Late cancellations

Yesterday evening (10/07/07) I was at my local station, Yate, waiting for the 1842 into Bristol. The information point was working and the train was announced as the next service from Platform 2.

At 1839 a Wessex / Alphaline liveried 158 sped through the station at speed and I had a hunch that this was the 1842 so I went to the information point and VERY CONVENIENTLY the information point WAS working but came back with the message we are unable to provide train information at present or whatever the wording actually is.

A fellow passenger used his mobile to contact National Rail enquires (in Bombay / Mumbai he said by the accent on the other end) and told them of this and the person on the other end told him there wasnt a 1839 from Yate, so he repeated himself. Ah yes was the response from the NRE, the 1842 has been cancelled due to a fault on the train.

His response to NRE was, well it didnt look as if there was a fault on the train the way it sped through the staion 5 minutes ago without stopping.

That passenger was travelling on a weekly season ticket from Newbury to Yate and I was travelling on a day return to Bristol and there were about a dozen other passengers on the platform waiting for that service. The passenger for Newbury told me that he now didnt expect to be home until 22.30.

As the service is supposed to be hourly I now have a ticket which I did not use because I jumped in my car and went into Bristol by road and I want my money back, not one of these fancy Rail Vouchers because I cant use them in a ticket machine.

What is the situation where there is an hourly service and one train is cancelled as the conditions of carriage state that your journey must be delayed by more tham 60 minutes.

I have since found out that the unit that sped through Yate had after its arrival at Temple Meads continued its journey to Taunton
on its booked service.

Could this be a case of FGW telling porkies AGAIN and that there was no guard / conductor to bring the train to Bristol from Gloucester due to their never ending staff shortages.

Rant over, off to work now.