Points Failure

It never rains, but it pours...And it was certainly pouring as I was on my way in to work this morning. My suspicions were first aroused when I got to the station and found that a train I should have missed had a six minute delay on it.

They were confirmed when we came to a halt just before the penultimate station, and the driver came over the Public Address system to inform us that there had been a points failure. Shortly after this announcement, a couple of trains went past us on the opposite tracks (the line is four tracked at this point), which is unusual for where we were, as they normally cross over to use the same bit of track that we were on.

We eventually got under way again and pulled into the penultimate station, where a train heading in the opposite direction passed us on the "fast" line, to take the branch we'd just left, suggesting the points failure was at the terminus. This was confirmed when, after departure, we proceeded to cross over onto the centre pair of tracks (the approach to the terminus being three pairs) and arrived into one of the high numbered platforms instead of one of the low numbered ones.

The points failure was eventually cleared, so I'm told, at around 2pm (I passed through at around 11:30am), only to be followed a couple of hours later by a fatality on the other route from the station.

As for work, it was a pretty quiet day, mostly because of the rain I expect, and nothing of note happened.