Great Western Coffee Shop

Sorry to vent on my second ever posting, but could someone explain to me the following:

Services into Reading are delayed for some reason, perhaps problems out of Paddington or delays somewhere else along the line - in this case a bridge strike at Burnham. So the 17:00 Maidenhead to Reading rolls in God knows how many minutes late, and I have a nice chat to the driver about the bridge strike etc. I'm all quite happy, these things happen, can't be helped, at least its moving again.

The 17:04 Maidenhead to Oxford rolls in not long after. On I get. Off we go, and arrive at Reading. Driver changes. Tannoy comes on. "Everyone not stopping at Oxford please leave the train as we will no longer be stopping at x y z stations".

Few minutes later, train rolls out of Reading with about 5 people on it, while about 50+ of us wander around Reading trying to get home.

What possible reason is there for dumping all those passengers (and thats not counting all those waiting to get on which were told not to) just so the service can bomb off to Oxford ? I am sure the answer will be "because the train is needed for another service" - and I would be (relatively) ok with that, if this was a service that was delayed by itself, but it wasn't, the whole network in and out of Reading was delayed from the bridge closure.

If there is one thing that fills me with rage it is when they do this, and it happens so bloody often its getting beyond a joke now.

There. Feel better now :-)

It's usually just an attempt to get the service back, so stops get removed in order for the train to be able to make up some time.

Oxford stoppers are half hourly, and chances are the other wasn't that far behind? Or potentially maybe another half hour behind which isn't the end of the world compared to services that other stations get.

However won't ever really know as you haven't said what day this happened.

And I have checked today, and there has been no disruption.

As well as the trains next working, there might also be a need to get the driver and/or TM to Oxford quickly as their next working could be delayed as a result - that might be one of the important evening Hereford's for example.  Also of course the charter figures are based on the arrival time at the destination station, and whilst I'm sure there is a penalty for a 'fail-to-call' I expect it's not so severe?

Do drivers & TMs work on both turbos & HSTs - I thought it was one or the other, with no cross-over?


Missing a call counts as a part cancellation. Other than that, I don't know the specifics either....

I was just using Hereford as an example, but it depends on the depot.  The variety is quite staggering really - here's a brief summary covering three of the depots:

• At Oxford roughly half of the drivers do both HST's and Turbos.  The rest just Turbos.
• At Reading there are supposed to be no drivers that sign HST's any longer (though about 4 of them continue to do so on a historical basis).  Reading Conductors depot has three links in effect, the top one works both Turbos and HST's, the middle one works Turbos, but also can work HST's if needed with an enhanced payment, and the bottom link just work Turbos (Basingstoke's, Gatwick's and Marlow's mostly).
• Paddington has two drivers depots, the HSS one has drivers that only sign HST's.  The LTV one has a top link that are supposed to sign HST's and Turbos (although in reality only a handful now sign HST's). The other link only signs Turbos.  Paddington TM's only sign HST's.
  

So, it's a tad confusing!  Not helped by the fact that no former FGWL drivers are being allowed to learn HST's currently due to an ongoing dispute between company and the Union which has been going on for over three years now - so, for example at Oxford all of the second link are supposed to sign HST's, but less than half actually do and are awaiting training.  This really doesn't help anyone!

I understand that, and had the train I had been on been delayed due to a technical problem, then missed stops to make up the time I can understand as its a one off. But the whole mainline into Paddington was shut due to the bridge strike at Burnham, so surely having one service make up time isn't going to radically change things, whilst disrupting even more passengers ?


It was 30mins behind as the whole network was running late - but 30mins might not be much, but it is when the original train was 40mins late or whatever it was, thats now 70mins for a 30min journey! And to make matters worse, the following train was over crowded, then has even more than usual getting on at Reading as the previous service was all dumped there. Really makes no sense to me from a customer point of view.

Its happened quite a few times, but I think this was September 3rd.

Nah I've been meaning to join the forum and ask for ages and kept forgetting, hence why it was a few weeks ago :-)

And sorry for the delay in replying, been a bit ill over the weekend :-(

Understood - just very frustrating to be dumped off a train thats going past your stop for no apparent reason (I guess the main issue is that no one ever tells us anything!).


I thought the charter figures were based on HST service arrival times to mainline stations, not Turbos to local stopping services ?

Every train counts in the charter figures. There are three sets - LTV, West & HST.

Ah :-) Thanks for the clarification!