Well my initial through running test of the Elizabeth Line was compromised (polite version) by this.
The train stopped at Langley. The driver came on and said that the power had been turned off because of an incident in the Westbourne Park area. After various other messages as it started to rain and the lights grew dimmer he said the batteries were running low and we would have to leave the train.
Zero support at Langley station, sorry no buses, no taxis, have to get an Uber. Do Elizabeth Line offer no passenger support outside their TfL» core area, don't want to give money to non-Tfl franchises? Several bus loads of train passengers left in the dark (both senses) outside Langley station.
I had formulated my plan B. Cycle down to the A4 (never been this way before), turn right along the A4 to Slough, turn a left in Slough past the Police Station, right through Chalvey and then down the cycle route to Windsor (which was a novel experience in the dark). To Windsor and Eton Riverside, train to Staines and the train back to Reading. Brompton to the rescue. Personal Rail replacement bike service!
According to
RTT» it looks like you were on the 15:09 Abbey Wood-Reading which was stuck at Langley for 113 minutes. This was the train 30 minutes before the one I initially caught at Bond Street which was terminated one stop later at
PAD» . I was regretting not having left earlier but on seeing what had happened to your train I was happier to be stuck at PAD where at least there was refreshments available 'upstairs'.
After a while I grabbed some food and drink but on attempting to return to the EL platforms the staff had closed the barrier line to exit only and were telling people travelling to Reading to use Waterloo. My experience of 30 years commuting from PAD has nearly always been that it's never a good idea to do this and that it's much better to wait for services to resume on the
GWML▸ which can happen very suddenly.
I was able to gain access to the EL platforms via the subway from the Bakerloo Line. It was now about 17:45 and I decided to wait and see what happened. Fortunately I didn't have too long to wait - as I mentioned in my post above, the 17:09 departure from PAD to
RDG‡ (which was the one 30 minutes after the service I'd first attempted to catch) arrived at 18:02 and after the platform staff had turfed everyone off, a shout came from the front end of the platform to say that the train *would* continue in service westwards so I jumped on and the train left almost immediately.
After then it was an easy journey on a very empty train, the only thing to note was that we caught up with the service to Maidenhead which had left PAD at 15:58 and had been stuck at Ealing Broadway for over 2 hours according to RTT. However that only caused a slight further delay and then the train I was on finally got busy at
MAI▸ .
On the subject of TfL offering support outside of their core area, I assume I need to do Delay Repay with
GWR▸ as I bought the ticket from them at Twyford. I'll see what happens but GWR were not being very helpful on Twitter last night with them referring queries from
TWY▸ and MAI passengers to TfL.
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