The Knowledge

It is a little over 3 months since I stopped work in London. My plan/expectation was that with poker and other reasons to visit, I would probably travel in about once a week in the post-job era.

It has worked out a little less - maybe once every 2-3 weeks. Recently we have been without a 2nd car, also, which tends to mean I favour taking the train. This in turn (when combined with poker plans) tends to imply staying overnight. I can tell you that hotel rooms in central London are in short supply.

What I also notice is that not being in a regular commuting routine means that one is lacking an important weapon - detailed tactical knowledge of the rail network.

This leads to weaknesses and critical errors in the travel game.

For example, on Monday, I was due to travel to Mill Hill for a lunch meeting, then onto Central London for an afternoon appointment.

I checked the timetable ahead of time and found a good one-change route (change at Luton Airport Parkway).

Things went slightly awry when I arrived at the station in good time for the 10:51. The board showed this running late. Alas, without my commuting knowledge, I did not know whether 9mins late was enough to make me miss my connection. I also did not know whether the 10:40 - which I might just make - would stop at Luton Airport. Neither did I know if my connection could be picked up at an alternate interchange.

Whilst I wavered, an update meant the 10:51 was now 12 minutes late. Had I been properly in training (pun alert) I would know whether 12 minutes was in the "change" window. I know generically that East Midlands trains are faster than FCC and I know my originally time-tabled change at L.A.P. would have at least 5 minutes grace.

I was seriously short of data. I also should have been able to evaluate whether a 9min to 12min re-calibration was likely to foreshadow a further slippage or whether we were already in the accurate-forecast horizon.

Anyway, I now decided to take the 10:55 on-time departure by FCC which I knew stopped at Parkway. I had missed the 10:40 anyway by dint of needing to buy a ticket - a disruptive event.

In my state of knowledge-starvation, I had inadvertently purchased a ticket to Parkway instead of my actual destination of Mill Hill Broadway. This meant facing a ticket-buying delay at the interchange point which could potentially see me miss an otherwise catchable connection. This would be a tremendous faux-pas.

Fortunately, I missed the connection by 2 full minutes anyway but I also saw the East Midlands train overtake us so I know that if I had opted to stick with that, I would have been able to miss the connection whilst buying the 2nd part of my ticket.

Arriving at Mill Hill 27minutes late (the interval between services departing Parkway to this non-prime stop), I failed to purchase my Mill Hill to St Pancras ticket on LEAVING the station on the way to lunch - a straightforward safety play.

This allowed me to miss my post-lunch train by <40 seconds which a real benchmark for disappointing results especially since the platform was < 50 metres from the ticket machine.

So, an aggregate of 1 hour late into St Pancras caused by basic knowledge deficit.

This was partly compensated by the knowledge that I wasn't in any real hurry.