First Capital Connect service to Baldock - RANT!

sammylou100

Two weeks ago I moved from South West London to Baldock, I needed to be nearer family as my sister is about to go into hospital.

I have commuted before from Arlesey to Finsbury Park with no probs, I checked over times, prices etc before moving to Baldock, it's horribly expensive, but considering London rent it all evened out. The problem is that I have to get a connecting train at either Hitchin or Stevenage as Baldock is on a different line & I travel to Finsbury Park (it's cheaper and more convinient for my tubeline & I can't change my ticket now as I got a year's season ticket loan from work.) The problem is in 11 days of commuting 3 of my trains have been cancelled and one severely delayed leaving me stranded half way. This morning I was over an hour late for work. It is shocking!

I have contacted First Capital Connect but they'll just send me vouchers for train travel, after spending £3200 on a year's season ticket they are completely useless to me. I know Baldock is a small town but anyone would think I'd moved to Antarctica!! Is it going to continue this way with me getting stuck 2 days a week?! Sorry for the rant, just needed to get it out!!! :mad:

Livingthedream

A good rant is always welcome, just had a quick look on the NXEC website and there's quite a few direct trains from Baldock to Finsbury Park, what time do you have to be at work for and would it be possible to catch the earlier direct 07:23 arriving at Finsbury Park at 07:56

sammylou100

Unfortunately not, that one would get me into work about 45 mins early (which would be fine, but it's already quite a long day), I tried to get the next direct one at 8.45 this morning which would have been a bit tight but that was the one which was cancelled! The mornings have been fine up til today, it's getting home that's a nightmare, there are no direct trains between 5pm and 6.69pm (in other words peak time, same in the mornings)

Sorry for another rant, it's just frustrating because it's costing me a lot but giving me a lot of stress! I don't like standing around in stations in the evenings when I could be home eating my tea!

Altarf

The problem on the Great Northern line is the overhead power lines, and if anything happens to them the line is utterly screwed and can take hours/days to get them working again. If there are no overhead line problems then FCC's GN (not Thameslink) service is pretty reliable. My partner uses their service daily from much further up the line, and excluding the snow in February, I think that she has been delayed more than 10 minutes less than half a dozen times this year, so you have started on a bad spell.

Part of the problem with the timetabling of trains at Baldock, is that in May FCC introduced some 12 carriage trains in the morning and evening peak, but obviously they can only stop at stations with a long enough platform, which Baldock doesn't have. Combine that with not wanting to go to Kings Cross...

If you don't want to change trains at Stevenage / Hitchin, have you considered in the evening going down to Kings Cross, where there are 4 direct trains to Baldock between 5 and 7pm (although you will only save about 3 or 4 minutes in time).

sammylou100

It's not that I don't want to change trains, I am happy to do so and understand that it's me being awkward because I don't have a ticket that takes me all the way to Kings Cross. I can't afford any extra on top of what I already pay. It's just the fact that in 11 days 4 of the trains have been cancelled. When it works (as it did this morning) it takes me an hour & a half to get to work, which I think is pretty good and I like living outside of London, my problem is that it just doesn't seem to work very well!! Must just be my bad luck I suppose!

dzug1

Can you travel from Letchworth instead? That does have through peak hour services to Finsbury Park. Or would the journey to the station be more awkward?

sammylou100

It's worth a thought, I think I'm just going to have to ride it out (no pun intended!) I purposfully rented a flat which is less than 2 mins walk from Baldock station so don't really want to drive over to Letchworth. Hopefully things will improve and I was just unlucky!