Not the Island of Sodor

Um well.

nottheislandofsodor — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 20:12:33 +0000

Date	AM/PM	Depart	Arrive	Time	Delay	Late?
12/01/2009	PM	18:01	18:55	0:54	0:05	No
13/01/2009	AM	7:00	8:15	1:15	0:23	Late

A very impressive 23 minutes late this morning. Good thing the stock broker I work for is not doing any business due to the credit crunch or someone would probably have been upset by me being late to work. Apparently one of the units, thats what we call the metro trains, ahead of me had a fire. I know this as one of my colleagues was on it. There was no danger and it was just a hassle for the people on it. There was certainly no annoucement from the driver or guard on the unit I was on.

Also I have changed the recording system to use the 24 hour clock as it will make it easier to work out stats.

This is about as good as it gets

nottheislandofsodor — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 22:36:15 +0000

Date	AM/PM	Depart	Arrive	Time	Delay	Late?
9/01/2009	PM	4:41	5:33	0:52	0:03	No
12/01/2009	AM	7:19	8:11	0:52	0:03	No

A typical day

nottheislandofsodor — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 21:24:42 +0000

Date	AM/PM	Depart	Arrive	Time	Delay	Late?
8/01/2009	PM	5:23	6:16	0:53	0:06	No
9/01/2009	AM	7:21	8:16	0:55	0:08	Late

Travian

nottheislandofsodor — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 01:24:10 +0000

Cool I have just been approached to join an alliance. SEN rocks!!!!! However, do I really want to be a member of a club. hmmmmmm

So what am I playing?

nottheislandofsodor — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 01:17:25 +0000

Well at the moment I am playing Dead Space (XBOX360) which could best be described as the first Alien movie but with mutated crewmen instead of an Alien as the monster. Very gothic horror. I am stuck in Chapter 4 where I have to run along the outside of the ship dodging meteors.

On the PC I am playing a lot of Travian which is a Civ like game but played via the web. I am happily building up my village, well empire now that it has a capital, but I am getting very tired of being attacked. So the Trapper is turning into my best item so far. Who needs a barracks and troops when you can just suck up all the attackers in traps!

I have got Halo 3 and Mass Effect coming so that I can see what the big deal about the two of them is.

I will come up with something slightly more interesting a bit later.

I’m fully supportive of brake tests

nottheislandofsodor — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 20:29:47 +0000

So I was sitting at the front of the train last night and heard the driver when he first got on, call train control and say that no one had performed a brake test and that they needed to do it before they could depart. Fair enough I say, working brakes sound like a pretty good thing to me.

But…. that meant we were two minutes late departing which translated into eight minutes late arriving.

Date	AM/PM	Depart	Arrive	Time	Late	Late?
7/01/2009	PM	5:22	6:18	0:56	0:08	Late
8/01/2009	AM	7:00	7:55	0:55	0:03	No

Starting the year off right!

nottheislandofsodor — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:22:40 +0000

Date	AM/PM	Depart	Arrive	Time	Late	Late?
5/01/2008	AM	7:22	8:18	0:56	0:10	Late
6/01/2008	AM	7:00	7:54	0:54	0:02	No
6/01/2008	PM	5:20	6:14	0:54	0:04	No
7/01/2008	AM	7:18	8:11	0:53	0:03	No

Not a great start to the New Year thank you very much. The first trip a mere 10 minutes late…

Oh well.

The rules

nottheislandofsodor — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:07:45 +0000

To keep things fair for Tranzmetro and myself here are the rules I am going to attempt to follow.

I will always use the latest published timetable to measure my trips against. Currently this is the September 2008 timetable.
I will use my mobile phone which is synced against the nearest cell site to record times.
For a service to be recorded as LATE it will need to be over 10% over the publised arrival time as in the current timetable. I would love this to be 5% or less.

So with this all in mind lets set the scene.

I live in Paraparaumu which is the last stop on the, not particularly originally named, Paraparaumu line. I catch the train all the way in Wellington, which is the other end of the line. According to the timetable the average train journey is about 50 – 52 minutes on a peak time service.

By and large in the mornings I catch the 7:00 am, the 7:18 or the 7:40, peak time trains for the 49km journey.

In the evenings I catch either the 5:20, 5:40 or 6pm trains all of which are scheduled to take 50 minutes to get back to Paraparaumu.

So why am I here

nottheislandofsodor — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 00:40:26 +0000

As a user of the Wellington train system for all of my adult life, about 15 years, I have finally lost all patience with the level of delays and nonsense. So I am going to keep track of each days journeys and see just how bad this all is. Maybe I am imaging it!

So thats the main reason for this blog.

I will also rant on about whatever I am playing, reading or watching.