8.34 Maidenhead to Paddington 14/7.. cancelled

[whole diary]

[johoare]

This train apparently is cancelled for Twyford, Maidenhead and Paddington due to a train fault.. I have a 9.30 meeting I am supposed to be at.. So have arranged for once for someone else to take children to school for me so I can be on the 08.34.. However it's cancelled.. so now I'm going to look very silly and not be at the meeting..

Does anyone know what sort of train fault it is that it can run (on time apparently) from Oxford as far as Reading but then no further?

[eightf48544]

Doors or brakes?

[devon_metro]

"Train Fault"

0840 would have got you to Paddington at 0917. Presumably a bit tight!

[johoare]

Yeah i need about 25 minutes from Paddington to be at my desk so it wasn't worth it.. And the train was still en route from Oxford to Reading yet showing as cancelled beyond that when I checked..  That is why I was wondering what could have been wrong with it.. Surely doors or brakes would have resulted in immediately cancelling it rather than continuing as far as Reading?

[inspector_blakey]

Wild guess but was it an HST^▸ (High Speed Train (Inter City class 43 125 units))? Reason I ask is that if an HST is running on only one power car, it can still make its normal speed (eventually) but the acceleration is really hammered, which means that each stop in effect takes much longer than usual. So it's possible that if the train involved was an HST with a power car down the decision was made to run it fast to Paddington where it could receive attention, to avoid the significant "knock-on" delays that it might cause to services stuck behind.

[johoare]

It's usually a 6 car turbo I think.. NR^» (Network Rail - home page) website suggested it was cancelled for Paddington too... I guess if they were running it fast to Paddington it would appear on NR site as still running there.. Oh well so far I'm none the wiser... Perhaps it was a "planned train fault" scheduled to happen at Reading

[Ollie]

I don't know the full reason, but it got terminated at Reading as it was over it's miles for an exam or something? An engineering guy will probably be able to be more specific.

[JayMac]

Is being over mileage a legitimate reason for caping a service? Why let a unit out of the depot if it can't complete its days diagram?

EDIT: typo.

[super tm]

Is being over mileage a legimate reason for caping a service? Why let a unit out of the depot if it can't complete its days diagram?

Half a diagram is better than no diagram

[johoare]

Thanks for the replies.. It still didn't get me to my meeting though.. Oh well it looks like we're back to the days of having to get the train before the one you need just to ensure you get there on time...

I'm going to a school play this evening, I can't leave work half an hour early so tonights train had better not have run out of miles 

[Ollie]

Is being over mileage a legitimate reason for caping a service? Why let a unit out of the depot if it can't complete its days diagram?

Maybe an allocation error? I don't know to be truly honest

[inspector_blakey]

How's Turbo availability at the moment? I guess there's a chance that they were so desparate for stock they sent out a unit even knowing that it could only complete a small fraction of its day's diagram in an "anything's better than nothing" moment.