Great Western Coffee Shop

Tonight has to be in the top 10 worst managed incidents I have ever experienced. It seems to have completely paralysed the Bristol area for over an hour, no one knew anything from control, single line running seems to have gone completely out of the window, and sitting for 45 minutes at the signals just outside BRI is a complete joke, when the train is full, standing and filling the overhead racks...... >:( >:( >:( >:(

Hmm. I'm very sorry to hear that, tramway.  >:(

Yes, looking at our 'Current Running' (http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/tgf.php) page, it does seem there wasn't much actually 'currently running', after an apparent breakdown at about 17:30.

Road transport was being provided between Westbury and Chippenham, but then there were apparently knock-on effects as train crew were out of place / time, compounding the issues.

It was the Cardiff Pompey, 15.22 ex Bristol that failed with brakes locked on. I caught the following Pompey service and decided to detrain at Bristol after waiting 30 min in the station, 3 car 158 packed to the rafters because the Padd's were diverted via parkway and all Bath traffic came our way, came back to catch the 17.22 which only just managed to get to be 5 car, which also took all the lost souls from the cancelled Westbury service, pleasant it was not. We were shifted to give BRI some platforms which meant we were held at the signal for 40 mins. Guard had virtually zero info from control and informed the passengers accordingly.

4 Hrs from Filton to home.

Sadly it's not just the trains. Public transport out of Bath seems to have ground to a stop altogether.

My son, travelling from Filton AW to Trowbridge, was on the train that failed. Ironically he had left work early (at 3) intending to go out this evening, but ended up not getting home (Melksham - he drives to Trowbridge each day since obviously there's no useable trains from Melksham) until well after 8pm.

They were told while sitting on the failed train at Oldfield Park for 3 hours that the brakes had failed. Initially they were informed that a following SW Trains set was going to push them along to Bath. I must confess my own first thought was "now that could be interesting, for a number of reasons..."

Some of the passengers were extremely nervous by this stage of travelling anywhere at all on a train with no brakes, let alone being pushed along by another one. In the end they were pulled down the line to Bath by, I believe, a 125.

Meanwhile my daughter, who works in Bath and travels to and from Melksham by bus each day, was for the second day running left stranded in Bath by First Group. Having left work at 5, she was told the next bus back to Melksham was today likely to run after 9pm. The same thing had happened yesterday, but without the promises of even a late bus running. Eventually she got a bus to Trowbridge and got her boyfriend to drive over and pick her up there. She got in around half past 8 this evening.

I have to say the bus service has generally been quite reliable over the past 6 months - maybe once every three weeks or so she's either late into work or is delayed getting out of Bath. This week's been a nightmare though. No idea what's going on.

Pulled down the line to Bath by an HST sounds interesting . Was it a down passenger service that went to the rescue? Or an up service that overtook it and then reversed into Oldfield Park?   

Ah, sorry, apparently I got that bit wrong (I just phoned him and checked his story).

They were going to be pushed by a SW Trains unit, but it couldn't do it. So, a 125 pulled in on the line beside them at Oldfield Park (i.e. running the wrong way) and everyone got off the broken down unit, crossed over the footbridge, and piled onto the 125.

clearly not actually in the station, everyone on that service has my sympathies, but 3 hours stranded seems a bit extreme. We had rumours that the SWT had attempted the rescue, so have assumed it failed then? Did anything come down from Westbury to drag it back?


I've no idea what's going on either, which is probably more than the management did tonight.

Phil - I've followed up on this in a split-off topic, as it's moving us onto more general topics than the Oldfield park problems, and work futher discussion IMHO.  See:

http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=5588.0

travelling fitter arrived and got set running on its own to bathampton  loop and then to westbury yard where it got further attention overnight apparently.train involved was 158954 i believe.