Quite often on this forum people talk about travelling long distances to airports on the day of flight and need to be persuaded otherwise.
This is one story of why not.
On Monday a Civic Party from my town in Cumbria were travelling to London for a formal Royal Horticultural Society awards ceremony, due to start at 1300.
As is normal it was to be a day trip by train- a 1 hour drive to the main line station, 3 hour train trip for the 280 miles to London, due to arrive at 1000. Late evening return and drive home.
On the day their due train at 0700 was cancelled due to a major power failure in the train yard at Glasgow, and the next train at 0800 delayed by over an hour due to the same power failure.
Then the train promptly broke down at Penrith when it arrived, which took well over 2 hours to resolve.
Late morning the Civic Party abandoned their journey as it was clear they couldn't get to London in time, all but one member. He eventually got to London Euston at 1519- 5 hours 10 minutes late (Amtrak levels of delay) and just got to the ceremony for the closing speeches.
Then in the evening, unbelievably, someone stepped out in front of a moving train on purpose with fatal consequences, leading to a line closure. Ultimately, after the line re-opened, the railway paid for very long distance taxis to get people home in the small or not so small hours of the next morning.
OK- this was a perfect storm. In all my years I have never heard of 3 major incidents on the same line on the same day- but any one of these shows what can happen.
There was a happy ending in that yesterday the RHS brought the award here, for an impromptu ceremony. So all of us involved were able to attend, not just the Civic party.
However someone at that function did say that there had been major delays on Wednesday as well due to an incident.
But on other days other things might have happened- weather, lineside fire etc.