FGW^▸ (First Great Western) website at 1554 all lines closed, disruption until 23:59

On bus replacement, it takes an hour from Oxford to Charlbury in normal times (including going via Hanborough) but this is worse at the moment due to the A420 west bound being closed causing major congestion in the A34, A40 west and A44.

While I am grateful for this expansion, I have been an occasional use of the Adelante WiFi for a few years now and make the observation that 25% of the time it fails to connect completely (probably just needs rebooting ) and 50% of the time there is very limited download speed even when sitting at oxford station.....and it gets worse when the train departs into the wilds of West oxfordshire.

Oh dear, the old bridewell is what I term the police station.....you can tell how long ago I left bristol!

Reference the cars outside.....my first car was a Mk1 Escort in Daytona yellow, lovely car only 20000 miles when I got it
when it was 20 years old. Absolutely rubbish in snow however...it was a 1.3L automatic.

Dual carriageway but no hard shoulder, the A34 takes motorway levels of traffic and speeds but is only dual carriageway, minimal central reservation and at this point no hard shoulder. If the bus pulled onto the verge it would still be at least partially on the inner carriageway.

Looking at the images, I hope that is two passenger doors/side on the end carriage/cab.....one of the big failings of the Adelante at Oxford in particular is the length of time it takes to unload passengers from coaches A and E as they only have a single door on the platform. Often these two carriages are still emptying of passengers when the middle three have emptied and refilled with passengers.

Maybe there are a few seats, but not enough for the people standing. Also many of those are possibly standing because they have to get off in the first few carriages at short platforms. Despite this passengers for Charlbury and beyond at least start the journey standing on a regular basis.

All working for me now....(Mac safari both times) but a bit disconcerting when you try and check for problems on way home and see a major disruption red box but unable to get further information.

Thanks Chris, very helpful, but this cannot be currently found on the FGW^▸ (First Great Western) web pages.

Under the link for "Your journey" the link to Travel updates is also broken.

Ian

The FGW^▸ (First Great Western) home webpage currently shows a very large red box, indicating major disruption, click for more details. This leads to a error 404 page not found. Major fail!

The web page also seems to have lost all other train running information.

I have been on the 1732 from Oxford almost every night for the last two weeks and it has been standing in every vestibule every single time, I have been on the train early enough to get a seat maybe 60% of the time but there has always been passengers standing until Charlbury.

Particularly notable was the evening when there was a SDO^▸ (Selective Door Opening) incident at Hanborough which resulted in us sitting for 30min at Hanborough waiting to depart  with the train manager rushing backwards and forwards. I spent this in the vestibule with no prospect of a seat in either B or C (I checked).

With the chaos on the A44 and A40 this train has got noticeably busier.

I remember a school trip just before xmas 1976 (I think) where we went to London from Bristol on a saturday school trip to see Madame Tussauds and the London Plantetarium (no longer operating). The trains were brand new and the automatic doors between passenger carriages were a big novelty for an eleven year old group of kids from the country! I seem to remember a speed display in the carriage as well with a big cheer when it went unto 125mph.

Could this be added to the thread already started a few days ago in the Cotswold lines section?

On the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page) now

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29565156

And this was also the reason we were given for the overcrowding on the 1732 Oxford to Gt Malvern service^..the 180 Adelante was replaced by a two car turbo.

In the not so dim and distant past, FGW^▸ (First Great Western) made a similar change^changing the earliest train for stations beyond Oxford that a saver ticket could be used on for travel to London Paddington, effectively an overnight increase way in excess of the headline increase by an order of magnitude.