Engineering Work Overrun, and my journey home

Today we had something that pretty much everyone who works as front-line staff in the rail industry dreads...An Engineering Work overrun.

In most cases, this would just cause perhaps half of the morning peak to go tits up, but this was an overrun of spectacular proportions, courtesy of a faulty tamping machine (follow the link to see a photo containing a pair of such machines).

By the time the machine was repaired, the crew were over their permitted hours, but as the job wasn't finished, they weren't in a position to hand the line back, so Single Line Working was temporarily implemented through the affected area, thereby reducing capacity by around 50%, meaning some trains had to be terminated short of their destinations.

The new crew eventually turned up, and work resumed at around 9am. Now, the problem with tamping is that you have to do it extremely slowly...And they had just over 14 miles (around 22.5 km) to do altogether.

Suffice to say, the line was eventually handed back at 17:17, but there had been delays, short workings, and cancellations all day as a result.

And then, on my way home, I was going great guns until the Underground train I was on waited for what seemed like ages at one station, stopped for a minute or so between there and the next one, trundled along thence to the station after that, stopping in the tunnel yet again, and again between the next two stations, and between the next two, so I jumped out when we eventually stopped at the next station.

Upon exiting the station, I discovered that I had just missed a bus and the next one wasn't due for another 12 minutes. When it didn't show up, I jumped back onto the Underground to travel on another couple of stops, with the intention of catching a bus from there, which drops me around 30 seconds from my front door. Once again, the train stopped in the short tunnel section just before my destination station for a minute or two, jeopardising my chances of getting the bus, but I made it to the stop just in time.