnel to Haymarket so that was me on the home straight...

That is until we got into Haymarket when they announced that, due to the train running late, the next stop would be Inverkeithing so passengers for South Gyle, Dalmeny and North Queensferry would have to disembark and wait for another train. HAd they announced that at Waverley I'd just have gone for a bus but Haymarket now meant I was a reasonable distance from a bus stop for Queensferry.

To cut a long story slightly less long (well it's not exactly short) I finally pulled out of Haymarket at twenty to six an hour after my train first left Waverley. Almost miraculously, and with a sprint from the train station to the school, I made it to the school five minutes after my last meeting was supposed to start and found the teacher was running behind schedule anyway. That was the most important one to get to anyway, and thankfully after that all but one of the other teachers I was meant to see had free slots so I was able to catch up after lots of apologies.

It's the last time I get the train when I'm in a rush though. from the grumbling of fellow passengers it's a semi-regular occurence. And this is while they're still getting 50% subsidies from the tax payer. I dread to thing what they'll decide constitutes acceptable levels of service when the government halves their subsidies.

Anyway, I'm not really a Beatles fan, but the song that I'd probably consider my favourite of theirs fits quite well with this blip.