Great Western Coffee Shop

Interesting times, indeed. Which of these explanations would you have believed?

I got to Reading too late for the 17:09 Waterloo, only to find it and the 17:04 Redhill still "delayed" in P4 (FGW at the front, P5 empty). The customer assistant at the gateline told me it was points failure at Wokingham. So I got on the Redhill train, and we waited. We were told all trains were being held, and our guess was as good as theirs when we would be going (probably not the recommended script, but we'd worked that out anyway).

Someone had been told that they were waiting for a part that wouldn't arrive until 18:15, then it would need testing etc. An SWT train came into P5, and I heard it announced as "not for public use" (i.e. stay on the other one).  Of course from inside a train I couldn't hear the platform announcements, so will have missed most of them. At about 17:50 a "duty traffic manager" (his tabard said) came into the train and told us it was going to the depot to release the SWT train behind it, and they needed to run the train on P5 "to clear the signals" before any FGW trains could run.

While we trooped down P4, seeing that the SWT train had been emptied, the one in P5 left - I thought it was empty, though RTT says it ran a normal stopping service. I overheard people on P5 who had been sent there off the train on P4 but not allowed to board before it left. Another SWT train came into P5, then this FGW manager (and the PA) told us the first Waterloo train would be the one on P4, and after that they might let FGW run one. So we all trooped back up P4 ... onto what was now the 18:09 (and left at 18:16, after several bouts of whistle-blowing). A 166 appeared double-parked in P5 (and did set of for Redhill at 18:22).

Most people were still reasonably good-humoured, in a long-suffering way. I saw several people with big luggage get off and leave - presumably bound for Gatwick, and going to find taxis. I overheard one girl (in more than one phone call) explain that she had been chased onto the train, though evidently not energetically, by a BTP PCSO. She had been next to a guy who was swearing at an FGW staffer who, seeing the police, called out "officer - he's swearing at me". She wasn't sympathetic, evidently thinking the lack of trains justified the vocabulary, so she joined in too.