Great Western Coffee Shop

I was on the 22.10 from Paddington to Maidenhead tonight. At 22.05 it was announced as being on platform 13 so we all started making our way there.. I was one of the first so by no means slow, yet as we were still on platform 12 there was an annoucement saying that the 22.10 was not only on platform 13, it was the front train on platform 13 (!) and it was ready to leave so please could we board now.. As you can imagine this caused pandemonium and a lot of people started running.  As we arrived on platform 13, with still quite a distance to go to the front train, the despatch person started blowing his whistle.. So the people who were still walking calmly joined in the sprinting masses..

I walked and got there with a minute to spare, so why oh why, when the train was about as far away as it could be, and was announced so late anyway, did they do that? Ridiculous...

At least the train wasn't air conditioned. That would have been unbearably hot especially because of the enforced exercise for the passengers..

Oh and an interesting comment as we got off at Maidenhead from a child who was with his mother.. He wondered why people bought tickets since we didn't need it to get on the train, or to get off. I have to agree I was thinking the same thing.. :)

I must sympathise, I've had to make a rather frantic dash from the main concourse to Royal Oak before. Err. I mean platform 13. And to top it off, it was the front unit only!

That's a recurring theme whenever I catch late trains from Paddington. Can anyone on the inside explain to me why the 0021 PAD - OXF always seems to depart from platform 13, in the deepest, darkest, furthest recesses of the station, when it's virtually the only service around at that time of night? And even if it has to depart from 13, why does this only show up on the platform indicator with nanoseconds to spare?

Further, I know despatch staff have to keep things running to time, but shouting at passengers who can't be expected to have been at their train in plenty of time since it's only just been announced isn't great customer service.

Had my first experience of 13+ last week - thursday - had to go to apple store to order new laptop for a drop kicked macbook pro (they are good but dot like being kicked!)

Ca in at what I thought was the tube station I see on the way into paddington.

What made it worse was the tide of people leavig the train had to fight the tide of people going to it - it was so far away that we had not made it to station proper before it was announced for the return journey

Although - it was behid barriers but the barriers were open - circa 630pm - so not sure which platform it was!

Apologies for the spellig - my keyboard is ******** util my new machie arrives.  Sometimes its the t, sometimes the e, toight its the N

It's usually formed off of the 00:15 arrival from Reading, so that probably explains the late platform confirmation.