Tales from today's commute....

[ianrauk]

They are editing the time table over the weekend, I hope they don't change anything 🙏

Same here with South Eastern Trains. I've already checked and there's no changes to the times of the trains I use thankfully.

Those carriages are very different to what we get - i.e. cattle class. We are stop 4 and the commuter trains in the morning are standing only -

It does depend on what train I get in the mornings. I can get a faster, direct train 10 minutes before or 10 minutes after. But much prefer the stopping service as it's much less busy. It's nice to sit in relative comfort next to the bike rather then battle with the great unwashed.

It was a tad milder this morning here in the South East, 11° and cloudy. The cloud making it a very dark 7am.
Thankfully the ride in to work was incident free.

 

[Spartak]

Yesterday's commute was from hotel back to Mechelen station.

 

[Mazz]

Strangely busy this morning but everyone was behaving themselves and my favourite rolling stock was back on today. Although its go no dedicated bike rack, it doesn't stop at every station so there's little standing to St'Evanage, and those that do can't stand in front of the bike or block me when I need to get off.

View attachment 795092 Technically I could have ran round for the earlier train on Platform 2 ( I was in time for it) but it does stop at every station and involves stairs.
View attachment 795093
They are editing the time table over the weekend, I hope they don't change anything 🙏

Do you ever need to tether the bike to the grabrail to secure it while train is in motion?

 

[Arjimlad]

What would you do?

I was stopped at lights on red. 3 cars in front of me, all of us waiting for right turn filter light to go green. Light turns green for us. First car goes, second car goes, but 3rd car doesn't budge. After some time I decided to go round it. I reckon the driver then saw my bike lights in the wing mirror, realised the lights were green and darted forward, made the right turn but left me now stuck on the red light again.

I was so tempted to tap on the back window to wake the driver up instead of trying to move in front of the car.

Had 2 like this on Wednesday morning. The first one was looking down at his phone rather than ahead at the traffic. The second one was looking at her laptop on the passenger seat.

 

[HLaB]

Do you ever need to tether the bike to the grabrail to secure it while train is in motion?

Nope. I've seen guards get tetchy with other folk who have done that on empty trains up north. There's hardly enough force anyway that you can't control with the front wheel between your knees.

 

[HLaB]

The exact opposite traffic wise. The train was packed (although it was the early one that stops at every station) and apart from a little congestion around the one way streets in the town centre, the normally busy area were well quiet.

Fortunately, on the train someone train had got on earlier with a folder and tied that up in the bike space. I thought there'd be no space to sit dow either as folk were standing but one bloke had spread himself out across two seats and no one squeezed in, I did. He made a bit of room when I did, and got off a few stops down the line anyway.