Monday 16 February 2015

42332 – 18:03 Monday 16th February

42332

OK, let’s be totally and utterly and doubly accurate tonight.

My journey from Paddington to Reading was aboard the 17:49 to Worcester Shrub Hill and I sat in Carriage D which was numbered as 42332.

We arrived at Reading at 18:31 which made it 11 minutes late.

I then travelled from Reading to home in 42382 which is a duplicate carriage. I captured this one for the blog on the 30th of June 2014. 

We arrived home at 19:09 which made it 13 minutes late.

Both delays were the fault of First Great Western.

See, all the information you could possibly ever want or need.

Thursday 12 February 2015

42056 & 42305 – 18:03 & 18:37 Thursday 12th February




















42056 & 42305

Well quite a busy old day all told.

Firstly, I spent the whole of my morning trying to decipher this tweet from Grant, who did explain that it was something about buying new spanners or something, but even now I think he was trying to get something past us.



And then in Carriage E, 42056, on the Penzance service home I was forced to share my seat with a bloke with terrible BO who spent the whole journey to Reading performing an extraordinary array of over-exaggerated yawns. I mean, I was getting the message, he’d had a hard day at work, but did he really have to share it with the whole carriage? We suffered a slight delay and as we pulled into Reading, the TM announced why we were running late which set Mr Attention Seeker off into another round of tuts, shrugs, sarcastic laughs and much head shaking. Unfortunately some women encouraged him by engaging him in conversation which gave him the ideal opportunity to launch into a bizarre anti-FGW tirade which all centred around the motto “Transforming Travel” – which, to my knowledge FGW have never used as a slogan anyway.

“Oh, Transforming Travel! Pah! Never in a million years. Transforming Travle, my left foot!” etc

Just as I was preparing to move I noticed an iPhone cable on the floor under the seat. I picked it up and asked Mr Transforming Travel if it was his.

“Oh, no it’s not mine,” he said as he took it and put it in his pocket, “I thought it was yours.”

Which means he was not only a thief but a selfish twat that wasn’t even going to ask me if I’d maybe dropped my cable. A selfish thieving twat. A selfish thieving smelly twat.

And in other news aboard the 18:37 to Frome, I read the tragic news whilst sitting in Carriage B, 42305, that FGW Twitter hero Leo is leaving the company. He was the only one who understood me!

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Wednesday 11 February 2015

44025 – 18:03 Wednesday 11th February



44025


44025 was the Carriage A on the 18:03 to Penzance.

I got to Reading and then spent the next 90 minutes just hanging around the station.

Here’s what I wrote to the lovely folk at FGW tonight.

I was travelling from Paddington to Thatcham on 11-02-15 when I was left stranded at Reading due to signal failures in the Reading West area.

I arrived at Reading at 18:30 and was eventually put in a taxi to Newbury at 20:10. I arrived in Thatcham at 20:40

During the 100 minutes of delay at Reading station I was staggered by the sheer incompetence of the station staff who didn’t seem to be able to organise any sort of consistent message to the hundreds of passengers in similar positions as myself. At one stage we were all directed to the help desk only to find a single member of staff, with a frightened caught in the headlights look in her eyes, who didn’t even know there was a signal failure never mind what was happening.

When the Station Duty Manager turned up 15 minutes later he whispered some garbled message about buses that could only be heard by the first row of the number 200 or 300 hundred people surrounding the desk. The only way to have a chance of finding our what was happening was to trail a member of staff around and listen in to the whispered conversations they were having between themselves.

Eventually we were then directed to the steps down to the short stay car park where I waited on the steps for about 40 minutes with not one shred of communication. When I eventually reached the front of the taxi queue I was amazed to see it being organised by G4S staff and local police with not one member of FGW staff visible.

You are no doubt in the process of claiming your own compensation from Network Rail for the signal failures because in your eyes you will believe this delay was not your fault (although one could accuse you that your inability to work in any sort of a functional way with your partners makes this just as much your fault) but what cannot shrug your shoulder of, is why your staff simply cannot deal with any sort of a crisis situation. All that was needed tonight was someone with a level of confidence to raise their voice so all could hear (maybe stand on the help desk so all could see) and loudly announce what was happening. No-one is expecting magic taxis and buses to be produced from thin air but I do expect to be kept informed of what was happening and a competent level of organisation.

I am an annual gold season ticket holder and would like to know what compensation I am due for the almost 2 hour delay not to mention the atrocious discomfort suffered.

Tuesday 10 February 2015

42034 & 42062 – 18:03 & 18:37 Tuesday 10th February





















42034 & 42062

Well back in the saddle after a weekend away and a Monday that saw me travel home a la taxi.
42034 was the chosen Carriage F on the 18:03 Penzance service and what was also chosen was the seat next to me by the wazzock in the head to toe orange day-glo.

This strange fellow gradually smelt more and more like fish the nearer we got to Reading so by the time we were pulling into Platform 7 I could have been working the past 6 months aboard a Grimsby trawler.

42062, Carriage C on the 18:37 to Frome was less smelly but more noisy thanks to the little lad in front who was driving his model space shuttle with accompanying spit bubbles.

Good to be back.

Monday 2 February 2015

44086, 42167 & 42021 – 07:15, 18:03 & 18:37 Monday 2nd February





















44086, 42167 & 42021

A three carriage capture today and an insight into what goes on aboard the slightly later than my regular morning train.

A sleepless night, even more disturbed by the annual running of the World Handegg championships saw me awaken slightly later than normal and only make it to the station in time for the 07:15 instead of the 06:57.

But every cloud has its silver lining and it allowed me to capture 44086, Carriage A on this particular service.

As I was settling down on a rather uncomfortable table seat, I noticed a Thatcham regular about to take a spare seat towards to the back of the carriage. Just as she was sitting down, the chap in the window seat leapt up, quite loudly announced “I’m not sitting by you!”, picked up his suitcase and flounced to another spare seat further down the carriage.

Which just goes to show that there’s a much lower class of commuter aboard this service than my usual one.

The evening’s journeys home were aboard 42167, the Carriage F on the 18:03 Penzance service and 42021, the Carriage C on the 18:37 to Frome.

And the lesson today was, don’t tweet pictures of strangers to other strangers as the tweet might be seen by other strangers who are known a bit to the second stranger and they might call the original tweeter (a complete stranger) intolerant. Or, on the other hand, carry on regardless.