How well informed should you be in advance about bustitution?

[whole diary]

[grahame]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transport/10476045/So-now-its-my-fault-if-I-dont-know-my-train-will-be-delayed.html

This relates to a Cambridge to London return trip ... how does in work for FGW^▸ (First Great Western) these days - discuss ;-)

Nothing forges a bond with a stranger faster than finding you^re adjacent passengers on the rail journey from hell.

When I complained to First Capital Connect^s customer services that there was no warning about engineering works that night, a woman told me I should have looked at the website before travelling. In other words, I should research the company^s artful plans to sabotage my travel life. At Cambridge station, the staff dolefully say they have a notice board on Platform 4 alerting passengers of all scheduled works. True, but it^s on a little-used stretch and only a cryptographer could make easy sense of its topography and small print.

What of the thousands of foreign tourists who pour through Cambridge? Or older travellers without web access, who find it taxing enough finding the right train? What about people who have circled the car park in vain trying to find a space, fought their way through the usual 20-minute queues to buy a ticket, and are weeping in despair?

[eightf48544]

i would have thought you should have been told when you bought your ticket if on-line or at a booking office. As most engineering work is planned months if not years (blockades) in advance then it ought to be possible to programme it into the system to pop up when a clsoed route is asked for. Even better would be if it told you possible alternative routes.

Whether TVMs^▸ (Ticket Vending Machine) could be programme as well I don't know.

Short notice emergency engineering works are more difficut to cater for.

But I not sure how the TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) can warn people who tun up on the day and expect to get somewhere by train. Perhaps local radio, ceefax (or it's new incarnation) but the main thing is plenty of staff people to tell the queuers that  there are buses and do they really want to go today.

It ought to be compulsary for any station with bus substitution to be manned whilst the buses are running. i did quite well with a couple of Sunday's pay supervising buses at Sutton admitedly in the bad old days of overmanned BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)). As well as getting a cab ride round to Selhurst with a driver who didn't know the route via West Croydon but that's another story.   

Intersting with Cambridge were both routes to London blocked? Normally if Kings Cross is shut Liverpool Street should be open.

 

[Henry]

 Only speaking for my local station, Totnes, but they are already displaying poster's/literature
 regarding Xmas, Whiteball Tunnel and the Jan/Feb closure of Exeter-Plymouth.
 
 I presume the information is available, just knowing where to look.

 Once told by a railwayman year's ago (admittedly on the Southern), To travel on the railway on Winter
 Week-ends ;-
                      'You are either an optimist or a fool'