Great Western Coffee Shop

Yet another example of Great Western’s unacceptably poor CIS. 

I went to Pangbourne to get 1P17 0808 Didcot – Padd.  Before I left the house at 0800 I checked GWR website and it was shown as running.  Got to Pangbourne station at 0815 and it was showing cancelled.  Later I discovered that the previous working, 2N23 0627 Padd – Didcot had been cancelled.  Even if they’d hoped to start up 2N23 at Reading, or run an ECS from Reading Depot to Didcot, they would have known well before 0800 that 1P17 would be cancelled.

At 0822 (ie booked time at Pangbourne) we got the automated announcement that 1P17 was cancelled and that the next service would be the 0850 (2P25 Didcot - Padd).  This was shown as on time until 0835 ie the time it was due to leave Didcot, then showed “Delayed”.  I checked RTT which showed the showed that the down working 2N24 (which forms 2P25) was about 30 mins late.  So it was known long before 0835 that 2P25 would be very late. 

My point, which I’ve made earlier in relation to an incident at Bath, is that there is no point in having a CIS which gives disinformation (fake news).  Insiders say it’s all to do with how the CIS is driven, but clearly it needs a system change or more human intervention if it is to be helpful and informative to passengers.   Accurate and timely information allows passengers to make other plans and maybe reduce the inconvenience of cancelled and late trains.

Looking at the glum faces of fellow passengers at Pangbourne this morning, some (including me) waiting over an hour for a train to Reading, made me think that travelling on GWR is a distress purchase for the vast majority of passengers.  Maybe stop thinking up new famous Five adverts to draw more people into GWR’s clutches and instead deploy the staff on making the CIS work properly.

I explanation the answer may be here-


By the time I arrived at Goring for the 7-45, things were still in a state of disarray, my train arriving nearly 10 minutes late. However by this time Journey Check had lost interest and no explanation was given for this.

What did Mark Hopgood say about information for passengers...?