2 February 2016, 7 am
I take an early morning train from Brizzle to the GWR Signalling Works. The Signalling Works lie somewhere between Reading and London Paddington and they might just as well be called the Signalling Doesn’t Work because what they mostly seem to do is stop trains from going along railway tracks. The train that is supposed to take 90 minutes now routinely takes 120 minutes because we have to slow down to negotiate, nay, plead, with the Signalling Works. If I were the Train Manager I would stop doing the regular announcements – we apologise for the late running of this train and any obvious inconvenience caused to your journey today – and start describing the scenery, perhaps a bit of local history, possibly some music (“Don’t Stop Me Now” springs to mind). I would rig up screens in every carriage and lay on a Powerpoint® presentation to illustrate the magnitude of the obvious inconvenience caused and the relative magnitude of the apology proffered. I might even attempt some kind of explanation as to why the signalling works don’t work and what kind of train company imagines it’s OK to bring a whole set of rush-hour trains to a stop in one place as part of its morning schedule. But I am not the Train Manager; I am the CIPA Pee. Which means I probably have a lot more to apologise for than a little bit of obvious inconvenience.
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