You can tell the weather by visiting your local train station in London. The turn of the seasons means that if you want to know what the weathers like turn up at the station and have a look around. If it’s like below, and it’s June, then you know summer is here. The official reasoning for the large crowds and lack of trains was signal failure. I suspect that signal failure is the ‘most likely to be accepted excuse’ as it’s easily believed. This is mainly because it happens so often.
Liverpool Street at 5.30pm.
If it’s summer and there is signal failure it probably means something has blown because of the heat. If it’s autumn then the problems are due to leaves on the line and you know it’s windy out. In winter signal failure pops up again, this time due to extreme cold (OK, winter in England is generally cold anyway and you don’t need crowds at a station to tell you such). Finally signal failure in spring means its raining outside. This is hardly a surprise but hey, someone is always surprised.
The crowd looks on
So, we bought some items for dinner and then joined the crowd to wait for our train. Lining up on the platform with the population of Brentwood wasn’t fun, but it was a damn sight better than the sardine trip in the slow moving tin shed up the line home. I really do hope we’ll not have to put up with this for the rest of summer.
