Great Western Coffee Shop

Picture the scene on Wednesday...keen to get home after a hard day's work.  Check the FGW website, no delays reported.  Walk to Paddington, keen to catch the 1836.......and the station looks full. Oh dear, all trains delayed.  Stand around waiting for an announcement,  Nothign apart from the odd mumbling soudns from the speakers (something about beware of thieves operating in the area - curses they should have warned me about unscrupulous people when I handed my money over for a season ticket and expected a reasonal service).  Good enough there were several staff available to ask WIHIH and was able to learn about a breakdown at Burnham with a fuel spillage and a fire apparently.  Fair enough, stuff happens but I could have gone to Marylebone if I'd known theer were problems.

Onto Thursday now.  Get on 1836 (and get a seat on a nice clean Adalante)...grea start.  Even better, there's a letter from FGW apologising for the previous day and saying that passengers could apply for compensation.  All due credit to FGW for this, so well done.  Start to get suspicious when the train hasn't left by 1845.  Then there's an announcement about the dealys due to being unable to find the train manager.  A few minutes later another announcement...all Reading passengers change to the train on platform 8.  Mass exodus but I'm not going to Reading, I'm going to Maidenhead so stay on the train.  Bad decision as I piss two alternative trains to Maidenhead.  Then the final announcement...can't find the train manager, this train is cancelled....ARRRGGHHHH!

I accept that equipment breaks down, staff become ill, etc.  I think it would be much better though if efforts were made to inform passengers of delays as soon as they are known. Grrrrr!

Hello, and welcome to the forum.  There *are* times when decisions are being made "on the fly" and it's not possible to tell the passengers what will happen because - well - FGW staff don't yet know either.   The gap between "we can't find the conductor" and checking in the loo, phoning his missus, and checking the crew room to see if there are any spares available.

I've suffered a lot of public transport delays in my xx years and some organisations have impressed with their handling of such situations, others have not. And it's not necessarily the organisation with the worst reliability record that's held in worst regard by its customers for how it handles things.  I'm thinking of one particular organisation who have delayed me on numerous times but I still use them.
1. I feel that they tell us there's a problem early on, even if they have no solution
2. They're open about what the issues are, and offer full (somethimes quite technical) explanations
3. I feel that they take management steps to ensure that there is enough resource available and working to handle unscheduled issues
4. They don't have a blame culture that looks to place the problems at someone else's feet
5. I feel their fares are good value

Agree entirely that sometimes, from an operators perspective, you don't know how long a problem is going to last.  However,  if your train is scheduled to depart at 1836 you would expect to know that there's no train manager at, or preferably by, 1836.  With the tight scheduling it seems that a departure delay of even a few minutes is likely to have a bigger impact on the eventual departure of the train.   Would be nice to inform the passengers so, in the absence of information, they can make a judgment call of whether it's worth switching to another train immediately or not.