Travelling In The Current Hot Weather

The past few days have been turning into a real nightmare because of the gloriously hot weather.

Network Rail, who run the rail infrastructure in the UK, have had to impose speed restrictions because the hot weather is causing the tracks to buckle. Indeed, a buckled rail was found on my line home the other day at Gatwick Airport. However, it makes me wonder how warmer countries are able to run high speed services, while our system grinds to a halt when it gets hot, cold, wet or dry. The answer is probably because we just don't invest in checking the track and maintaining it to a sufficent standard.

South Central, the train company whose trains I take, has been particularly badly affected it seems. Apart from badly delayed services, they have taken to cancelling some of the services before mine. This means my train is very overcrowded at present. So what have they done about it? The answer is they are running it with only 8 coaches instead of the usual 12. Pure brilliance!

I also can't believe the language schools are still trying to pack hundreds of students into these trains as well. Travel at peak times should be priced higher to avoid this, but South Central has no evening restrictions like other rail companies seem to have.

On the plus side, everyone is listening to the warnings about not travelling by Tube, so it's been empty in the mornings and evenings. Great!