Fantasy pure or not ,is not something that we indulge in here, which you would do well to remember in future posts WP.
Is it just me, or is that an unnecessary slap for a new member, especially coming from a moderator? It would discourage me from ever coming back to the forum, being spoken to like a teacher on my second post.
Tough call ... I looked at the original post. "but I'm sorry I find your beer barrel explanation of the cause of Thursday's breakdown pure fantasy." ... polite, but took my breath away too when I read it, and WP's answer was in line with that breath being taken away.
I do hope that RivieraRegular is not put off posting; the message from WP is correct in suggesting "hey, have a look around - there are already many answers here", yet in practise it's very hard to find the wood for the trees sometimes.
I have no trouble believing that the entire train was disabled (and replaced by an
IET▸ ) because it hit a beer barrel. How the beer barrel got in the way of the train, I wouldn't know; strongest bet - some sort of vandalism, with accident or weather being less likely runners. None of those likely to be the fault of
GWR▸ , but it's their role / part of the franchise to pick up the job of getting customers to final destination station, and to take the flack. It's usually better, I think, to tell the customer what's happened when a train is capped like this, but I say "usually"; exceptions to the generality because:
*) Don't want to give other people ideas
*) Don't want to scare passenger into needless worry about "will it be safe to go through on the replacement"
*) Don't actually know what's been hit as the incident develops, so couldn't fully inform the customer; it's a fault on the train, but at an early stage was that some sort of mechanical problem on the loco, or it hitting something?
Once upon a time, a long long time ago, if something went wrong with a vehicle in a train / it was damaged, it could be removed from the train and parked up in a siding and the rest of the train continue. And if it was a locomotive that was disabled, another could be requisitioned from nearby. Those days are gone - GWR operates 4 x class 57 locomotives suitable for the sleeper, as opposed to
BR▸ who operated 512 class 47 locomotives. When the train sets out from Penzance it's basically on its own until Reading, with fingers crossed that the old locomotive makes it. Failure along the way ... there is no spare "Thunderbird" rescue locomotive; working with freight / engineering operators the best GWR can hope / ask for is a tow to Plymouth, Exeter, Taunton or Westbury, with their spare loco at Penzance or Reading rescuing the train during the next day.