Great Western Coffee Shop

Hi all,

Anyone know what's happening at Southall at the moment ? There have been issues on and off the past few evenings with trains delayed, and I heard on the radio this morning it would continue until end of service today with 15 minute delays in and out of Paddington, due to speed restrictions at Southall.

Just wondered what the cause was!

Just a 20mph ESR on the Down Main line as far as I know.  Over a set of points which leads into Southall Yard.  Shouldn't cause anything on the relief lines or up main to be delayed, but will knock anything on the down main by 2-4 minutes - possibly more if the trains start to back up in the peaks.

FGW Live Updates say, 'problems with line-side equipment'. Is that just a catch all phrase or is it being used rather than saying a problem with the track?

I think matters were made worse at Reading last night (Thursday 24th) by a points failure outside of Reading which resulted in passengers (and to be fair Staff) not having a clue when a particular train was arriving and what platform it was coming in on.

Alot of westbound through services were pulling in at P5 whilst eastbound through services seemed to be coming in at P8 or P9

Whilst I totally understand the need for the "keep back behind the yellow line on P4" announcments at the moment it isn't always that easy for us passengers where there is probably 4 times the normal volume of passengers on P4 trying to find out what the heck was going on.

There also seem to have been recurring problems between Didcot Parkway and Swindon over the last week.  Not sure what or where - but that was put down to "lineside equipment" as well.  Then today an HST came to a halt for a while between the two (think it was the 10:00 London Paddington to Paignton via Bristol Temple Meads).  Not a good day for West of England services - the 07:30 from London Paddington to Penzance never made it over the Tamar because of a "train fault".

Currently on an overcrowded 17:22 Padd'n - Hereford with standing the whole length of the aisle in coach A.

Ahead of us, the 17:12 to Henley and the 17:18 to Oxford both cancelled.

Thanks for the info guys. Yeah its been pretty iffy for the past week - mornings and evenings - but my train from Maidenhead (17:04) has not been on time for at least a month now. Its only 3 or 4 minutes late usually, but its been the same for weeks - very odd (17:07 was the original time before they changed it a couple of years ago, if I recall).

FGW are obviously struggling this year, I have had a discount on my season ticket every month since January due to their performance, according to the guy in the ticket office - with the 6% increase in January and the 5% discount, its worked out to about 50p more per month than last year - which is a nice result. Although next year will be a shock as it will have effectively gone up 5% (the discount ending) and then 8% (or whatever the January rise is), unless there is another performance discount! Anyway I digress...