Thameslink is back to normal !

The Hendon Times trumpets the story "Thameslink is back to normal" on its website. But what does back to normal mean? As anyone who has followed the sorry tale of the First Capital Connect franchise on this website will most certainly wonder. The only safe way to know is to have a look at their website.

This I did and yes, normal service has been resumed. At 09:44 there were a total of 9 trains stopping at Mill Hill Broadway listed as running late. Here's a couple of the excuses :-

08:06 St Albans City to Sevenoaks due 09:53

This train has been delayed and is now 8 minutes late from St Albans City.
This is due to an earlier broken down train. 

 

08:22 St Albans City to Sutton Surrey due 10:05

This train has been cancelled.
This is due to a train fault. 

 

 

 So there you go. Thameslink is back to normal. Delays, breakdowns, cancellations. The Hendon Times had the following message on it's story

Are you a First Capital Connect Thameslink commuter? Did you have an easy journey into work this morning? Contact reporter Sarah Cosgrove on 07795 505 961

 If you are a Thameslink commuter and you had a rotten journey and I know lots of you have been looking at this blog, please do call her. I'd also suggest you sign our petition for Gordon Brown to sack First Group (see the sidebar). Nearly 500 people have signed the petition since I mentioned it on the blog on Friday (it has gone up from 2,650 to 3,109 signatures). When you consider that it is only being publicised through a couple of blogs, that is pretty impressive. I believe about 50,000 people a day suffer from using the service. That means that well over 5% of them have signed the petition, which is a pretty large number. Let's just hope that Lord Adonis follows up his threat to strip them of their franchise.