Problems at Paddington, 21/7/10 am

[whole diary]

[adc82140]

Things were not good at Paddington this morning. Apparently a broken down train had delayed everything on the up relief at West Ealing- not that they were telling us this at Paddington until I put a call in to customer services.

I was attempting to travel out to Slough- the target train was the 08:22 to Hereford, Slough first stop. On arrival at Paddington, everything on the boards on the local lines was marked as "delayed", but I thought I'd be OK, as the Hereford train, being a main line train, was marked as "on time".

But only two minutes before boarding, it was announced that the train would be skipping Slough, so effectively FGW^▸ (First Great Western) were making the problems so much worse for themselves- all of the many Slough commuters were forced onto the severely delayed all stations stoppers. There Hereford trian left 5 minutes down, and ran fast to Reading. As for those of us going to Slough, it was a long wait and a squeeze onto a very sweaty Turbo.

OK, I guess the stop skip was to allow the train to get its slot on the single track section in the Cotswolds, but really they should have put a compensatory stopping order on the next fast HST^▸ (High Speed Train) out of Paddington, and therefore increase capacity on the delayed Turbos. No "out of the box" thinking going on at FGW control, methinks......

[IndustryInsider]

Seems a bit silly to cut out the Slough stop for the sake of just 5 minutes - it soon made the time up passing Didcot 4 minutes early!

The fault was with a turbo on one of the Greenford trains which was stuck with its brakes on, although a problem with a HST^▸ (High Speed Train) at Southall was also causing a few problems and is more likely the reason behind the late departure of the 08:22 - the set for which is only due in 12 minutes before working its next service which is very tight for a HST!