For
some time the car park had flooded for a day or two every time it rained at
Shalford Station on the First Great Western Reading-Redhill line. Complaining
to FGW, who manage the station, seemingly produced no resolution. Indeed, every
time it flooded, passengers cut down the fence simply to get from the platform
to the car park without wading through 6 inches of water and FGW kept on rebuilding
the fence but not removing the flood.
Then after one particularly spectacular flood in Oct 06 diggers arrived and dug up the car park. Hurrah, we thought they're fixing the problem at last. At one point during the work it was again completely flooded - marooning the digger in the deepest point. But when the digger left, the fencing was taken down, the water remained and if anything was worse.
Time passed, the car park continued to flood.
And
then it became apparent. FGW hadn't been fixing the flooding, they'd been preparing
to bring Shalford into the 20th century by installing a ticket machine in this
unmanned station. (It would be the 21st century, but the new machine doesn't
allow the collection of tickets bought on the web - what a lost opportunity!)
So where had they chosen to put the machine - yes in the middle of the flood
zone. And yes, within two weeks of installation, it's an island in the middle
of Lake Shalford Station.
But, it's all right really, as the ticket machine only worked for the first three days of the two weeks since it was installed, so we don't have to argue that we shouldn't pay a penalty fare because the ticket machine was in the middle of a lake!
(c) Howard Fisher, February 2007. Images click through to larger photos.