Reading Engineering Works - Information provided at North Camp

[whole diary]

[Kevin]

Just joined the Forum so it seems a little churlish to start with a moan but I would like to highlight the poor and inaccurate information provided at North Camp and Farnborough North Stations during the alterations to train services caused by the works at Reading between Christmas and New Year.

I had printed timetables off the Website, so didn^t have any problems myself but I pity any poor person who turned up at either of these stations without checking information before hand. And tried to find out what services were running.

For example at North Camp Station on Wednesday evening, there were no staff, the real time information screens were not working, there were no announcements and incorrect timetable information was displayed!  Indeed the information consisted of a felt pen scrawled notice saying a normal Saturday service will operate after a time early in the morning, when this was far from the case.

On a normal Saturday evening services from North Camp to Farnborough depart at; 1927, 2027, 2127, 2232 and 2334.  The scheduled times on Wednesday evening between Xmas and New Year were 1927, 2001, 2057 and 22.28; hardly a normal Saturday!

Regards,

Kevin

[grahame]

Welcome to the forum, Kevin, and please don't feel churlish about raising issues such as this.   After all - the forum was founded four years ago ... exactly because of major problems that came about because of the timetable changes of December 2006!

Since the forum was set up, it's provided a useful source of information and I (and many others) have learned a lot more about what goes on behind the scenes, and why some things that may appear trivial / easy to you and me aren't actually the case.  I'm thinking of things like letting people know that a train is cancelled.  Sometimes, these things develop from an ongoing situation and it gradually becomes apparent that something won't be able to run; should it be cancelled (and announced cancelled) early on, in which case FGW^▸ (First Great Western) stand the risk of being accused of taking the easy way out and not providing a proper service, or should the formal cancellation be left until very late in the process, in which case FGW can be accused of keeping their customers in the dark.

There have been issues over past few weeks; in my own area, the reliability of the service over the last few weeks has fallen back to the sort of levels we saw in late 2006 / early 2007, when cancellations were up to around 40% of the services in a week (it's been 25% upwards for each of the last seven days, excluding 25th and 26th when no services were scheduled) and our scheduled timetable is still completely inadequate.  Some things HAVE improved, though; we've got better information at our local station now, and we've worked with FGW to get a couple of small changes made that make significant differences to people. But that's a story in another thread / on another line board.

I too have noticed holes in the information provided during the current blockade of Reading ... things like FGW's front page doesn't actually provide you with a link to London (Waterloo) departures - where their West Country services are running from - so there's not an easy way for Joe Public to check on his service.   Train change times at my local station at Melksham ARE displayed ... on a notice board 100 yards from the station, rather than on the three boards at the station, which have regular times and a generic "check your chirstmas times" notice.  And it seems that there's a hole at North Camp too.   It's certainly a good idea to raise / point out these issues - and to let FGW know;  something of a double edged sword there as you can get yourself labelled as a bit of a nuisance if you do it too much / get too pedantic, but really you're helping them look after their other customers by doing so and - even if they only get a small percentage of extra revenue raised from happy customers - you're helping them.

[eightf48544]

Welcome to the Forum Kevin, you have raised an important issue that the railways even after 175 years are still struggleing with and that is getting correct information to passengers.

Grahame is giving a very charitable view of getting information to passengers when things go wrong. I agree it is very difficult to get real time accurate information to passengers, especialy at unstaffed stations, as events unfold. It's something the railway needs to get a grip on in 2011.

Today although we have all the modern comminications techniques, moblie phones, GPS positioning of trains, web reporting of train departures, CIS^▸ (Customer Information System) for the passengers etc. these have to work correctly to be of any use.

They don't compensate for lack of staff on the ground when things go wrong. In the steam era the station staff  at North Camp would have received the special timetable for Christmas week so could do notices and advise intending passengers of the revised train times , you could even ring your local station to make on the spot enquiries.  As to finding out where a particular train he  could ask the local signalman where the train was who should have some idea where it was. 

Nowadays although the Help Points  are very good you are totally reliant on the the Railrrack/TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company) informing the call centre exactly what is going on as it happens, The more links there in the chain of command  the more difficult it is to pass the correct information to where it's needed.

Again in the old days the local Station Manager could decide to issue special stop orders to provide a train at station where the previous train had been cancelled and the next train through that station is not booked to stop and the next booked train is some time off. Nowadays it has to go to TOC control who then have to go to Railtrack control. Just one of the many detrimental effects of separating the mangement of the wheel from the mangaement of the track. 

However, in the case of North Camp it seems to me that it Camp is another example of the railways' "Lack of Attention to Detail" the Reading blockade has been known about for months the timetables have been out for a while so there is absolutely no excuse for not displaying the correct information at North Camp.

The same with the lack of link from the FGW^▸ (First Great Western) website to the Waterloo website to check departures.

Regarding Melksham although it appears the times have been displayed, they were not necessarily in the place where you expect to find them. Again a "Lack of Attention to Detail"

[willc]

No wonder there are problems with information if someone is trying to contact Railtrack...

[JayMac]

Indeed. Contacting Railtrack Ltd might elicit a less than helpful response, similar to those included in this document:

http://www.fitlads.net/tmp/railtrack.pdf.

You may well get a reply directing you to an answer given by Private Eye in the case of Arkell vs Pressdram. 

BTW^▸ ('by the way'), if you are easily shocked, I'd suggest staying away from the the top level domain in the link above! 

[Kevin]

Thanks for the welcome!

As you say as the Reading works have been known about for months, there isn't really a good excuse.  When an unexpected incident occurs, then it is more understandable that correct information is more difficult to get out as events unfold.

I think the thing I find most annoying about this issue is that North Camp is staffed some of the day and someone did actually produce a hand written notice but managed to get the information so wrong.

Whilst on the subject, would there be a reason why the final stopping train of the day (23.14 from Guildford) was not operated throughout this week, or the subsequent semi-fast, altered to serve all stations?  Coupled with the lack of correct information, I suspect there were a plenty of folk caught out my this and stranded at Guildford late in the evening.

[Jonathan H]

Whilst on the subject, would there be a reason why the final stopping train of the day (23.14 from Guildford) was not operated throughout this week, or the subsequent semi-fast, altered to serve all stations?  Coupled with the lack of correct information, I suspect there were a plenty of folk caught out my this and stranded at Guildford late in the evening.

It was replaced by a coach (as had been advertised for a long time) - probably after midnight.  With the trains stabled at Redhill, FGW^▸ (First Great Western) decided not to run any train services which would have required ECS^▸ (Empty Coaching Stock) moves to or from Wokingham.  [I think this was a bit mean.]

So, the first Redhill bound service was the 0713 from Wokingham and the last Wokingham bound service was the 2139 from Redhill.  There were buses from Reading at 0434 and 0534 and, I think, buses from Gatwick at 2223 and 2318 - they take longer to get to Guildford than trains - e.g. the 0534 bus was timetabled into Guildford at 0700 and Redhill at 0805 (instead of 0610 and 0638 when it is a train).

I caught the 0534 bus from Reading through to Reigate on the Thursday and it picked up passengers at each station it called into so these passengers were presumably aware of it running.  Clearly, there is quite a gap between the last train and the bus otherwise they would overtake.

Jonathan