Bit of a grim day for First Great Western today. Things started to go awry fairly early on. My wife braved the service first to catch the 7.05am Chippenham-Paddington, but didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when the station’s PA bleated (pun intended) that sheep in the Box area were staging their very own protest against the Chinese Olympic torch by blocking the line with their little fleecy bodies. Delays of 15 minutes ensued while the woolly rapscallions were either removed from the track or mown down by said HST.
Having dropped the kids off, I made it to the station a little after 9am, just in time to see the Delayed sign flip up against the 9.25am, and then the following 9.55am to be cancelled.
“The train is being held up by a local service with a technical problem,” came the announcement. In First Great Western parlance local services with technical problems can only mean one thing: a blocked line. And blocked it was, well and truly. So blocked that 10 minutes later station staff kindly announced that we were to be ferried to Swindon by road transport.
Around 80 people rushed to the front of the station as instructed and queued to climb aboard a double-decker 55 bus right outside the front doors showing Swindon as its destination. But something was wrong.
Hold on, I thought, this is a scheduled service. Surely the good folk at FGW can’t have commandeered a scheduled bus service.
And I was right because out of the corner of my eye I spotted an FGW chap standing at the taxi rank about 50 yards away. I wandered over.
“Is this the transport to Swindon?”I asked.
“Yes,” he replied.
“Well just to warn you, everybody else seems to think it’s that bus over there.”
“It isn’t.”
“I know.”
“Six in here please.” And he opened the door of a Ford Galaxy to me and the two or three others who’d realised that the 55 bus was merely a cunning ruse designed to distract us from the waiting taxis.
We clambered in and were delivered to Swindon station just in time to catch a train which had been delayed by 45 minutes on the Bristol Parkway line by God knows what. I finally made it to work about an hour late – not too bad considering.
But to cap it all, my guests for a 1.30pm meeting arrived half an hour early because – wait for it – their trains from Bristol and Gloucester had been so heavily delayed they’d missed their earlier morning meeting and had come straight to my office. Their journey time from home to London? Around four hours. V poor.
The only positive thing I can say for the day is that at least I got my first class off peak upgrade on the train from Swindon – even though it was the delayed 9.29am which, according to FGW, is before 9.30am and therefore not a valid upgrade. You know what I think? I think those sheep at Box had the right idea. Baaaaah.
Having dropped the kids off, I made it to the station a little after 9am, just in time to see the Delayed sign flip up against the 9.25am, and then the following 9.55am to be cancelled.
“The train is being held up by a local service with a technical problem,” came the announcement. In First Great Western parlance local services with technical problems can only mean one thing: a blocked line. And blocked it was, well and truly. So blocked that 10 minutes later station staff kindly announced that we were to be ferried to Swindon by road transport.
Around 80 people rushed to the front of the station as instructed and queued to climb aboard a double-decker 55 bus right outside the front doors showing Swindon as its destination. But something was wrong.
Hold on, I thought, this is a scheduled service. Surely the good folk at FGW can’t have commandeered a scheduled bus service.
And I was right because out of the corner of my eye I spotted an FGW chap standing at the taxi rank about 50 yards away. I wandered over.
“Is this the transport to Swindon?”I asked.
“Yes,” he replied.
“Well just to warn you, everybody else seems to think it’s that bus over there.”
“It isn’t.”
“I know.”
“Six in here please.” And he opened the door of a Ford Galaxy to me and the two or three others who’d realised that the 55 bus was merely a cunning ruse designed to distract us from the waiting taxis.
We clambered in and were delivered to Swindon station just in time to catch a train which had been delayed by 45 minutes on the Bristol Parkway line by God knows what. I finally made it to work about an hour late – not too bad considering.
But to cap it all, my guests for a 1.30pm meeting arrived half an hour early because – wait for it – their trains from Bristol and Gloucester had been so heavily delayed they’d missed their earlier morning meeting and had come straight to my office. Their journey time from home to London? Around four hours. V poor.
The only positive thing I can say for the day is that at least I got my first class off peak upgrade on the train from Swindon – even though it was the delayed 9.29am which, according to FGW, is before 9.30am and therefore not a valid upgrade. You know what I think? I think those sheep at Box had the right idea. Baaaaah.
2 comments:
If the passengers lean LEFT on Devil's Elbow Bend, then they will fall off...
Surely that depends which way they're going?
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