Another day of late trains! I got to Radley station this morning for the 08:11 train to Didcot to hear talk amongst other passengers about cancelled and late trains. The train was about 10 minutes late. When we got to Didcot, the screens showed trains cancelled or heavily delayed. It turned out that there was a major signal failure in the Twyford area (between Reading and London) and there was a major snarl up.

So what to do? Try for London and risk missing my meeting? Go home and miss the meeting anyway? I went to Platform 2 and found a train that was about to start from London. It was crowded, but I found a space next to the door. Shortly we set off for Reading. The train manager told us about the signal failure and said we could change at Reading and travel to Waterloo. I decided not to do this. I’ve done that before and it took almost a couple of hours to get to the wrong part of London. So I sat on the train - actually I acquired a seat near the middle of the carriage because another passenger decided to get off and try for Waterloo - and eventually we set off, crawled past Twyford with a pilotman, and then went off at full speed, to arrive about 45 minutes after the time I would have arrived had the trains been running to schedule.

I got to my meeting about 30 minutes late.

When I got back to Paddington this evening to get my train home (aiming for the 17:18), there were crowds of people looking at the departure boards (always a bad sign). Trains were cancelled or delayed. Why this time? Signal failure near Airport Junction.

I got onto the delayed 17:00 to Bristol. We started at about 17:10, crawled in a queue of trains to Hayes and Harlington (the fast lines were closed to that point), and then went at full speed to Reading. Arrived at Didcot just after 18:00, the normal arrival time for the 17:18.

Sorry to be complaining about the trains again, but this is the second day this week that I’ve travelled by train and the timetable has been out of kilter for one reason or another. You can never know, when you set out, whether or not you will arrive on time.

Fortunately it was a beautiful day, sunny and warm. Turned out to be the warmest October day on record.

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