Thames Valley infrastructure problems causing disruption elsewhere - 2025

[whole diary]

[eightonedee]

Seeing the discussion above (and being very glad that our "stay at home over bank holiday weekends" policy was vindicated again!), can I make what might be a controversial suggestion on social media?

If you have a smartphone, and access to social media, you will have access to the train operator's own website and on-line information system. The world of social media is an ever-fragmenting one, making it ever more difficult to keep all their subscribers informed by their means.

So, wouldn't it be sensible for train operators instead to concentrate on keeping their own sites up-to-date (and more importantly, supplied with full and up-to-date information on all train problems, so that (for example) Grahame would have been able to find out whatever caused the two cancellations immediately it happened - or at least have been warned about them in good time.

There's no need for train operators to maintain teams looking after all the various social media outlets, just one well-resourced one supplied with up-to-the-minute information from "Control" and the depots and staff on the ground. Perhaps if there are spare staff as a result, they can be employed in liaising with bus companies and taxi operators to summon help, and perhaps recruiting and running a back up system of out-of-hours emergency services from them run on a retainer contract basis.

There's no reason why anyone should expect X, Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram or any other such service to be a main source of travel information, any more than they should rely on them for up-to-the-minute football scores or commodity market prices. Just have plenty of posters and notices at stations and in trains with the operator's web address - or better still, screens with live information relevant to the site or train in question.

[grahame]

There's no need for train operators to maintain teams looking after all the various social media outlets, just one well-resourced one supplied with up-to-the-minute information from "Control" and the depots and staff on the ground.

Agreed - a single site with web site and app interface to the same data.
Perhaps at a URL like https://www.greatbritishrailways.info

There's no reason why anyone should expect X, Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram or any other such service to be a main source of travel information

Correct - and especially avoiding a requirement to sign up to a network of private content, especially one that has gained political overtones.  There IS the need to run 24x7 and to be robust and have a findable alternative in the event of IT issues, a need to cope with high volumes, to protect against spam, to make it easy to find what's needed, and to answer both privately where appropriate, and in public where lots of people will have the same questions.

[Mark A]

Good point. An issue is the quality, style, and depth of the information that finds its way to rail industry web sites, and the fragmentation of the industry itself.

South Eastern Railways, or was it the part of Network Rail that cares for the track in that part of the world, when something happened that impacted the service, developed the habit of using Twitter to communicate in detail & in an accessible form, as to how a particular issue was being tackled and when something would be fixed, and many people found this genuinely helpful in planning their use of the railway.

Reducing the comms to a template pick-and-mix template message of the sort:

'Due to'... a fault on a train/lack of staff/delay to a previous service ... 'the' {service} 'is' delayed/cancelled/scrapped. 'We're very sorry for the delay.'... is an approach that delivers an information-poor environment to the intending traveller.

Also, starting a sentence with 'Due to' is less than ideal.

Mark

[grahame]

Reducing the comms to a template pick-and-mix template message of the sort:

'Due to'... a fault on a train/lack of staff/delay to a previous service ... 'the' {service} 'is' delayed/cancelled/scrapped. 'We're very sorry for the delay.'... is an approach that delivers an information-poor environment to the intending traveller.

Yes and no - reducing it purely to that is poor - however, to get something out quick when time is of the essence of staff are rushed of their feet makes sense

[Mark A]

Agreed.

Perhaps what the industry could avoid though is the appearance that they're still promoting 'X' as their primary channel for information - the National Rail web site's a case in point and it's a practice that has a very 2012-era vibe. A current example: regarding the issue with the bridge in Cardiff, on the NR^» (Network Rail - home page) disruptions list, the site's (again) advising 'End of the day' and the first source of information offered is a web link to a (hijackable) hashtag on their 'X' feed - so they're linking to something that is no longer a public web site: there's little to no information in the public domain as to what the issue actually is and the time needed for a temporary/permanent fix.

Mark

https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/service-disruptions/cardiff-central-20250420/

[TaplowGreen]

Cancellations to services between London Paddington and Reading

Following damage to the overhead electric wires at London Paddington all lines are now open.

Disruption is expected until 19:00 22/04.
Train services between London Paddington and Reading may be cancelled, delayed by up to 45 minutes or revised

[NickB]

Now 20:00
But let’s face it, in a few minutes it will change to ‘until the end of the day’.

[a-driver]

Cancellations to services between London Paddington and Reading

Following damage to the overhead electric wires at London Paddington all lines are now open.

Disruption is expected until 19:00 22/04.
Train services between London Paddington and Reading may be cancelled, delayed by up to 45 minutes or revised

Not strictly damage to the overheads. 

The pantograph on a train heading into Paddington automatically dropped. This could be due to a defect with the overheads but it could also be a train fault or just a spurious fault.  NR^» (Network Rail - home page) will examine the overheads on the line or lines where the fault occurred as a precaution, especially if the driver can not see any obvious damage to the pantograph on the train.