I'll come to Friday evening's BTM^▸ (Bristol Temple Meads (strictly, it should be BRI)) chaos in a moment, but this is interesting from the FGW^▸ (First Great Western) website when looking for train delays at 1345 today.

ROUTE FILTER
The route filter has been disabled due to the high demand for this service. The normal service will resume once demand has reduced sufficiently.

This is not the first time that delay information on the web has 'gone down due to excessive demand'. It would be interesting if there were hit statistics from either FGW or NexusAlpha (data suppliers) on their 'live delay' and 'live departure' boards traffic pre and post Dec 10.

Filton departures has been down more than once due to excessive traffic, and the demand due to continued unreliability is unrelenting.

Which brings me on to last Friday.

Big sigh of relief at seeing a Friday 1722 BTM - Portsmouth consisting of 2 x 158s, this soon evaporated as the TPE^▸ (Trans Pennine Express) element of the stock had 1 coach with total electrical failure. Never mind, 3 coaches could just about accommodate the Friday passenger (sorry customer) load full and standing and give the local announcement team their due all Bath Spa passengers were informed of the HST^▸ (High Speed Train) service which relieved the load a tad.

20 crushed min later it was decided that the stock was going nowhere and we all detrained. I decided to drown my sorrows in the bar, only to see that the stock had been split and those poor souls remaining depart on the ex Wessex stock, oh well the 1822 will be along soon.

Was it hell, earlier 'technical' problems had taken at least 2 sets out of service therefore there was nothing coming from Cardiff, a delay while FGW managed to find a working 158 from St Phillips depot. Average loading on this 2 car, but I hate to think what Cardiff/Newport passengers were going through.