Wednesday 13 December - day 3!

Due to having attended a works bash last night, and the poor record of the 0642 I thought that it was not worth going for that service and resolved to catch the 0707.

All went well, in fact very well. I got into work 30 mins early! This was because the 0754 from Didcot was delayed and I managed to hop on that. I also met up with some of the other mad people who do this journey - they were not so pleased, however. One person had caught the 0612 from Bath, hoping to arrive in Oxford at 0730, however, his Didcot-Oxford service had been cancelled (due to lack of a drive?) and he'd had to wait for the 0754. He was not happy.

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I thought I do some experimentation and catch the 1620 from Oxford. This meant catching 3 trains (a Didcot change and a Swindon change), but there was only a 18 mins wait in Didcot, as opposed to the 35mins wait if you go for the 1653 service.

All went well until we go to Swindon, where we were met by a huge crowd of commuters who had been waiting for 30 mins for the 1656 service. This train left at Swindon at 1726. I was not too unhappy as this is when my connecting service was supposed to have left, but what was strange is that the train pulled up without anyone on it. Apparently, it had started from Swindon as, I quote 'there was no one being able to work train from London Paddington'.

Excellent - so we have fewer trains, the ones that are running are knackered, the points system keeps breaking down, drivers go off sick and are not replaced, and we're running out of buffet cars.

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Journey to work punctuality: 33% (over 3 journeys, a huge improvement)
Journey home punctuality: 100% (thank God it works this way!)

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FGW alerts:
Services between Truro and Falmouth replaced by bus transport due to signal failure. All other services to run as scheduled.
1721 Oxford-PAD cancelled. Currently no further problems.