Slow trains out of Paddington - overnight 25/26 Oct 14

[whole diary]

[NickB]

Does anyone know why trains out of Paddington are running so slow this evening? 30mins to ealing so far... Depressing.


Mod Edit: Thread title amended to add the date.  bobm

[johoare]

Looking at realtime trains I am guessing engineering works.. Hopefully someone knows for sure though.. There were a couple of trains that had destination Maidenhead showing on there which isn't the norm for a saturday night I don't think

[grahame]

Does anyone know why trains out of Paddington are running so slow this evening? 30mins to ealing so far... Depressing.

2R95 - the 00:30 Paddington to Maidenhed lost 5 minutes to Acton Main Line, 14 to Acton West and 18 to Ealing ... a further 3 down by Maidenhead.  2R96 - the 01:00 stated 16 late from Paddington and lost 8 minutes by Ealing.  Unknown reason ... I would guess engineering rather than train issues, and judging by the loss between multiple timing points it was probably (i.e. I am guessing) a signalling issue with trains running under caution.

Note Jo has posted while I've been looking - yes, engineering works I guess, but it seems it may have interfered with the signals as the slow running wasn't scheduled.

[NickB]

Back to maidenhead eventually. 60 mins for a 35min train. Tedious. Onward travel from maidenhead was by coach if needed. My delays were all before ealing though. No sign of engineering.

[NickB]

Thanks grahame. Sounds right.

[johoare]

Nothing on Journeycheck either.. Must be some info somewhere if (local) trains were only going as far as Maidenhead towards the end of the evening

[JayMac]

Back to maidenhead eventually. 60 mins for a 35min train. Tedious. Onward travel from maidenhead was by coach if needed. My delays were all before ealing though. No sign of engineering.

I note the time of this post. Another minute and the journey time by clock would've been zero or into negative figures.

Perhaps things were running slow Sat night into Sun morning because it was known an hour would be given back at 2am. 

[Network SouthEast]

 

Looking at realtime trains I am guessing engineering works.. Hopefully someone knows for sure though.. There were a couple of trains that had destination Maidenhead showing on there which isn't the norm for a saturday night I don't think

Saturday late night trains terminating at Maidenhead are a fairly common occurrence due to engineering work.

[Electric train]

I believe the replacement for Highfield Lane bridge at Cox Green (West of Maidenhead) was being dropped in last night, also I am guessing there was a load of work being done as part of this Christmas bridge demolitions in the Slough area and there is a lot going on in the Acton and Stockley Park areas.  With all this going on it doesn't take much to cause a big delay if a train is late

[tomL]

Was a long crawl from Paddington to Swindon last night. I was on the 1936 Paddington to Swansea and it was 11 down at Reading and about 15 down at Swindon (made the weekend first upgrade worth while though, was able to have a look at the new first class, but I digress  ).

The announcement from the TM^‡(resolve) was along the lines of "this is due to a two track running this evening due to engineering works". But it really did feel like we were chasing yellows all the way and just about avoided the need to completely stop at a red.

I'm sure some of the others can be more insightful but that was my view from the passenger seat    

[John R]

According to RTT^» (Real Time Trains - website), you were switched to the relief line from Stockley Bridge Jn to Slough and were following a slightly late stopping service to Oxford hence the slow running  Though there's no obvious reason why you continued to lose time nearer Swindon.

Of mild interest, beyond Swindon the service was routed via Gloucester, and passed the Westbury bound service between Swindon and Kemble. Pre doubling, having been 16 down it would have been held and lost further time, but was able to continue unchecked.

[tomL]

According to RTT^» (Real Time Trains - website), you were switched to the relief line from Stockley Bridge Jn to Slough and were following a slightly late stopping service to Oxford hence the slow running  Though there's no obvious reason why you continued to lose time nearer Swindon.

Of mild interest, beyond Swindon the service was routed via Gloucester, and passed the Westbury bound service between Swindon and Kemble. Pre doubling, having been 16 down it would have been held and lost further time, but was able to continue unchecked.

From reading elsewhere on the forum this was the exact plan. When the route via Bristol Parkway is closed the diverted trains can more or less have a good run on diversion up to Gloucester.

EDIT: Was still a bit of a tangle at Swindon though. We arrived on plat. 1 with the Cheltenham Spa service ready to go on 3. I'm guessing that one was held to let the Swansea service get in front.

[TaplowGreen]

According to the Twitter feed there were signalling problems too.........then again as this is pretty much a daily event now it probably wasn't felt worth a mention elsewhere?

As severe disruption (not including fatalities) now sees to be part of Business as usual for FGW^▸ (First Great Western), I have seen some people demanding that fleets of coaches are sourced to zip into action as soon as something goes wrong in order that road transport doesn't take hours to arrange - this is probably impractical and born of desperation by people delayed 5 out of 5 days, however I think the catch all "we're not paying compensation for consequential losses" get out clause will come under increasing scrutiny if people source their own taxis etc to get them to where FGW are supposed to.......if the problem is caused by something within NR^» (Network Rail - home page)'s remit, FGW can pay their customers and have the battle with NR later to get the money back - as is often pointed out, the amount paid to FGW by NR is in any case far in excess of the amounts paid to customers.