Christmas Eve On The Trains

 

One of my past jobs was planning capacity on one of the digital networks, stating early December and over Christmas and the New Year we always had an embargo on new works and freeing up capacity by moving/re routing circuits, the network would run almost to capacity all generated by Credit & Debit cards, unlike many people we were not that busy over Christmas, though the jobs in limbo (usually waiting for superstructure to be built had a default date of Christmas day), on Christmas Eve the Manager of the group I was working in would say 'we will finish at three O'clock today as the higher management can never decide what time to let the staff go, most people went to the pub across the road for a drink, a few including me would go straight home as British Rail had said that all trains will finish early and be at there destinations by 21.00, the underground and buses finished later, the reason I did not go to the pub is that when I start drinking and having a good time you forget about the time and before you know it you have missed the last train, when I got to Waterloo Station it was busy I was in luck there was an Epsom train due to leave in 10 mins, the train was not overcrowded, there was one person soundly asleep, as the train was arriving at Stoneleigh Park two stops before Epsom, some one decided to wake him to make sure he did not miss his stop, he went ino a major strop shouting 'what the f**k did you wake me for this is not my stop, I'm on my way to Amersham you should have left me alone', most of the nearby people were stunned and amused, not only was he on the wrong train he was on the wrong railway, I still wonder if he got home for Christmas.

One of my brother in laws worked as a Guard on South West Trains had had one of the last trains into Waterloo that Christmas Eve, getting into Waterloo not long before 21.00, he told me that the indicator boards all said there are no trains until XX XX (two days later) everyone was asking is this train going to XXXX, they cancelled his empty stock working to Wimbledon Depot, he managed to get a lift on another Empty Stock working to Wimbledon.