Points failure at Taunton now. There’s a train approaching Swindon from Taunton over two hours late.
Taking this w-a-y off topic, travelling around the last fortnight I have seen an unreliability that's been depressing. We're primarily a
GWR▸ forum and as such it's that
TOC▸ we look at, but seeing Transport for Wales, South Western Railway and West Midlands Railway all failing to deliver in just 7 days of travel out of 15, from a multitude of causes. Now because that's a multitude of causes, there's no easy fix though there might be a commonality of stretched resources across so many areas.
Crew shortage - brake failure - points failure - lack of available platform - AC filling carriage with smoke - late running freight train - person hit by train.
Another sad commonality was the information systems which cope with what should be normal, but fail to cope and spew out incorrect information and generalised recorded platitudes when they could be usefully informing passengers in a more targeted way. Typical example standing at Shrub Hill - cancellation of hourly WMT service to Dorridge is announced with a huge list of stations and a canned apology which to me sounded insincere and advice that you should wait an hour for the next train. Then a different and human voice suggests caching the train in a few minutes to Foregate Street and changing there for just half an hour's delay.
Onboard information systems also not coping. Example, also from a trip to Weymouth, but taken by a friend from Bristol. On boarding, the in-carriage display read "We will shortly be arriving at Bristol Temple Meads, where this service will terminate." This scrolled continuously throughout the journey, no other display, and no voice announcements. She mentioned this to the guard when he came round, he huffed that he had been making announcements. Well, perhaps he had, but they weren't audible in that carriage.
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