On 05/04/2011 17:33, none wrote:
On 05/04/11 17:03, amogles wrote:
On 5 Apr., 15:32, wrote:
Yes, it is. The real problem is Joe Public's complete lack of patience
these days. Previously, they'd work it out for themselves that the
likely delay is a couple of hours, do I want to try a different route
or shall I wait -

Interesting point.
I wonder, wether the staff at Waterloo would be aware of what was
going on and letting Reading passengers onto the corresponding train
for example? In the past it would have taken one phone call from
Paddington to Waterloo to set that up, but do the railways still think
like that?
[Non-train specific to/from Reading and beyond are valid at both
Paddington and Waterloo anyway.]

The answer is - yes, they do. In fact the TOCs work together for ticket
acceptance a lot more than is commonly realised. Cross acceptance
between the Waterloo and Paddington routes to Reading is regularly
agreed when there is major disruption. If the blockage is close enough
in that you can by-pass it by "Tube", London Underground might be
involved as well.

Have a look at the National Rail "Service Disruption" page from time to
time and see how often ticket acceptance information is included. You
may be surprised.

But as someone else has pointed out, you need to be satisfied that the
likely delay on the "normal" route is worth making the diversion for.
Otherwise, it could be "out of the frying pan, into the fire". A few
days ago this happened during the incident at Drem on the ECML, where a
train from Aberdeen to London was sent from Edinburgh to Newcastle via
Carlisle and Hexham, thereby ending up following later trains which had
waited for the line to clear.

--
- Yokel -

Yokel posts via a spam-trap account which is not read.