Great Western Coffee Shop

Things were not good at Paddington this morning. Apparently a broken down train had delayed everything on the up relief at West Ealing- not that they were telling us this at Paddington until I put a call in to customer services.

I was attempting to travel out to Slough- the target train was the 08:22 to Hereford, Slough first stop. On arrival at Paddington, everything on the boards on the local lines was marked as "delayed", but I thought I'd be OK, as the Hereford train, being a main line train, was marked as "on time".

But only two minutes before boarding, it was announced that the train would be skipping Slough, so effectively FGW were making the problems so much worse for themselves- all of the many Slough commuters were forced onto the severely delayed all stations stoppers. There Hereford trian left 5 minutes down, and ran fast to Reading. As for those of us going to Slough, it was a long wait and a squeeze onto a very sweaty Turbo.

OK, I guess the stop skip was to allow the train to get its slot on the single track section in the Cotswolds, but really they should have put a compensatory stopping order on the next fast HST out of Paddington, and therefore increase capacity on the delayed Turbos. No "out of the box" thinking going on at FGW control, methinks......

Seems a bit silly to cut out the Slough stop for the sake of just 5 minutes - it soon made the time up passing Didcot 4 minutes early!

The fault was with a turbo on one of the Greenford trains which was stuck with its brakes on, although a problem with a HST at Southall was also causing a few problems and is more likely the reason behind the late departure of the 08:22 - the set for which is only due in 12 minutes before working its next service which is very tight for a HST!