Great Western Coffee Shop

For some reason there was an engine sat at the end of Platform 4 in Cardiff Central this afternoon (it looked like it had smoke coming out of it, it wasnt a steam engine tho!) so there was chaos when both the 1648 Swansea and 1704 Carmarthen services were due to arrive.  The board on platform 3 said both services were due to arrive there however the 1704 Carmarthen service arrives at about 16.45 which meant there was an announcement that the Swansea service would depart from Platform 4. However due to this engine being parked there there was another announcement at short time later telling everyone to go to Platform 7 for the Swansea train (and this serice would be the first to depart Cardiff for Bridgend, Port Talbot, Neath and Swansea). So 100s of passengers had to walk down the stairs and up again platform 7. This resulted in the train being more than 10 mins late departing because there was a mess up with platforms at Cardiff.

As well as this, it seems that departure screens at Cardiff (and Newport) were listing services to Portsmouth Harbour when there were replacement buses at Newport on this service. This led to confusion by passengers who were looking at this screen thinking there would be a train to Bristol Temple Meads and stations to Portsmouth.

When I got into Cardiff Central this morning to get on the 09:25 to Reading (and onwards to Twickenham for the Barbarians V NZ game), the Customer Information Screens were showing some http link  ;D

In fact, none of the Information screens on the Rhymney Valley service I regularly take were showing as working.

yes there was caos at cardiff due to everyone crowding onto the 17:04 arriva service to carmarthen because the fgw service to swansea was late. As for the engine you saw it was a steam engine, in fact it was a A4 pacific asnd it had run empty from barry docks before heading into canton to pick up it coaches to haul a railtour back to London

In fairness the platform staff announced several times that the FGW would be the first departure to stations to Swansea (although by the time it eventually arrived and departed it left a few mins ahead of the 1704). Also a bit silly to put a steam engine onto the end of Platform 4 when they knew the platform would be needed for either the FGW Swansea or ATW Carms service.