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When the first giddy rush of all that snow had subsided, and we were back inside warming our toes after all the frolicking, we sat down to play the game of London Snow Madness.
You know the one: spotting examples of over-reaction, over-cautiousness and general official madness that always accompanies a snow fall (or flurry, on some occasions).
Our contenders are:
This here destination board at Sydenham Hill station, which apparently can't display any information. Apart from the information that it can't display information.
All London buses being cancelled. Eh? All of them? Every single one? Not even anything on central, gritted roads, until mid-morning? Fffft. When I were a lass in t'North, this'd never a' 'appened. Bus companies claim the roads are unsafe - maybe they ought to do some winter weather training...
Train company websites, which are either down, pointing to National Rail Enquiries (who are somehow still running normally), or displaying a bizarre default page (“The following services are running normally: x to x via x”; thank you Southeastern, most informative).
But our winner is TfL's explanation for why the Waterloo & City line was suspended this morning. Adverse weather conditions? Staff shortage we could believe, but was it snowing in the tunnels?!
Spotted any others as you're huddling over a steaming cuppa? Let us know.
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To be fair, that screenshot about the Waterloo & City Line is from the BBC whose information is provided by Trafficlink, who are notoriously focussed on ... er ... Traffic, and are very bad at Public Transport information, to the exclusion of the 8 million who move daily around London by methods other than cars.
That screenshot is from the BBC, but I cross my heart TfL said the same thing... I just happened to screengrab the BBC's page and not TfL's!
The depot of the w&c in Waterloo is actually exposed to the elements. Perhaps there's something there which caused a problem?
Victoria line was the only one totally unscathed and that is in a tunnel throughout (but not including the depot).
On second thoughts - good point.
I'd have thought TfL may have prioritised work on the Victoria line as it is rather more crucial to the city's operations than the W&C line (whose route, let's face it, can be covered by a 30 min walk).
It may also be that they don't have a lot of equipment on the W&C line for clearing snow (they've got quite a cramped depot, apparently).
To be fair to TfL, is it fair to expect them to have enough equipment to deal with a once-in-20-year weather event? Personally I don't think it would be a sensible use of public money to tool up for such things.
Yeah fair point - on bbc london news this lunchtime, the presenter asked Boris whether he's going to buy some snow ploughs to clear routes in case this happens again. He quite sensibly answered that he'd spend all the money on them and never use them for 20 years, by which time they'd probably be of no use anyway.
What about the circle line - suspended all day, snow undergound? since the circle line only surfaces for about 4 stations. Of course it may have a depot outdoors, not sure where the circle line traines are stabled over night.
The Met line stabled its trains at Uxbridge in the open and this was running well (not good, just well), in fact this morning it went from Uxbridge to Baker Street then stopped there. So the trains liked the snowy outdoors but hated the warm tunnels - odd or what?
Getting home this afternoon (left early, I was on my own all day, seems the snow kept the rest of the office at home), noticed a display at Ealing Broadway for the main line local service - the 13:39 service to London Paddington has been delayed, this service is due at 15:36. hope no one was waiting for this one !!
yes, i too love the snow inside the tunnels question...