Taunton Cancellations Last Night

[Parham Wood]

Does anyone know what caused the disruption at Taunton last night? My daughter posted:

"Took me 3hrs to get home from Taunton last night. Thanks network rail. Taxis were appreciated but it would have been nice to have been told the trains were cancelled. Removing them from the departure board silently is just rude."

Are there any human station announcers anymore or is it all automatic based on a normal service? Is it not possible for local staff to make announcements when things go wrong?

 

[Captain Chaos]

Complete points failure was the cause. Locked up both ends and blocked all lines. Engineers had to come from quite some way to fix it though which would have meant the delay was worse than expected. Not sure why that was the case though.

 

[tsr]

Yep, several trains delayed in the region of 60-90mins, as far as I can see. It sounds like the departure boards were updating automatically. I can't comment on the specifics of the audio announcement system at Taunton but I'm pretty sure an overriding message of some sort could have been broadcast. The issue with the automated system may have been that the trains were not in fact all cancelled (only 2 appear to have been, and only one cancelled throughout its journey) but just held for a long time, so the expected reports were far enough overdue for them to be considered "out of date" and removed from the CIS. However, I think that the fact that taxis were offered would have been an indication to most passengers (I guess including the OP's daughter!) that the disruption was severe and that the trains would not be moving for some time, whether cancelled/altered/held.

 

[Parham Wood]

Thanks for the update! She was travelling to Nailsea but not sure what time. Could have been late as she normally drives unless there is a post work bash. It could have been harder to get there than Bristol TM with the disruption.

 

[tsr]

It sounds like she must have been travelling after the 2129 Taunton - London Paddington departed (which was not delayed by the points problem), so she would most likely have been affected by the points problem as these two trains were cancelled at Taunton, but as she'd have ended up on a bus like this one from Weston SM to Nailsea & Backwell anyway - thus a taxi was probably not such a bad deal!