What a day for FGW, courtesy of therailwaycentre.com:
Today was another VERY bad day for FGW with a huge number of delays and cancellations. Problems started in Cornwall with the failure at the start of service of set No. 150219 on the Falmouth branch. This was quickly followed by the 05.52 Penzance-Paddington formed of 43025/LA28/43124 failing at Camborne, after a delay the train was terminated and returned empty to Penzance. This failure blocked the up line and following trains were delayed. The 06.43 Penzance-Paddington was 113mins late at Par, the 07.30 Penzance-Glasgow 62mins (and terminated at Bristol), the 07.43 Penzance-Paddington 90mins and then diverted from Taunton to Reading missing stops at Bristol, Bath, Chippenham and Swindon, 08.30 Penance-Dundee 40mins (and also terminated at Bristol). The 05.05 Penzance-Paddington was 30 late from Exeter.
FGW also managed to cancel the 07.10 Bristol-Paddington, 05.40 Cheltenham-Paddington, while the 07.38 Paignton-Paddington was terminated at Exeter as was the 10.00 Paddington-Paignton.
If these delays were not enough, a major signal problem between Hayes and Paddington caused further delays from 11.00.
Virgin not to be outdone, managed to terminate the 06.25 Plymouth-Edinburgh at Totnes after a door fault, the set however managed to operate empty to Birmingham.
Mart