The Anonymous Widower

An Open Letter To GreaterAnglia

As I have been travelling up and down to Ipswich from London since probably about 1963, when I used to put my bicycle in the guard’s van and have it hauled by a Britannia between my parent’s main and retirement homes, it was inevitable, that one day I’d end up in the sort of incident that I did last night.

I should say, that after the death of my wife and son to cancer, and a serious stroke, I retired to London from Newmarket, and as I’m still a season ticket holder at Portman Road, I come up for every Ipswich Town home match.

Yesterday incidentally, was the first day, when my chosen train up (down in your terminology) to Ipswich, the 13:30 from Liverpool Street hasn’t been within a minute of its scheduled arrival time of 14:43 and I missed the first few minutes of the match.  Luckily, Ipswich left the excitement for later. As I’ve taken this train, perhaps fifty times in the last three years, that is probably not a bad record.

I usually go home on the 17:09, so that I can experience the comfort of First in a Mark 3 coach. Yesterday though, we were advised to take the Football Special and in common with everybody else, I ended up on Colchester station. At least the buffet was open, and I was able to get a decent cup of hot chocolate, as from my knowledge of railway electrification, I knew from the fact that all the lines for London, were blocked by fallen trees, we could be in for a long wait.

But Ipswich fans tend to be fairly stoic and resourceful, especially after the troubles of the last few years.  I thought and hoped, that my mate, Ian, who lives in Kent and had also been at the match, might be in the area, and as luck would have it for me, but not I suspect for him, he was visiting his father in Colchester Hospital.

So unlike others, just after 18:30, I was sitting comfortably on my way south. Ian lives near Ebbsfleet, so he was able to drop me at the station there, to get the High Speed service to Statford, which is an Overground ride away from where I live in Hackney.

I was starting to get hungry, but as I’m a coeliac, getting food at Stratford and the nearby Eastfield shopping centre is difficult, as not even Marks and Spencer, has anything like a gluten-free sandwich and there is no restaurant that I trust to serve a meal without gluten.

So instead of getting home at about seven, I was home just before nine, which given the circumstances and probably the experiences of other passengers, wasn’t too bad.

It is interesting to compare the trip[, with one I took on Deutsche Bahn in similarly awful weather, where I was abandoned at Osnabruck on a trip from Hamburg to Amsterdam, and left to my own devices. With incidentally no offer of compensation.

Obviously, you will always have problems with trees by the line, if we continue to get this awful weather. And obviously now, unlike in the 1950s and 1960s, there are no Britannias to periodically clear the trees, by setting fire to them.

In some ways, you suffered from one of the problems of an all-electric railway, which is obviously vulnerable to an event as last night. It would of course have helped if the line from Ipswich to Cambridge had been electrified, as it would have enabled the ferrying of Ipswich passengers for London to Cambridge, for onward travel. But that infill won’t happen for some years, if it ever does.

I think that the only solution, that might help, would be if you had a couple of Class 88 engines to run direct services to Yarmouth, as their go-anywhere capability would have allowed a shuttle via Cambridge.  But then the first of these is a few years away from being built.

I think, under the circumstances, you did as well as could be expected. But probably the fact, that Ipswich had won, meant most fans were in a good mood.  But you can’t please everybody!

Certainly though, your performance in times of smaller troubles over the last few years, has in my experience, been a lot better than some other companies I could name.

January 26, 2014 - Posted by AnonW | Sport, Transport/Travel | Class 88 Locomotive, Football, Ipswich Town, Trains