I’ve spent a few days this week working on an equipment trial hosted by the engineering department of Durham University. The original plan was that I’d go up there by train (a 4.5 hour journey north, changing at Birmingham) after lunch on Wednesday, arriving in time for dinner, spend all day Thursday and Friday it the university, then catch a train home just before 5pm on Friday, arriving in Malvern sometime after 9pm. That meant that I’d get no time to see anything of the city of Durham, which was a shame as it looked interesting and it’s not somewhere I’ve been before.
The equipment trial went pretty well, though it was really hard work and surprisingly tiring. I got to the station in good time for my train home, and sat myself down in the waiting room next to the information board. It soon became apparent that there was a problem. No trains were arriving from either direction, and the ominous words “delayed” and worse still “cancelled” started peppering the board. Finally we got an announcement over the tannoy. There was a major signals failure at Darlington, the next major station to the south, and all lines in both directions were impassable. Everyone on the station was to wait for further information which would be provided as soon as possible.
Well, I waited for half an hour in an information vacuum, in which time my train via Birmingham changed status from “delayed” to “cancelled”, with trains for the following two hours all marked as “delayed”. I decided I’d had enough. It looked ominously like there would be no trains South until very late that evening, which would mean that at best I’d get stranded at Birmingham as I would miss the last onward connection to Malvern. At worst I wouldn’t get even that far. And I was so tired that I didn’t want to face a a very long late journey with no guarantee as to how far I’d manage to get before being stranded. It seemed a much better option to cut my losses and stay an extra night in Durham.
I knew that the Premier Inn that I’d been staying at for the past few days was fully booked, as I’d heard the receptionist say so. And I don’t have a smart phone and didn’t have any other hotel phone numbers to hand. Fortunately, my company uses a travel agent to manage all our hotel bookings which has an efficient out-of-hours service. So I rang them up and spun them a sob story – I was stuck in Durham with no means of getting home that night, but I had a spare pair of knickers in my suitcase and their phone number and trusted that would be enough to save the day! Could she please find me somewhere – anywhere – to stay in Durham that night? The woman on the end of the phone burst out laughing and said that of course she’d help.
In fact, she had trouble finding a spare hotel room. I think that lots of people were also abandoning their train journeys and snapping up rooms. Certainly, several of the hotels she tried first were full. But she did manage to book me into the Radisson, just over the river from the town centre. I think I must have looked particularly stressed when I checked in there, as the receptionist handed me a voucher for a free glass of wine at the bar! It was certainly the right call to abandon my journey – although the signals were eventually fixed, the knock on disruption was such that there was only one train to Birmingham that night, which left Durham after 9pm and wasn’t scheduled to get into New Street until well after midnight. It would have been absolutely packed with no hope of a seat, and I would have missed the last train home to Malvern by several hours. It was much better to be safe and warm in Durham where I could have an early night and try to relax.
