Great Western Coffee Shop

Seen on the screens at platform 2 at CDF this afternoon.

1630  Eastleigh, calling at (etc, etc)

Shouted many times on platform 2 at CDF this afternoon.

"Portsmouth Harbour train, platform 2"

On board the train awaiting to depart the very same platform 2

"This train is for Southampton Central".


No wonder someone on board was overheard to say  "I think this train is for Portsmouth, but I'm not sure."

Seems like it was definitely going to get as far as Southampton, with some uncertainty as to what would happen after that.

However, once at Southampton there are plenty of opportunities to change to other services for onwards travel to Portsmouth.

He wouldn't have got to Portsmouth unfortunately, the service was terminating and starting back from Southampton Central but going via Eastleigh, due to the planned engineering diversion having a landslip just south of Botley superimposed at short notice...   ::)  Just to keep the staff on their toes... 

When I was at Southampton earlier the arriving trains were running empty into one of the goods loops west of the station before returning to Cardiff from platform 1 - no doubt confusing all those who weren't bothering to read the displays...

PS, just had a quick look at both 'realtime trains' and 'opentraintimes', and neither reflect what is actually happening in reality.   National Rail's live departure boards seem reasonably correct though...

Paul

From Portsmouth News (http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/traffic-travel/travel-latest/landslide-halts-trains-from-fareham-1-5849657):

Well at least the names didn't get mixed up on the boards - "Train for HamptonMouth" or "Train for "SouthPort"

Seems this landslide might not be fixed for a few weeks, so it must be a bad one.  Should be no impact on FGW during the forthcoming weekdays, except for the late night route retention diversions via Eastleigh, but SWT's normal weekday timetable will be pretty much shot to pieces... 

Then with all the planned track renewals going on immediately west of Southampton Central at the moment they'll be pulling their hair out now designing reliable weekend timetables for the next few weekends.

I wouldn't book on the Melksham to Brighton 'rail cruise' just yet...   ;D

Paul

Funnily enough, we now see a down side of automatically publishing details of this sort of line closure on the various rail websites, such as NR Enquiries, as the ongoing problems between Eastleigh and Fareham are now showing up as an issue for FGW. 

But as we know, they only run this way once a day in each direction for route retention knowledge, so the impact on passengers should be near zero, as the Eastleigh reversal is not an advertised call.  The relevant services will just have to waste a bit of time somewhere as they take the normal route...

Paul