Great Western Coffee Shop

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30398791 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30398791)

Interesting comment about 90% of trains running normally....well bring it on I say!

Taking bets on a late start due to 'overrunning engineering works' on the 27th.  ;D

As the first long distance arrival into Paddington is not planned until 11:26 on the 27th, I sincerely hope not!

Personally, a little birdy tells me to put decent money on a London Bridge over-run.....far more likely, I hear

That's because the Up Line is shut until 11:00, before that time trans terminate at RDG.

"normally" doesn't mean the same as "as timetabled"

Having suffered/experienced the FGW Thames Valley service between Xmas/New Year for the last few years (and will again this year), I wouldn't advise you to expect anything good........take a flask of soup and some turkey sandwiches along, you may have a long wait!!! (......then again, that's business as usual these days!!!)

Called it.  ;D ;D ;D

Should've placed a bet with the bookies :P

I suspect you wouldn't have got very good odds, we all know FGW couldn't organise a p*** up in a brewery so today's chaos was no surprise, just read the rest of the thread!

But the cause was Network Rail. FGW have had to pick up the pieces. Just like East Coast and Govia have had to out of Kings Cross. Not very well admittedly, but trying to make contingency arrangements late on Boxing Day or even early this morning that the line wasn't going to reopen in time would tax anyone's ingenuity and resources. So I think your criticism of FGW is unfair.

And if you say that they should have a contingency plan in place then yes, maybe, but having people and coaches on standby for every engineering possession in case it over-runs will cost serious money as you have to make financial commitments to guarantee that the resources will be available if required. To date, the rail industry hasn't gone down that route to the best of my knowledge, but that's not an issue specific to any particular TOC.

"Together, First Great Western and Network Rail will build a Greater West for our passengers and the communities we serve" - (FGW Website) - that means collective responsibility when things go wrong, not just waving flags about investment. If the infrastructure provision falls over, then the service provider needs to manage the fallout

no-one seems particularly surprised that it didn't work yesterday, however I doubt they expected it to be quite that spectacularly bad.

I am surprised and disappointed that things went as bad as they did, I know how much planning and effort is put into the Christmas work.  Contingency plans are put in place to allow for some over run.  There are T minus 12, 8, 6, 4, 2 and 1 week review panels which are lead by a senior manager outside of the project team the panel includes reps from Route Ops and Asset Managers, from T minus 2 weeks it can go to almost daily reviews; on top of this there is a whole rift of interdisciplinary checks and reviews by the engineering team to ensure the designs are correct.

The post mortem into these events will have already started, indeed the causes will already be logged, each major renewals weekend like this the NR organisation has a "War Room" for each programme which is usually headed by a program director.  Conference calls are held every 2 hours with the NR Route Ops are involved and the TOC's are advised of progress.  When a site manager becomes aware there is problem or a potential problem they will call this in straight away (e.g. a critical piece of plant has failed).  Progress is also recorded on site electronically and emailed into the "War Room" Senior Managers and Programme Directors are on call and will attend sites, the Programme Directors involved in these works almost certainly will have conference calls with NR Executives even the CEO more than likely on both Christmas and Boxing Days.

The project I was involved in on Boxing Day removed some of the planned tasks, because there had been some problems early on, this was done to avoid an overrun, this of course has a consequence of finding the access and manpower to complete this work before Easter.

Unfortunately these 2 events have detracted from the 16 day major rebuild work going on a London Bridge, Reading viaduct works, Watford and countless other major bits of work that all went on or are happening now without delays, 11,000 people working over Christmas on infrastructure renewals / enhancements equals a lot going on. 

Many thanks for the above ET which, for me at least, provided an insight into the run up to and monitoring of such works.

I'm not a believer in calling for "heads to roll" in circumstances such as the delays of the last few days but what is the interface (if any) between NR and the government at times such as this?

I also agree with your comment regarding the success of some projects having gone unnoticed due to the overrunning of others but it could be argued that we (the traveling public) shouldn't notice when a project goes well unless the end result is an improvement

As a frequent passenger through reading during the last 10 years I am still impressed that Reading stayion was rebuilt from the ground up whilst keeping services operational.

Interestingly one of the comments I've heard from FGW sources is that NR didn't keep them informed of the likely overrun which is one of the reasons people were just turning up at Paddington to find chaos - at least those heading for Kings X/Finsbury Park were forewarned.

Clearly some of the conference calls alluded to weren't particularly effective, and what was the nature of the contingency planning in the event of an overrun? I didn't see much evidence of it kicking in, it was just chaos!