This morning 10/1/11

[whole diary]

[johoare]

This morning was back to the normal disarray at Maidenhead 

The queues for buying tickets are the longest I have ever seen.. My friend (who was in the queue) said she thought it was because the ticket machines were cash only but we don't know for sure..

Fortunately for lots of people in the (very long) ticket queue, the 8.34 was a bit late.. I arrived on the platform about 8.31 and a train arrived.. The indicator boards had given up (well they lasted about two days last week.. can we expect more?) and no other information was forthcoming... so there were a lot of people (including me) asking others if the train that had arrived was the 8.34 (non stop to Paddington) or the 8.26 (stop everywhere).. In the end we decided it was the stopper and let it go (luckily it was)..

Happy New Year from FGW^▸ (First Great Western)/NR^» (Network Rail - home page)/anyone else who controls our passenger experience methinks 

[Chris from Nailsea]

Erm ... Happy New Year!, Jo 

I'm rather puzzled by the suggestion that the Maidenhead TVMs^▸ (Ticket Vending Machine) were 'cash only', to be honest: generally, it's the case that they're 'card only' - to avoid the attentions of the 'smash and grab' element?

Certainly at Nailsea & Backwell (sorry to go on about it!), our two TVMs have been 'card only' for quite some time now.

[johoare]

The two machines in Shoppenhangers road (so not the main entrance) are card only all the time due to the machines being repeatedly vandalised for cash..

Yesterday morning it was the 4 machines at the front of the station plus the three ticket windows that had the longest queues I've ever seen.. It was my friend (who spent ten minutes just buying a ticket) that suggested perhaps it was cash only at the machines (it's happened before) which was making all the queues very long.. Unless someone knows for sure we'll never know.. I bought my monthly ticket on the way home last night just to be sure but all was back to normal this morning..

[Ollie]

On monday morning there was a BT network problem with credit/debit card authorisation - which could potentially explain the build up of people and taking longer.

[johoare]

Aah thanks Ollie.. So it potentially was cash only then?  I'm glad I already had my ticket then 

Now all we need back is some sort of information system that doesn't give up about 6am 

[Ollie]

Now all we need back is some sort of information system that doesn't give up about 6am 

Twyford first though

[readytostart]

Would've thought cash only would be useless on the mainline, who carries enough cash with them to get to London these days!? 

Almost choked the other morning trying to help a guy on my train with a season Winchester - London who wanted to go on to Manchester ^270 SOR from EUS-MAN, which comes down to about ^70 for a SVR. Ended up selling him a split RDG^‡(resolve)-BAN and BAN-MAN, followed by a SVS from MAN-EUS for the way back.