Hopefully these will help:

The SHRUG website has now reappeared after an unexplained absence for several days.  The new 'Hogrider' is available for view.

No apology that the website was AXED for several days, though it does mention a DUFF Internet Service Provider, and the fact the newsletter is SHORT FORMED only including data up to 25th September.  Perhaps the server was SEVERELY OVERCROWDED?   

There must be an average of 300 or so track workers of various disciplines on average between Reading and London at the moment whilst all the various upgrades are going on.  That's a lot of worn out horns!

Shuts and locks them electrically, but not physically, they will stay shut until such time as the doors are released again from an active cab.

Refreshing to see that you can actually post a message which doesn't accuse those of us on here that try and explain why things may be happening in more detail as 'Railway enthusiast fundamentalists' or some similarly stupid label.  I dread to think what it was before you modified it. 

Speaking personally, I am pretty passionate about the railways and hate it when passengers have their journey disrupted.  Part of my reason for being on here is to try and explain why things have gone wrong to those that might not have the technical knowledge or ability to find out.  I don't have to do it and I sure as hell don't get paid for doing it.  It also gives me a platform to anonymously criticise (and indeed praise) the railway industry when I deem it suitable.  Many staff feel the same way I do and your constant sniping at us really makes me wonder why I bother.  Sure, there are some bad members of staff out there and things don't always go to plan, but I'm sure the same applies in whatever industry you are involved in but perhaps not under quite the glare of public scrutiny.

I strongly suspect that today will be discussed at a very senior level within Network Rail (doubtless with input from FGW) and it might indeed be sensible to stop the work whilst a review in undertaken.  It's interesting that it's (presumably) the Crossrail electrification team that have once again caused this disruption rather than the GWML^▸ (Great Western Main Line) electrification team who have been doing similar piling work for over a year with very few problems.

Quite agree that it's been another very disappointing week, but there was never the sheer amount of infrastructure work going on, or anywhere near the number of trains/passengers, in these alleged 'good old days'.  The amount of work going on is phenomenal - Reading, electrification, resignalling, Crossrail and so on with hundreds of staff on the trackside both day and night.

Which works out at an excess of under ^27 per person.  Doesn't sound so huge when you describe it like that though. 

The use of language can be very much open to interpretation.  I remember back in the Thames Trains days being told that we should avoid using the word 'Terminates' and instead use the phrase 'Final stop' because it risked upsetting those who had suffered from problems during a pregnancy.

Yes, presumably bi-directional from the crossover that it supposed to be on the viaduct itself.

Yeovil Pen Mill is number 5 I think.

Apart from the DfT.   

Firstly, 'hundreds of customers' on the night sleeper after Exeter?  A couple of dozen more like.  Secondly, the train was only delayed at Exeter by 19 minutes, and was back on time by departure from Plymouth, so only the handful travelling to Newton Abbot/Plymouth would have suffered minor inconvenience.  Thirdly, the driver for the train may well have been utilised to work another train down towards Plymouth due to the disruption -  looking at the diagram that it books on at 23:25 and does one shunt before 'working as required' until departing with the sleeper at 04:11.  He/she would therefore have been a prime candidate to be used to work another train in the meantime, perhaps to Plymouth, so a taxi may not have been viable or necessary.   
 

To be fair, the routes into Waterloo has just as many days when the service is a disaster!

Realtime trains has no services listed at Appleford for the first couple of Sundays after the timetable change.  Buses would show on there as long as they've been entered into the Integrated Train Planning System.  Also, no journey is found on the NRE^‡(resolve) website.  I think the further erosion of Appleford's service is continuing with the next timetable change.

Notwithstanding the fact there was major disruption still, I did feel that the revised service plan held up reasonably well given the circumstances - there seemed more staff on the ground at the locations I witnessed, and the usual complete meltdown didn't seem quite as catastrophic.  For example, the Oxford<>Reading stopping services pretty much ran as normal, whereas often there's a mad scramble for drivers and sets meaning loads of last second cancellations.  Perhaps some lessons have been learned?  Perhaps forum members who were directly affected can give a summary of how their journey was affected today and how they thought it compared with previous major signalling outages as I may just have been 'lucky' in what I witnessed?