No, I haven't lost the plot! 

Rather, I'm sharing member ChrisB's view that this sort of problem won't suddenly go away on New Year's Eve:


I'm merely preparing the ground here, ready for member TaplowGreen to develop this topic, in due course.

CfN. 

 

Let somebody else have a go, TG! 

 
So what's gone wrong? January 9th and nothing reported!

 
TaplowGreen must be in hibernation. 

 

My apologies - normal service resumed.

Cancellations to services at Slough

Due to a points failure at Slough fewer trains are able to run.

Train services running through this station may be cancelled or delayed. Disruption is expected until 08:30 10/01.

Customer Advice
We're sorry for the delay to your journey.

We will update this message with more information when we have it.

 
Phew, thank goodness for that!  New Year, TG!   

 

I think perhaps you tempted fate...................

Cancellations to services between Reading and London Paddington

Due to the emergency services dealing with an incident between Ealing Broadway and West Ealing all lines are blocked. Disruption is expected until 16:00 10/01.

Train services between Reading and London Paddington may be cancelled, delayed or revised.

Customer Advice

Due to emergency services currently dealing with an incident in the Ealing Broadway area, all trains are temporarily on stop. We apologise for the disruption and any inconvenience this may cause.

 

Fatality at Hanwell by the looks of it.  The ultimate unhappy new year for somebody then.  Thoughts to friends, family and all involved.

Sadly, we are now ‘in the season’ for such incidents.

 
Sadly, yes.  From the Richmond & Twickenham Times:


My highlighting - hopefully helpful.  Chris.   

 
From National Rail - Journeycheck having a lie-in.

Route(s) affected
Elizabeth line between London Paddington and Heathrow Airport / Reading

Great Western Railway services to / from London Paddington

Heathrow Express services to / from London Paddington

Description
Overrunning engineering works between Ealing Broadway and Hayes & Harlington is causing disruption to services. This means that trains between London Paddington and Heathrow Airport / Reading may be cancelled, delayed by up to 40 minutes or revised.

Disruption is expected until 10:00.

 
Delays to services between London Paddington and Reading

Due to failure of the electricity supply between London Paddington and Reading trains have to run at reduced speed on some lines.

Train services running to and from these stations will be delayed. Disruption is expected until 08:00 28/01.

Customer Advice
Due to a fault with the overhead electric supply tripping affecting the UP and Down relief lines, trains in this location will be delayed.

 

Disruption now expected till 1600

 
From National Rail

Route(s) affected
Elizabeth line between Shenfield and Heathrow Terminal 5, and also between Abbey Wood and Heathrow Terminal 4 / Maidenhead / Reading

Description
Urgent repairs are needed to the track between London Paddington and Acton Main Line. Trains running between London Paddington and Heathrow Airport / Reading may be cancelled, revised or delayed by up to 20 minutes.

Disruption is expected until the end of the day.

 
And the Elizabeth Line was bust this evening too.

My gripe for this evening is with (one of) the gateline crew at Paddington. There must have been 1000 people queuing for the 18.20 to Didcot.  The gateline team were checking all paper tickets and turning away anyone with a TFL ticket. That included a woman ahead of me who had a 2/3 year old child in that throng.

Where is the sense or humanity in turning that woman and child away, who arguably had a valid ticket, and who then had to battle through the ongoing masses to wait god knows how long for a TFL service. 

I’m off to complain to GWR on her behalf.

 

A friend of mine boarded the 1023 at Paddington which, she texted was "going nowhere" for 12 minutes,eventually she got to Reading and waited for the 1123 to Tilehurst/Didcot, which was progressively "delayed", eventually being announced as running fast to Didcot. By then I was waiting in the car at Tilehurst Station, where the concourse was jammed with vehicles of contractors working on the lists - and an ambulance making a rare appearance in its dedicated parking space; I was half-blocking the entrance and advised my friend to take a taxi and returned home. When I got there, I reflected that she might as well have waited for the next local service and she came to the same decision, opting to walk to my house. BTW nowadays the station car park seems almost as full as it was pre-Lockdown.

 
Alterations to services between London Paddington and Didcot Parkway via Reading

Due to a points failure between Slough and Hayes & Harlington some lines towards London Paddington are closed. Disruption is expected until 14:15 05/02.

Train services between London Paddington and Didcot Parkway via Reading will be suspended between Reading and London Paddington. All stations between Reading and London Paddington will not be served.

........also affecting services towards Newbury.

 
Cancellations to services between Reading and London Paddington

Due to a speed restriction over defective track between Reading and London Paddington fewer trains are able to run on all lines.

Train services running to and from these stations will be cancelled, delayed or terminated at and started back from Reading. Some stations between Reading and London Paddington will not be served. Disruption is expected until the end of the day

 
And again today - after a reasonably good start to the year, slipping back into the old routine

Cancellations to services between Reading and London Paddington

Due to a speed restriction over defective track between Reading and London Paddington fewer trains are able to run on all lines.

Train services running to and from these stations may be cancelled, delayed or revised. Disruption is expected until the end of the day.

 
I'll prepare another new topic, ready for 2026. 

 
Gonna be fun at Paddington ...

 
Cancellations to services between Ealing Broadway and London Paddington

Due to urgent repairs to the track between Ealing Broadway and London Paddington all lines are blocked.

Train services running to and from these stations will be cancelled or revised. Disruption is expected until 13:00 09/02.

Customer Advice
We are sorry for the disruption to your journey today.
-
Network Rail have declared a possession overrun for this morning whilst carrying out essential track maintenance.
-
Owing to this, GWR services will not be able to run past Reading on journeys towards London Paddington and no services can depart London Paddington heading towards Reading. Some Elizabeth Line services will run but only as far as Ealing Broadway.

 
This may be due to a very late start to the engineering work as the stop board was placed on the wrong track and destroyed by an IET.

https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:G68678/2025-02-08/detailed#allox_id=0

was the train involved I believe.

And some interesting decision making being done as well, the driver was happy to keep going but others decided he wasn't fit to continue.

 
Delays due to defective track. Non-specific location.

 

Specifically Southall!

Cancellations to services between London Paddington and Newbury via Reading

Due to a broken rail at Southall fewer trains are able to run on some lines. Disruption is expected until the end of the day.

Train services between London Paddington and Newbury via Reading may be cancelled.

Customer Advice
Due to a broken track in the Southhall area, only a limited number of trains are able to run on this line. As a result, some train services may be cancelled or delayed

.....also affecting Didcot services.

 
Ah Southall was it?!
2hrs to get home to Maidenhead tonight via Elizabeth Line tonight including getting retrained at Slough so that the empty train could arrive at Reading faster.

Interesting to see how the timetabling and track priorities shift over the evening. During rush hour the Didcot services were running fine and the Elizabeth Line trains ran slow with 40min delays. Now, at the end of the day, Didcots are cancelled and tfl is running ok(ish)

 
Alterations to services between Reading and London Paddington

Due to a speed restriction over defective track between Reading and London Paddington trains have to run at reduced speed on some lines.
Train services running to and from these stations will be delayed or terminated at and started back from Reading. Disruption is expected until 09:00 19/02.
Customer Advice
-
We are sorry for the delay to your journey today. Due to a section of faulty track in the Hanwell area, our trains have to run at a reduced speed over the fault. Network Rail are trying to fix the fault, but in the meantime we are going to have to cancel some of our trains between Reading and London Paddington. This is necessary to prevent a traffic jam of trains building up as they slow down over the faulty track.
-
Our trains that run between Newbury and London Paddington will only run between Newbury and Reading.

 
Bust track at both Hanwell and Ealing Broadway.
Everything is delayed. Yay.

 
Delays to services between Slough and Reading

Due to a points failure between Slough and Reading some lines are blocked.

Train services running to and from these stations may be delayed by up to 15 minutes. Disruption is expected until 10:00 21/02.

Customer Advice
We are sorry for the delay to your journey today.


Can you tell me more about the incident?
A set of points on one of the lines between Slough and Reading has failed.

 
Alterations to services between Reading and Slough
Due to a points failure between Reading and Slough:
Train services running to and from these stations may be delayed by up to 20 minutes or revised. Disruption is expected until 11:30 22/02.

As consistent as Wales.

 
And again.......

Delays to services between Slough and Reading
Due to a points failure between Slough and Reading some lines are blocked.

Train services running to and from these stations may be delayed by up to 15 minutes. Disruption is expected until 08:00 25/02.

Customer Advice
Can you tell me more about the incident?
A set of points on the high speed lines between Slough and Reading has failed.

Trains will need to be crossed over to other available lines to bypass the issue. This may mean you will encounter some delays to your journey this morning.

More information will follow as we have it.

 
Getting ridiculous now......time for the digit to be removed from the orifice and the root cause addressed.....

Cancellations to services between London Paddington and Reading

Due to a points failure between London Paddington and Reading some lines are blocked.

Train services running to and from these stations may be cancelled, delayed or revised. Disruption is expected until 15:30 25/02.

 
I do wonder exactly keeps failing. There are many components associated with points that are not necessarily part of the mechanical points themselves. Is it detection? Track circuit sytems?

 
Points failure at Slough this morning.
From the rerouting I suspect it’s on the main line

 

Yep..........

Cancellations to services between Reading and London Paddington
Due to a points failure between Reading and London Paddington some lines are blocked.

Train services running to and from these stations will be cancelled, delayed or terminated at and started back from Reading. Disruption is expected until 11:00 28/02.

Customer Advice
-
We are sorry for the disruption to your journey today, due to a points failure in the Slough area, the high speed lines are blocked. This means our high speed long distance trains and other operators local stopping trains are having to share the same lines.

 
Hard to believe I know but yep, here we go again (from National Rail this time)

Services at Slough

Description
A points failure at Slough means that some lines are blocked.

As a result, services at this station may be cancelled, delayed or revised.

Disruption is expected until 11:00.

 
From National Rail - Journeycheck still asleep.

Route(s) affected
between Ealing Broadway and Slough

Description
Overrunning engineering works between Ealing Broadway and Hayes & Harlington means that some lines between between these stations are blocked. As a result, trains running through these stations will be cancelled or delayed by up to 10 minutes.

Trains are currently unable to run between Ealing Broadway and London Paddington.

Disruption is expected until 08:15.

 
Cancellations to services between Slough and Twyford

Due to a fault with the signalling system between Slough and Twyford all lines are blocked.
Train services running through these stations may be cancelled or delayed. Disruption is expected until 05:00 05/03.

Customer Advice
Due to a complete loss of signalling between Slough and Twyford no trains can run.

We're sorry for the delay to your journey.

We will update this message with more information when we have it.

 
Breathtakingly hopeless...............

Cancellations to services between London Paddington and Reading

Due to a fault with the signalling system between Slough and Twyford all lines are blocked. Disruption is expected until 09:00 05/03.

Train services between London Paddington and Reading will be cancelled.

Customer Advice
Due to a fault on the signalling system between Slough and Twyford, the trains that run from London Paddington to Reading in both directions are unable to leave the depot. This means we have had to suspend the train service.

 
The Evening Standard reported that

Did that really happen?

 
Check Real Time Trains?

 

Not a chance. Passengers were via SWR, the trains themselves weren’t.

 
Except passengers struggled to go that way either. Passenger taken ill (which was unfortunate) meant that there were no trains to Waterloo from 0609 until 0728. I was lucky yesterday - didn't need to be in London until later so was able to get one of the first fasts from Reading at about 0835 - Reading station was pretty much deserted.

 
Reading elsewhere that TfL are seriously unimpressed with the constant failures between Paddington and Reading (points, signal, track etc) which are affecting the Elizabeth Line and are taking a robust line with NR at a senior level, asking for details to be set out as to what is being done to address it.

A refreshing contrast with the apparently rather more quiescent GWR it would seem.

Whether it'll have any effect of course remains to be seen!

 
TfL are a direct customer of Network Rail

GWR are a customer of the DfT, and a secondary customer of Network Rail of which Network Rail is a get-out clause within their DfT contract.

 
TfL have publicly stated how un8mpressed they are with Network Rail previously. 

Their public statement of unhappiness clearly achieved a lot!

 

It achieved a fair bit in securing additional resource, acknowledgement of shortcomings and undertakings that there would be improvements, but unfortunately this has yet to be delivered.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/feb/27/140m-rail-plan-to-tackle-elizabeth-line-and-great-western-problems

 

 

Is it just me - or is that really NOT customer advice?

I would expect "Customer advice" to be something like "People who normally use GWR trains to Maidenhead or Telford should allow an extra  half hour and will need to change at Reading if coming from further west" . It actually advises the customers what to do!

 
How would you describe that piece of hard-coded text then?

 

* An apology. 
* An expression of care in acknowledging it is not as it should be.

I'm not sure it even needs a title though 

 
I’m on the 19:04 EL train from TWY (I’m going to Hayes) which left from P2 (which I was fortunate to aim for as according to RTT the previous one ran 13 minutes late and didn’t call there). This particular train is non-stopping Taplow and Burnham as indeed all EL trains are doing this evening with no advice that I’ve seen or heard so I don’t know what passengers to and from those stations are meant to do.

Also all the GWR trains on the PAD-DID route are shown on the screens at TWY as cancelled - from RTT it looks like they’re running but not stopping at TWY or MAI as in the message posted above.