I've just had a ridiculous journey home from University. I met someone off the 1639 Nottingham service; normally we would get straight on the 1645 LM to Lichfield Trent Valley, but at that time, staff were announcing a signal failure both at New Street and Butlers Lane...so, we thought it better to stay on 1639 and change at Tamworth. On arrival at Tamworth, we found that the 1731 LM to Crewe was showing as 'delayed'.
At that point, no one seemed to know why it was delayed and how long the delay might be. As usual, station staff scurried back into their offices - no information, no announcements etc. The lady at the ticket office said all she could tell us was what was already on the board anyway; she said she couldn't tell us about the Cross City Line as it's not her patch! In the end, they announced that people should go back to New Street if they wanted to get anywhere tonight. I informed the sole member of staff left on the station that there was no advantage in this for us, given the problems on the other line.
In fairness, the chap was actually very helpful, and arranged a taxi to take us back to LTV (LM to pay!). So all in all, it turned out OK, and we arrived home only about 30 minutes later than expected. What is always annoying these situations and it's the thing which really annoys passengers the most is that there's never any information available. I accept that it takes a while for information to filter through, but that doesn't mean that it's acceptable to just have complete silence. Even an announcement to say they were looking into it and would let passengers know what was happening would be better than nothing!
