Had a very interesting meeting in Birmingham today with www.ineed2know.org.uk (NYAS Birmingham Sign Posting Service) about controlled vocabularies among other things. Very stimulating and plenty of food for thought.

The start and end times were slightly different to what I had planned them to be, so I found myself with an option of getting an earlier train to Worle, my next stop for more consultation. I knew I was tempting fate when I emailed the landlady of B&B to say I would be arriving an hour earlier.

Right on cue, that email must have been intercepted by whatever government department is collecting (and presumably at some point losing) all our data. The email was obviously immediately sent to network rail because by the time I arrived at New Street station, a state of chaos had been organised, with services being diverted via Leicester because of a signal failure. I missed a late running train (50 minutes late) by one minute; yep, a whole sixty seconds. The 16:40 then disappeared from view and we were told the 17:10 to Plymouth would be 10 minutes late but it then arrived five minutes early. Confused? So was everyone on the station, our heads being further addled by the constant changes to the departure platforms. 

I SHOULD NEVER HAVE MOANED ABOUT TRANSPORT INFORMATION YESTERDAY. 

My mistake. 

The information angle on all of this however is curious, because while none of the display notices were particularly accurate, and while the staff on the platforms were not being kept up to date; when I phoned up national rail enquiries they told me exactly what time the trains would be expected; and explained that the 16:40 ‘had stopped’ (where, how, why, I didn’t ask). 

But a further point; if we had a transport system that was funded to work properly, there wouldn’t be such a need for so much information. Maybe, and it’s just a maybe, that a bit more investment in signalling systems would remove the need for so much ‘customer services information’? 

The other strange aspect to all of this was that while the tannoy was extremely loud in reminding everyone not to smoke, keep their luggage with them at all times, buy as many cheese sandwiches as possible - the announcements about the trains were accompanied by the usual howl of feedback, so common on these occassions. 

I will say no more about railways and information systems for now.