A fire near Bristol closed all the lines to Cardiff yesterday afternoon (22nd).

This reminded me why I stopped using the train and really don't miss commuting.

I understand things go wrong but it's still frustrating to see that the train companies and/or network rail are still not able to communicate to customers.

Sitting on a train at Reading there was a delay but the train then left with assurances from on board staff it was going to Cardiff. Off course it was terminated early at Bristol and checking the website it had variously been cancelled, delayed, left 3 mins late (not the 30 it did). It was also apparent there were no trains getting through. At Bristol everyone was told to go to Gloucester. While that might have looked good on paper I'm not sure having several intercities worth of people stuck at Gloucester waiting for an already crowded 2 carriage Transport for Wales train was a great idea. Several trains later I managed to find a standing spot on a rammed 3 carriage train. This was then terminated early at Newport with an announcement to pick up the waiting services at platform 2.These of course were all cancelled and then the one train that eventually arrived was too crowded to board. Distinct lack of staff at any of the stations as well apart from various GWR train crew also trying to get home who were having to face a lot of angry people.

Interestingly at Gloucester I ended up next to a Network Rail person who was unaware of any delays - worked at HQ but chatting to him he saw the problems in quite abstract terms and could see nothing wrong with sending people to x,y,z as the routes all aligned. Seemed surprised when I mentioned lack of information and sevre over crowding. Now not a very representative sample but my previous experience with Network Rail has shown great engineers but no customer focus.

And why do I have to create a separate account for delay/repay?

Anyway rant over.