Roland Perry wrote:
In message . com, at
11:38:07 on Sun, 15 Jul 2007, CJB remarked:
Most trains delayed by hours or cancelled to/from Paddington and
points west of Slough. FGW services in complete disarray. Been going
on on most of Sunday afternoon, evening.

Must have missed that: I departed Reading at 14.33 - the train was
nearly 10 minutes early arriving from Paddington.

I finally got back to London well over two hours late. Train from
Ledbury at 1646 was running fine as far as Oxford, where the train
manager sounded very surprised to announce that the service was
cancelled (after loads of people had gotten on and it was full and
standing).

Then, after about ten minutes of general confusion, the service was
announced as continuing to Didcot so everyone piled back on again to get
to Didcot (in retrospect, a bad idea... I should've followed my instinct
and gotten straight on the coach from Oxford).

More hanging around at Didcot with hundreds of passengers being advised
to wait for the next London train, a 35-minute-late service which was
being reported on the displays as "full and standing from Bath". A
London stopping service from Oxford turned up after about 15 mins, which
about half the passengers decided to gamble on since it was actually
there; it travelled along without incident as far as Reading when it was
announced as terminating there just before arriving.

Mayhem at Reading with various London services standing in the
platforms, a queueing system in operation for Waterloo trains, but
little in the way of announcements other than a scrawled noticeboard
next to the (empty) information desk.

I tried to get on a Railair coach to Heathrow which was about to depart
but my ticket (London Terminals) was rejected ("we don't get any revenue
from that") so I went off and bought another ticket and then waited for
the next coach 30 mins later, boarded with about two other passengers,
and then trundled into London by Tube from Heathrow.

I was not impressed by the poor level of information (except from the
train manager of the original service who cheerfully gave out all the
information he had), and I'll wait with baited breath to see if First
will refund my Railair ticket as well as my original ticket...

Ironically I was almost due a refund for the outward journey on Friday
evening thanks to a racially abusive (and slightly violent) passenger in
my carriage who had to be carted off the train at Slough and delayed it
by about 55 minutes.

--
Dave A
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London