After the match at Wembley on Sunday, we went for a meal for an hour to wait for the passenger numbers to die down. Our journey was for the 20:04 LM service from Wembley Central to Watford Junction, connecting on to the 20:32 VT service to Coventry, the latter being on a non-flexible (Traveller) ticket.
Arriving at Wembley Central at 19:45, there were no organised queues, just melées of people crowding around various entrances mainly being refused admission. There was much frustration, but I didn't see any passengers behaving badly. Three separate members of railway staff told us that for our LM train to WFJ, we had to keep walking up High Road and turn left. Temporary signs along the route confirmed that for trains to WFJ we were going in the right direction.
We were sent on a quarter of a mile long walk around three left turns until we approached a back entrance to the station where a long queue of people eventually snaked on to platform 1. It took until 20:00 to get to this point.
We then noticed that there were London Underground style roundels on the walls, and no departure times listed on the display monitors. This was not where an LM train was going to come in, despite the previous three assurances. We checked with another member of staff who told us that we needed to go to platform 5. We were not allowed to go out the way we came in and were told we had to fight our way along the very congested platform to the other end to get out. From there, we were directed back outside to High Road where we'd been 20 minutes earlier.
A sympathetic member of staff then tried to help us through the crowd that was outside the entrance that led to platform 5. We made our train only because it was running late, but needless to say this was a very stressful experience, and needlessly so.
Once on platform 5, there were just 20 other people there. No-one without tickets was allowed in to buy one, and only a few people with tickets were allowed in. Everyone else was being directed to platform 1. The LM service left with plenty of empty seats.
Why sell tickets for a service if you then do all in your power to stop people from using it, and do so by quite devious means, not making it clear that that's what you're doing?
Arriving at Wembley Central at 19:45, there were no organised queues, just melées of people crowding around various entrances mainly being refused admission. There was much frustration, but I didn't see any passengers behaving badly. Three separate members of railway staff told us that for our LM train to WFJ, we had to keep walking up High Road and turn left. Temporary signs along the route confirmed that for trains to WFJ we were going in the right direction.
We were sent on a quarter of a mile long walk around three left turns until we approached a back entrance to the station where a long queue of people eventually snaked on to platform 1. It took until 20:00 to get to this point.
We then noticed that there were London Underground style roundels on the walls, and no departure times listed on the display monitors. This was not where an LM train was going to come in, despite the previous three assurances. We checked with another member of staff who told us that we needed to go to platform 5. We were not allowed to go out the way we came in and were told we had to fight our way along the very congested platform to the other end to get out. From there, we were directed back outside to High Road where we'd been 20 minutes earlier.
A sympathetic member of staff then tried to help us through the crowd that was outside the entrance that led to platform 5. We made our train only because it was running late, but needless to say this was a very stressful experience, and needlessly so.
Once on platform 5, there were just 20 other people there. No-one without tickets was allowed in to buy one, and only a few people with tickets were allowed in. Everyone else was being directed to platform 1. The LM service left with plenty of empty seats.
Why sell tickets for a service if you then do all in your power to stop people from using it, and do so by quite devious means, not making it clear that that's what you're doing?