Great Western Coffee Shop

Deeply irritated with FGW this evening. 21:45 to Exeter St Davids suffered a front power car failure (sounded like they were having difficulty getting the brakes off). We were detrained on platform 5 and told to join the train arriving on the adjacent platform 4 (inbound service from Oxford). Train Manager advised this would be the next departure. The 22:15 was sitting on platform 3 but there were no announcements to that effect. I tossed a mental coin and decided to stay on the 21:45 which was now showing as 'delayed 22:03' on the app. Of course, the 22:15 pulled away on time and we finally left at 22:24. Always trust your gut instinct!

 >:(

Log report is below, it was an Automatic Warning System fault on the initial train, complicated by the fact the replacement train needed enough fuel in to get to Exeter and back to Paddington before heading to Old Oak Common depot for fuelling in the morning. I'm guessing they couldn't 'step-up' the HST for the 2215 as it needed fuelling at St Phillip's Marsh.

1C32 AWS FLT PAD 21:44 FGW TSC advises that the set due to work 1C32 2145 Paddington to Exeter was having to be taken out of traffic due to an AWS defect on the leading power car which the fitters were unable to rectify. Due to the requirement of this train to be formed with a set having sufficient fuel to get outstable overnight at Exeter before returning to Paddington in the morning. It was necessary to wait for 1P81 to arrive and incur a late start.

Apparently the replacement set also had some issues. Departure was originally expected at 22:05 but the further problems on the replacement set delayed the departure further.

Thanks for the background. It fills in the story nicely. These things happen, but it would have been nice for passengers to stations to Bristol to have been given the option of hopping across to the 22:15 for a slightly earlier departure, although presumably that would have generated its own set of logistical issues...

Sometimes well-meant (I'm sure) advice to people in this kind of situation can turn out to be completely wrong in the end. I can recall people advised to get off one HST if they were going to Reading, Didcot or Swindon as it had a fault and it was unlikely to be fixed before the next service went out in 15 minutes, which conveniently was on the opposite face of the same platform island. About 2 minutes after people had switched there was a PA telling people to get off that train for those destinations and cross back over to the other one. The correct thing to do  was to ignore this announcement as this train left before the first one (which in the end left about 10 minutes behind).

I suspect the problem was they weren't quite sure when the 21:45 was going to depart once they became aware of additional problems with it. And as you say, so close to the departure of the 22:15 shifting everyone over to it would have caused further problems, and perhaps meant the 22:15 would have departed late itself.