Right in the middle of my return trip to Paris by TGV, the day before yesterday, the suave voice of our captain pulled me out of my torpor: “The train driver has just informed me that following a technical incident he was forced to reduce the speed of our TGV by 5 km/h. We must therefore expect a slight delay on our arrival at Montparnasse station. Currently, it is rated at around ten minutes. We will keep you informed of the evolution of the situation. »
Suddenly, I found myself in the train problems that were my nightmare, like two trains crossing at such a place or one train catching up with another and then who what whose where? In this case, the data was as follows: how many kilometers were we from Paris, at what exact speed was the train going given the drop of 5 km/h compared to the planned speed, what was going on If this decrease varied upwards or downwards, would we gain time on our delay or lose time on our potential advance compared to the estimated delay?
Finally, when we arrived in Montparnasse, our skipper told us that we were five minutes late. Like what the decrease in the reduction had compensated for the possible increase in the delay in the event that the technical incident had more impacted the hypothetical speed. The next day (yesterday, therefore) was the strike. And then there, train problems…