WHAT ON EARTH IS SIGNAL FAILURE
AS SOMEONE WHO KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT THE TRANSPORT NETWORK BUT EVERYTHING ABOUT HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OF A COMMUTE, ESPECIALLY WHEN DRUNK, HERE’S MY UNEDUCATED GUESSES ON WHAT THIS IS.
In an instant, a fly can be swatted, a fly who probably had a great day, buzzing around the nearest waste centre or tip. It probably found a leftover roast dinner that could feed its family for months. In my imagination, this fly has a family and maybe some pets. What a fly would consider a pet baffles me, but I assume it is dragging bacteria around on strings like leads. This fly has worked hard for what little he ever had. His family lives under a leaf held down by wrappers and rubbish, branching out into an entire fly city. When you zoom out, you realise there is a dead body lying there being eaten by all the flies, and suddenly this feels like the opening scene of a film.
But anyway, a fly can be gone in an instant, the same as any happy feeling.
On Monday, your battery is drained from the weekend. If this is not you, imagine it; we are on this journey together. You are hungover, choosing not to speak, wearing sunglasses indoors, sitting closest to the bathroom in case last night’s buffet decides to make a guest appearance. Over the day, you realise people are people, and they are probably in the same boat. You talk, you laugh, your day improves. By lunch, only fragments of your evening are memorable, and the dread of either diarrhoea or vomiting is fading.
You end work with a smile, a bit of excitement for tomorrow. After a Tube journey from hell, but today you do not care. Your skin feels stuck to your muscles, someone is breathing too close, you are hunched like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, but it is a good commute.
You enjoy the bliss, ignoring the outside world, which is usually a recipe for disaster. Arriving at London Bridge, you sprint up the escalator like you are dancing through the streets but on a steeper gradient, sliding into the station, reaching the board, and it is all shit.
Every train is fucking cancelled. No trains leaving due to a signal failure. A signal fucking failure. Your day is scrapped.
Now, here is what I think a signal failure is, with no prior knowledge.
Trains work on a gossip-based schedule. Drivers get bored, so they join a book club. Let us say Southern and Thameslink are reading The Odyssey, fitting, since it is about a man who takes forever to get home. Drivers get you home, then they still have to get themselves home. I can feel someone’s mind exploding at that. It often takes most of us almost an eternity to get home each day.
Frank, one of the drivers, forgot to read a chapter. It is a big book, fair enough. Train Jesus sees a hefty leaf on the track, not a twiglet, a full twig. He sends a signal. Somehow, it does not reach the tower. The train does not get it. Train Jesus watches the annihilation of this leaf and freaks out, calls a complete halt. Everything is delayed because the funeral procession must go ahead for our fallen soldier, the leaf, obliterated by tonnes of machinery.
A moment of silence.
A signal failure is when railway signalling equipment stops working correctly, forcing signals to turn red or go dark so trains must stop for safety. It happens when the system cannot reliably tell drivers whether it is safe to proceed, often due to power faults, damaged components, wiring issues, or environmental conditions.
Written by Stan Still