"There's nothing I can do to stop it!"

Just a thought mate, might help if you give the station involved with 0721 early departure to assist those who might know the answer

I luckily arrived at Chesham in time to catch the 0722 which left at 0715. I don't know if this was just the first train that got through after the earlier troubles at Baker St. Train was amazingly quiet all the way to Aldgate - I think a lot of folks who'd normally catch that train were still further north...

But in the past. it does cause major tut-tutting when the "emergency timetable" is implemented, where services leave 5-10 minutes before booked time on a half-hourly schedule leaving many behind. Even more harrumphing when you get turfed out at HotH as well. I guess there are reasons behind it, but the average punter just gets enraged. Ah well...

My understanding was that it was some sort of emergency at Baker Street, though why that would lead to a shuttle leaving five minutes early is a mystery.

Rest assured, someone from here will have been working or have the full story to hand, so stay tuned.

Perhaps it was the previous train running late, rather the early running of the 0721?

With the nature of the branch the next train may have been scheduled to arrive at Chalfont before the other train had left the branch so the train could not be delayed further?

He was on it on the last day- I'm sure he knows ;D ;D

There is no standard "emergency timetable." Over the last couple of months there have indeed been altered workings and planned cancellations, but there is not an actual service/timetable that we wheel out during times of disruption.

There may be occasions where we implement a special service due to a long-term failure, but it is implemented on a very ad hoc basis, and is normally engineered on the spot.

My money is on the train being the previous one running late, or indeed not even a scheduled Chesham service, but a diverted train from somewhere else. Yes it's annoying when such a train leaves "early." Obviously Chesham is one location where timings of trains are most easily noticed due to the infrequency of service. But unfortunately if this train had been, say an Amersham service prior to diversion, it can only make a swift turn-round at Chesham to avoid a huge gap where it should have been on the southbound.

Basically during times of disruption we'll provide trains where we can and hopefully at regular intervals, but cannot for obvious reasons guarantee they will turn up at the published times.

That was a one off incident whereby a specific problem caused the Met service to be suspended on the Monday morning over exactly the same area as it had been suspended during the weekend. Since it initially looked like being a long suspension and was known about before the first trains ran, the decision was taken to use the weekend's timetable initially rather than make up an ad-hoc service.
It is very rare for this sort of thing to be done and indeed the circumstances in which it is possible are fairly rare; it was a great help that staff would still have had the timetable to hand, it having been used so recently. Even then it is not all plain sailing, particularly as regards train crewing.
In the event I believe through services were restored from about 8:30 from which time we had the fun of trying to re-instate the normal Monday to Friday service.

Would hope/imagine it would be diverted to Amersham, or be held back at HOTH...

I guess that explains why no 1930 departure from Chesham! - Just had to sit on the platform for half an hour with no information except for recorded announcements ' A good service is operating on all lines except the East London line which is closed.'

Seems chesham could really do with a member of staff about full time, considering the situation it finds itself in.

No, but as Ben suggests they should be!

Sorry? Perhaps you don't understand me. I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm merely saying it would be ideal if a station such as Chesham, where there has clearly been a great deal of change to the way the service operates could benefit from all day staff. I'm well aware of the financial difficulties LUL and many other companies are in. Let's not begin the station staff debate now please.

And for that matter its a pity that 'need to have' is so subjective depending on if you ask staff, management, unions, or politicians.

Whatever happened to the needs of the passenger.

Nothing - so long as you're prepared for your fares to double next year and triple the year after............

If the size of the pot is limited and customers are not prepared to pay MUCH more, things will stay the same or get far worse.
Just go forward to summer 2012 and all available station staff redeployed to crowd control at "olympic" stations (i.e.those with heavy loading/unloading predictions). The rest of the stations on the system will undoubtedly see far fewer staff unless the ODA finds a massive new pot of cash.......