Incidents are often fluid in nature and change as time goes by, so sometimes it’s hard to say anything at all without later being proven wrong. I know how frustrating it can be for the passengers, but believe me it’s just as bad for us staff because ultimately it’s us that are made to look like complete berks.
For example:
I got stuck out at the wrong end of a route after a colleague ran over a fallen tree. For a long time it was just a case of waiting until the train had been freed from its deadly embrace and the tree cleared off the line. Although my booked back-working was obviously cancelled I was told I would form the next departure after this, but obviously this slipped further and further back as the job progressed until ultimately I was to form the last service back. All the while I was communicating with the passengers, making myself available and reassuring them that yes we were definitely going to leave, no I don’t think it will be on time, but yes we’re definitely going to be on our way. Shortly before departure time came around I got one last call from control telling me that Nitwit Rail had, in the process of removing it, discovered that the fallen tree had struck and damaged a bridge and that the line would not be reopening. Therefore, the train was cancelled and the passengers should take an alternative route.
How did I feel at the end of this? Frankly, a bit daft. I wished I’d directed them all to take the alternative route a lot sooner, but what was I to do? Control had assured me that I would be coming back at some point or other, and so I told the passengers.
I can hear Daily Mail’s being thrown down in disgust even from this distance, but was this really “misinformation”? Did I mislead the passengers? I don’t believe so. I told them precisely what was going on just as control had told me, but the parameters of the incident changed and changed again as time went on and the incident was dealt with. I can’t even blame Nitwit Rail for failing to tell us the severity of the tree-fall because they did not become aware of the damage to the bridge until after enough of the tree was removed to reveal it.
I offer this tale for the purposes of illustration. We are not the masters of our own destiny and just sometimes an incident will not progress along predictable lines and, as a consequence, the information you are given may not necessarily be as accurate as we would like. It would be lovely to be told by control that an assisting train will be on-scene within 30 minutes and for that to be precisely what transpires, but sometimes this doesn’t happen. It doesn’t mean that the information you were given at the outset was wrong, but rather that it has been overtaken by events. It’s one of the reasons why I personally will never be drawn on how long something may or may not take.