Mon 1 August - 07:14 to Richmond...

"Trains departing platform 1 are the 07:14 Richmond, departing in three minutes... " the little box with the green button tells me.

Oh really? Since when has there been a service just to Richmond?

Ask the guys, it's news to them. Since my ears are blocked from this cold that I can't shake, it's always possible I misheard. But he checks and he hears the same thing. While we stand there, pondering what the problem might be, the main platform announcement tells us that the train that's coming in on platform 1 is going to Richmond.

The train arrives and the display shows it to be a Flinders Street train. We'll see... My tip is that it's a fault in those pesky PDP-11s.

We pull into Richmond and people pile in as usual, but the train sits for a minute or so and you start to wonder... Anyway we make it to Flinders Street without incident, so just a glitch in the system somewhere. We pull in to platform 12 a couple of minutes late - perhaps the fact that platform 12 is so far away from the rest of the station it seems to the PDP-11s that it’s closer to Richmond?

Home on the 17:38. We end up about three minutes late for no obvious reason.