Instead of contradictory announcements, there were no announcements (or information on the display screens) at Bath Spa earlier, which seemed to cause some issues, particularly for the average passenger when the Portsmouth Harbour/London Paddington/Brighton/London Waterloo/London Paddington services all depart within just over half an hour and there had been delays on incoming services around Fareham as well as issues north of Bristol. Thankfully the station staff were giving advice and information to the people approaching them with queries!
In terms of contradictory announcements, I was at Newport recently and the HST to Swansea was announced (on the screens and through the autoannouncers) as making an additional stop at Patchway between Newport and Cardiff Central.
Then it did the standard 'third announcement' and disappeared from the departure board (I asked the platform staff what was going on and they didn't seem to have a clue), before appearing on it again 20 minutes later as running 40 minutes or so late. Clearly it was on diversion for some reason or another but it was one big confusing mess. Eventually most people crammed on a stopping service to Llanelli and then the HST showed up 10 mins later, but was crawling through Port Talbot all the way to Swansea as the stopper was calling at Baglan, Briton Ferry, Skewen and Llamsamlet.
I can imagine disrupted Valley Lines services at the busier stations is an absolute nightmare. I was genuinely surprised they only have 2 platforms at Cardiff Central for the Valley Lines, there were pacers and sprinters everywhere! I'd imagine Queen Street also gets pretty bad. It seems the best way to cut down delays is to terminate trains early, but that means some stations and routes not getting a train for a couple of hours due to the delays affecting the services behind!
Slightly unrelated but I've noticed at these platforms, the autoannouncers just say... e.g. "Platform 6 for the 15.01 service to Bargoed, calling at..." without saying 'Arriva Trains Wales'. Is this because of the very tight schedule at these platforms and they need to cut down the announcements? I'd imagine it'd get confusing if they put in "Platform 7 for the xx.xx service to Barry Island. This is the service from Aberdare." "Platform 6 for the xx.xx service to Aberdare. This is the service from Barry Island", just curious as to why they don't include 'Arriva Trains Wales' when they do on the other platforms. Maybe Arriva don't want to be associated with the amount of pacers that run on these lines