All trained up

Well – I’ve had my fill of trains in the last 24 hours.

On Tuesday night my train was delayed because of a points failure. It was bad enough that it was delayed, but what made it unbearable was the fact that:

• we never really got reliable or realistic information about the length of the delay. Initially they said 10 minutes, but it turned into over an hour.
• The train eventually went _back_ by 3 stops, having announced that buses would be laid on. So we stood in the cold for 10 minutes, waiting for buses that never turned up, only to be told that the points issue had been resolved and we could get back on the train

Today (Wednesday) things only got worse. I arrived at Partick to be told that there were no trains, and they wouldn’t start until after they had checked the lines. So I went home. The sequence of events following went a bit like this:

• At 9.50 I phoned the information line, to be told that the Wemyss Bay trains were running, but that Partick-Central was a no-go
• At 10am I left, got a bus to Partick and then a free tube ticket
• At 10.30 I arrived at Central, only to discover that the 10.50 Wemyss Bay train was cancelled.
• At 10.40 it was announced that people for Wemyss Bay (and a range of other services) should go out and on to buses. I asked a member of staff, who advised that the bus would take me to Paisley, whereupon I could get on the normal service.
• At 11.00ish I arrived at Paisley. 10 minutes later we were advised that, while there were trains to Greenock, the rest of the Wemyss Bay line was not available, and that passengers were expected to make (and pay) their own way from there. So I gave in.

Now – I understand that we have been having a freak weather moment, and so I can understand that things are tricky. However, what I find massively unacceptable is the complete lack of information available to customers. The ScotRail website only changed it’s ‘Urgent’ notice from ‘all services are delayed’ to ‘the majority of services are running’ at 1830 tonight. No interim messages indicating which lines were reopening and which were not.

We live in a so-called ‘information age,’ and yet there was no information, and seemingly not just for customers, but for staff as well. Worse, the information that was presented was often incomplete or incorrect.

mrBen