bramling
Veteran Member
Having been in South Wales the last couple of weeks, I’ve been pretty shocked at the poor performance of the local rail services.
Pretty much every time we have attempted to use trains there has been disruption. On top of that, where disruption has occurred it has been poorly handled, with useless provision of information.
In particular:
* Turnround times are way too tight, pretty much across the board. So when delays occur they seem to propagate onto following services.
* A number of single-track branches. Maesteg in particular seems to be a shambles, with late running of one service then affecting multiple others, with the potential to delay GWR and other services on the main line. Today it seems over half of the Maesteg services have been late, in several cases considerably so, with two journeys being terminated at Tondu.
With services running through to Cheltenham this arrangement just doesn’t work.
* The Penarth branch seems way too tightly utilised.
* Running through Cardiff means a delay in one area then affects another.
Is this experience typical, or have I merely been unfortunate in being here at a bad time? A lot of money seems to be being spent on the metro scheme, but would this have been better spent on reducing the amount of single-track sections?
Pretty much every time we have attempted to use trains there has been disruption. On top of that, where disruption has occurred it has been poorly handled, with useless provision of information.
In particular:
* Turnround times are way too tight, pretty much across the board. So when delays occur they seem to propagate onto following services.
* A number of single-track branches. Maesteg in particular seems to be a shambles, with late running of one service then affecting multiple others, with the potential to delay GWR and other services on the main line. Today it seems over half of the Maesteg services have been late, in several cases considerably so, with two journeys being terminated at Tondu.
With services running through to Cheltenham this arrangement just doesn’t work.
* The Penarth branch seems way too tightly utilised.
* Running through Cardiff means a delay in one area then affects another.
Is this experience typical, or have I merely been unfortunate in being here at a bad time? A lot of money seems to be being spent on the metro scheme, but would this have been better spent on reducing the amount of single-track sections?