Network Rail's tweeted a photo, not sure of the precise location. I mean, they'll know, but I don't.
Ah yes - I have found that one too ... copy below in case the original sets lost
OK - It's a mess. And there's no way that the staff who turned up to work early this morning could get all their customers to where they wanted to do at or reasonably closed to time. As well as being dealt a poor hand by the weather, they are trying to run a system which lacks the resilience it needs to keep running in modern British Weather, and they've probably not neither enough staff nor enough authority to do what could and should have been done. But I would at least have hoped that those who are offering paid railway advice would get it right, or be honest and admit "don't know" rather than guessing.
I tell the story of a friend travelling from
Westbury to Swindon this morning, who found his train (the 07:46) cancelled and lines into Swindon shut. And it's a "must travel" day for him. With the knowledge that the lines though Chippenham were closed, he was advised to catch the train to Bath and take the bus from there. Wrong! I make that
177 minutes travelling, total perhaps 200 minutes by the time you add a small allowance for changing at Bath and at Chippenham.
Changing at Trowbridge and Chippenham, you have
137 minutes travelling - perhaps 160 minutes in total.
Changing at Trowbridge onto the bus from there to Swindon, you have
87 minutes travelling - perhaps 120 minutes in total.
OK - contrast is to a normal journey time of
45 minutes traveling - 2 hours is pretty awful, but why did the public transport advice professional suggest a solution that would have taken almost three and a half hours?
An illustration, in the failure of trains today, of just how useful they are when they run ...
and an illustration of just how important local knowledge and proper mitigation is (and how much time it can cost people when lacking!)
Click on the map to explore geographics
