Great Western Coffee Shop

On the way back from a day out/bicycle excursion, arrived at Gatwick station for display to announce that 16:00 Reading train had been cancelled to failure of electrical supply. Silly me I thought they were diesel powered. Got a train to Redhill where the 1630 was displayed as on-time/delayed by failure of electrical supply. Looking on the plus side, at least we got to test the new platform 0 at Redhill (good job there is no more land platform -1 might confuse the computer).

Got to Guildford and there appeared to be a delay. The guard then came through and said there was a broken down train at Erleigh blocking the track. I then realised that there were three other Downs Line trains parked over two platforms. Somebody on the platform said they had been trying to get to North Camp for over two hours. As usual (?) the front line staff (train crews) were left to carry the can of unhappy passengers with little/no information on any "management" plans of what to do. Reading passengers eventually told to go via Woking and Basingstoke.

Got to Reading about 19:30. Commented on the situation to a "senior manager" shooting the breeze on the gate line. "Oh I vaguely heard something about that" was the reply. I presume the attitude was that it was an SWR problem, and failed to think through about four or more trainloads of GWR passengers adrift at Guildford.

So what happened at Erleigh? Did an EMU weld itself to the rails?

It was the 12:50 from Waterloo that caused the havoc.

Line re-opened about 18:00, with a service appearing to have got through to Reading at 18:30, either non-stop from Guildford or run as ECS. Next arrival from Guildford was 20:00 though maybe something before that which hasn't appeared on open data

Knock on today: