Great Western Coffee Shop

Anyone find the recent "improvments" to the delivery of real time information to not be much of an improvement?  With JourneyCheck you could quickly find any service alterations but with the new system it lists disriptions to services and just says to use Twitter for the latest information.  To get more detailed information you have to enter the stations you are travelling to and from which will show a list of departures and then select a specific service.   JourneyCheck is currently still available and I hope this continues to be the case.

I took the oppotunity is morning to share my views on these new indicators with FGW. At 0830 the indicator was Green. A good service with no reported delays (I think is the description). However the 0826 from Worcester Shrub Hill to Paddington was cancelled meaning no service until after 10.00 - a gap in service of approx two and a half hours!!
I am sure this new initiative was started with the best of intentions but, again, I am afraid it has been produced with a railway operational head on and not a passenger service head. To a railway operator if all the trains that are running are not delayed there are no delayed services but to a passenger a cancelled service (especially in the circumstances of this morning) produces a considerable delay. Surely a good service is one with no delays or cancellations.
My other concern is that FGW suggest we note the service indicator and, if needed,search further for individual detail. I would not criticise anyone who saw the Good Service indicator and feel they had no need to look further this morning.

When you go to Twitter it doesn't tell you what you want to know, i.e.  xxxx Cancelled.
Click on "Information" to find out what to do, i.e. bus, tickets other TOCs trains but  tells you to go to twitter and still no info.

That train was cancelled due to the termination of the 0545 PAD-WOF at Oxford.  The reason given on Realtimetrains was intriguing:

"This service was cancelled between Oxford and Worcester Foregate Street due to a planning error (TA)".

What could that mean?

The bible says:

A member of train crew was unavailable.

It has always seemed to me that one of the problems of the tick box management culture is that it doesn't really solve the problem.

Tick delay code TA. Job done.

To my mind there are two questions that should be answered.

1. Why was member of the crew unavailable?
2. What can we do to prevent it happening again? However,  that would impinge on the bottom line because the answer would probably be employ more staff.