Cable theft at Paddington causes severe disruption - 23 June 2010

[whole diary]

[johoare]

hhmm now if only they'd have thought to have handed out free wine from the buffet when we were stopped... That would have helped 

Seriously though water or other soft drinks would have helped I think.. The good thing was that it was a pretty much good natured atmosphere on the train with people trying to make other people to take their seats once we'd been stopped for a while as all the sitting down people were feeling very guilty..

[Ollie]

Jo were announcements being done regularly whilst you were waiting at Paddington?

[Ollie]

BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page) Report: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/10398387.stm

BBC report it as 300ft of cable stolen, I don't know which is right to be honest..

[Chris from Nailsea]

Erm: is there possible confusion over 90ft or 90m?

Mainline rail services in and out of London Paddington station have been severely disrupted after 300ft (90m) of signalling cable was stolen.

(By the way, I'm not suggesting that anyone here, or at the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page), doesn't know the difference - it just might have been written down wrong somewhere!)

[Ollie]

I can only assume, what I read said 90ft. Will try and get a definite answer tomorrow, don't know how successful I will be mind..

[Chris from Nailsea]

Well, as Rick questioned earlier: how does someone apparently manage to nick 90 feet of copper cable, never mind 90 metres of it, in broad daylight, without being spotted?? 

[johoare]

Jo were announcements being done regularly whilst you were waiting at Paddington?

Hi Ollie. I was probably only on the concourse at Paddington for five minutes before the 17.50 was announced.. So I didn't hear much but I did hear an announcement about Chiltern Railways/SWT^▸ (South West Trains) taking tickets and what the problem was... I think they were most likely doing a good announcing job there..

We did sit there on the train for a further 20 minutes or so before we left but obviously couldn't hear outside announcements and certainly weren't  priveleged enough to get any on the train..

[willc]

Much confusion at Oxford - someone really should have switched off the screens, or taken over manual control, as what was being shown seemed to bear little relation to what was going on.

I arrived at platform 2 to see an HST^▸ (High Speed Train) with London window labels sitting in platform 1, which was then announced as the service to Worcester Shrub Hill, made my way over, where screens said the next departure was for London but the platform staff said no, definitely for Worcester, and an announcement was eventually made on board to that effect and the screens altered to say it was the 18.54 departure. I don't know whether the set had come from Reading or was turned back at Oxford.

We actually left at 18.51, to clear the platform for a Reading-bound Voyager. Lots of Turbos parked in the sidings as we passed. We made an extra stop at Hanborough, where a good few people got off, and it was also going to call at Honeybourne in addition to the usual stops by the 17.50 ex-PAD^» (Paddington (London) - next trains), so full marks to whoever made that decision.

A colleague's husband works in London and he was planning to go by Chiltern to Haddenham & Thame Parkway and then take his chances from there, so hope his arrival coincided with a 280 bus into Oxford.

[Glovidge]

I thought it was due to power cuts...how on earth can someone not see that amount of cabling going missing and how does it affect the railway FOR THAT AMOUNT OF TIME?

Doesn't the railways/FGW^▸ (First Great Western) have a control room with alarms which could action a resposne asafp? I was stood at Slough at 13:10 I can't believe this was still ongoing 6 hours later (a bit like that tennis match!)

[Oxman]

WillC,

The HST^▸ (High Speed Train) was an earlier up service that had terminated at Oxford.It was planned to use it to restart the 1816 Hereford, but crew displacements delayed getting into the platform. So, when it reached he platform, it was announced as the Hereford, and then the decision was taken to send it as the 1854, which caused some confusion whilst the additional stops and the traincew diagrams were sorted. It had to leave a few minutes early to free up the platform and, very unfortunately, a Cross Country service arrived on platform 2 just as it was leaving platform 1, with 40 or so customers for the Cotswolds. Cue: lynch mob of Charlburyites and lots of taxis.

It was 90 Metres of cable.

Also, at some point in the early evening, there was another incident at West Drayton. Some idiot decided to go for a walk in the 4 foot and narrowly avoided being hit be a train. All services were stopped and cautioned for about 20 minutes, which added considerable delays to those already being experianced as a result of signalling problems.

I'm told it should be fixed tonght.

[johoare]

Thanks Oxman.. I think that explains why my train got stuck for 25 odd minutes.. It's still a pity we weren't told any of this though really.. I'd like to hope the train driver found out why we were stuck so would have been nice to have passed it on to all of us..

[James158]

I feel really sorry for all you who were stuck on a train for some considerable amount of time. To just sit there is bad enough, but to have no announcements at all represents appalling customer service. Surely the guards know what is going on and how long the train will be waiting for until it's on the move again.

Delays are still continuing tonight with 2 trains into Plymouth nearly 2 hours late. This must have been the worst day for FGW^▸ (First Great Western) staff and passengers. Lets just hope that the cabling will be fixed in time for this mornings rush hour, as I am sure that was a day that nobody wants a repeat of any time soon.

[inspector_blakey]

It's actually very possible in certain circumstances that guards may not know exactly what is going on (they get their information from control, and if control aren't quite sure what's happening yet the the guards won't!), and they certainly might not know immediately how long it'll take before a train is on the move again.

But, that said, it's no excuse for not making any sort of announcement at all - something along the lines of "We're delayed by cable theft. At the moment I'm sorry, I don't know exactly what's going on or how long we're likely to be here, but as soon as I do receive any information I'll let you know". I think passengers would at least rather have som ekind of acknowledgment that there's a problem from staff on the train, and you're right that not to say anything at all is fairly poor customer service.

[James158]

Thats right Inspector Blakey. Some kind of announcement would not go a miss. Correct, in some circumstances the guard and the driver may not know the amount of time they will have to wait. They will have to just wait for the green signal.

[johoare]

Well yes.. I've heard "we don't know anything at the moment.." announcements before.. And at least then you know that there is no information rather than just guessing whether there is some which they are keeping to themselves or if in fact there is none.. Since the conditions on the train were so bad too it made it doubly worse

Oh well, trains look ok this morning.. Hope they stay that way