Time after time...

As Cyndi Lauper would have sung if she had used FGW trains - "If I'm late, and you look then you will find me, still on the train"

For the last 3 days I've had at least one delayed journey to or from work.

On Friday I was delayed getting home. I got to Paddington in good time, boarded one of the recently re-introduced fully air conditioned, power points for laptops, trains home. Result I thought....until asked to get off the train as it had broken down. So much for the work carried out to improve reliability. We waited then all the passengers off that train, plus a few more toddled off to platform 9 where a DMU cattle truck awaited. Only the first 5 carriages were ours, so we had to walk past a couple of unused carriages and squeezed into our stalls...I mean seats. The train was seriously over crowded, with a large part of my journey spent with an elbow in the side of my head. And the air con was as much use as a chocolate fire guard. Those extra couple of carriages would have made all the difference, and I do have genuine health and safety concerns re the number of us rammed aboard.

On Monday night as I stood under glowering skies I was grateful that my train arrived 5 minutes late, however before the rain. That was until once more we were crammed in like sardines in a tin. The train was even more seriously overcrowded than on Friday, being only 3 carriages long. Again the air con was ineffectual. The driver then spent most of the journey reminding cyclists that full size bikes were not allowed, and apologising for the increasing delay as the poor train was obviously suffering under the strain of being severely over loaded. Again I really have to wonder if any thought is given to the safety of the passengers wedged in. And I heard the most overly used word in the FGW staff vocabulary, "sorry" more times than I care to remember. Do wonder how sorry FGW and their staff are.

Then this morning I caught the semi-fast service from Cholsey at 7.20. It arrived a couple minutes late (first sorry of the day.) By the time we got to Tilehurst the train manager announced we were 6 minutes late. By Maidenhead we were running at least 20 minutes late. Another apology followed to inform us we were stuck behind a local stopping service, however should soon pass it when we moved into the fast line....followed by another to say we hadn't moved onto the fast line and "I don't know why, maybe it is due to us running in one engine." We did eventually get to Paddington, however due to our late running I missed an important conference call (won't blame the signal black spot on FGW, just wouldn't have been in it if we'd ran to time) and I was extremely late for a meeting.

I am sure that if an wrote to FGW I'd be told how sorry they were, however,an don't believe it any more. I do however hope FGW do not keep up their strike rate and I actually have a punctual service both ways tomorrow....however I won't hold my breath.