You couldn't make it up!

[whole diary]

[whistleblower]

A Funny Story (unless you were involved!).  On Sunday evening a steam-hauled special failed at Westbury.  It was heading to London with 400 people on a very special day out.  The special was declared a total failure and it was decided that all these people would join the next HST^▸ (High Speed Train) to Paddington departing from platform 3 at 2130.  Can you imagine what Westbury might have looked like with more than 400 disgruntled people on the platform?

The HST had departed from Castle Cary on time but had still not arrived at Westbury before the Weymouth service left at 2138 - from platform 3!  My friend was driving this and the rest of the story is his.  It took several minutes for 400 people to try and climb on to the Weymouth, assuming it was the Paddington service, and for the staff to try and get them off again.  Eventually they left for Frome and had an uneventful journey as far as Bruton when they had, unusually, a double yellow signal to slow them down.  This co-incided with an emergency call for the train behind him to come to an immediate halt.  My friend proceeded slowly over the crest of the hill and saw flashing headlights on the up line and moving silhouettes in front of them.  He came to a halt and as the headlights came closer he realised that it was the missing HST and in front of it were three cows meandering up the line.  The HST driver stopped to speak to my friend, who was in stitches of laughter, and said "It's not funny - I've been following them for 5 miles!"  He didn't have the heart to tell him what was waiting at Westbury!

For some time afterwards, there were hilarious radio messages asking the HST driver to try speeding up to nudge them out of the way or blowing the horn, but none of it worked and he had to follow them from Castle Cary to Bruton before they moved off the track.

Can you imagine the number of complaints inundating customer services.  Poor FGW^▸ (First Great Western) - trying to run a railway alongside steam engines and cows.  What chance have they got?

[Jim]

I have seen the platform with 200 odd people on it, that was on a Sunday when a HST^▸ (High Speed Train) got "bricked" in Trowbridge, and all pax had to transfer to the next down!

[peter.peterclarke]

Actually, we customers did once speculate that each train had a writer in residence to do precisily that ie make up excuses as to why we were delayed.  In one case after a 15 minute pause between Paddington and Slough we were told there was a failed frieght train at Slough (so cearly not FGW^▸ (First Great Western)'s fault as they didn't run freight) however as we passed through Slough some time later we could see the failed train which was as FGW Adelante, noted for their reliability.

[grahame]

Actually, we customers did once speculate that each train had a writer in residence to do precisily that ie make up excuses as to why we were delayed.  In one case after a 15 minute pause between Paddington and Slough we were told there was a failed frieght train at Slough (so cearly not FGW^▸ (First Great Western)'s fault as they didn't run freight) however as we passed through Slough some time later we could see the failed train which was as FGW Adelante, noted for their reliability.

Welcome to the board, Peter.  The "best" stories are usually the true ones, in that you couldn't really make them up ... I love Whisleblower's story of the cows and the steam excursion and I have every sympathy for FGW in all their job roles when such things happen - and I think Joe Public has too if he's informed and aware of the issues they're working to resolve.

It's when there's a "blame" culture showing through the cracks, where there's a complete lack of any information / feedback, or where the excuses are parently incorrect that it really gets the passenger's goat, me thinks.