Aplogy for football fan's delays

[Coxster]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/6394985.stm

Rail engineers have worked overnight to try to repair a signalling fault that caused hundreds of football fans to miss the Carling Cup final kick-off.

Fans of both teams heading to and from the Cardiff's Millennium Stadium were affected by the delays.

Queues outside Cardiff Central train station took more than four hours to clear after the match.

Network Rail has apologised for the delays, which have continued while the fault is repaired.

Monday's First Great Western 0715 London Paddington to Cardiff and 0955 Cardiff to London services have been cancelled and other services are facing delays of up to half an hour until midday.

In addition, services from Portsmouth to Cardiff are terminating at Bristol before returning.

The disruption is a continuation of the delays which saw an estimated 2,000 football fans miss the start of Sunday's Carling Cup final between Chelsea and Arsenal in Cardiff.

Police said the atmosphere among football fans before and after Sunday's match was largely good natured, however many complained they were not given enough information.

Many more supporters spent much of last night trying to get home after the match.

A serious electrical problem was identified at Newport on Sunday morning, just hours before thousands of supporters were due to travel on the line.

It meant that many spent up to three hours between Bristol and Cardiff, forcing them to take their seats midway through the first half.

Fans heading back to London said it had ruined what may have been the last time they visit Cardiff for a major football cup final.

Although some trains were up to 90 minutes late for the game, football officials ruled the match should still start on time.

British Transport Police said the signalling problem was caused by an isolated electrical problem in the cables at Newport.

Network Rail spokesman Ben Herbert apologised for the delays, which he said had been caused by a "fairly serious" but unforeseen signalling problem.

He told BBC Radio Wales: "We can appreciate it did cause pretty major disruption for a lot of people yesterday and this morning.

"If we had known about it, we would have put arrangements in place, worked with the train operators, to make people aware a lot earlier.

"Unfortunately it is one of these things we could not have foreseen. It was very unfortunate it did coincide with that very big match at the Millennium Stadium."

The match, which ended in a 2-1 victory for Chelsea, was the seventh Carling Cup final to have been held in south Wales during the rebuilding of English football's traditional home, Wembley, in north London.

Football's showpiece games are due to return to Wembley, beginning with the FA Cup Final in May.

 

[westcoaster]

very unfortunate but there is nothing you can do with signalling, you just cant work without it, anyone know just how far the problem was or was it a local problem, ot when the football come's back to wembley, do most ppl go by tube to wembley park, or by train/tube to wembley central, nr have put up a new bridge at the south end of wembley central, it has stairs to all 6 platforms and goes over the shunt neck and then in to the houses. and on to the stadium.

 

[tubenutter]

Wembley Stadium seems to be very close to the ground, though I can't imagine many people use it. From my limited experience a lot more people use Wembley Park than Wembley Central.

 

[yorkie]

Wembley Stadium seems to be very close to the ground, though I can't imagine many people use it. From my limited experience a lot more people use Wembley Park than Wembley Central.

Not sure what you mean by not many use it?

I once went there by mistake, because we just followed the crowd out of our exit and ended up at Wembley Stadium station. In fact, we were incredibly lucky because we got on a train straight away (we din't have far to walk so I guess we were at an exit very near the station), which departed when full (then loads of people could be seen filling up the platform for the next one, hopefully there was one immediately behind!!), and got us to Marylebone incredibly quickly. I think the game was a 1800 kick-off, so finished something like 1950, and somehow we got on the last train out of King's Cross at 2030 with seconds to spare. Pure luck.

I suspect that many people would not be so lucky, due to the severe limit of capacity provided on that route. I'd say it's a lottery: you either get away incredibly quickly (as I did) or you could be waiting forever. Wembley Park would not be so quick but it would be less variable, the capacity there is far greater.

 

[tubenutter]

Not sure what you mean by not many use it?

I once went there by mistake, because we just followed the crowd out of our exit and ended up at Wembley Stadium station. In fact, we were incredibly lucky because we got on a train straight away (we din't have far to walk so I guess we were at an exit very near the station), which departed when full (then loads of people could be seen filling up the platform for the next one, hopefully there was one immediately behind!!), and got us to Marylebone incredibly quickly. I think the game was a 1800 kick-off, so finished something like 1950, and somehow we got on the last train out of King's Cross at 2030 with seconds to spare. Pure luck.

I suspect that many people would not be so lucky, due to the severe limit of capacity provided on that route. I'd say it's a lottery: you either get away incredibly quickly (as I did) or you could be waiting forever. Wembley Park would not be so quick but it would be less variable, the capacity there is far greater.

What I meant, although I am probably wrong, was that because of it's position (and the position of Marylebone on the LU network) it would probably be easier for most people to take the Underground to Wembley Park. Looking at the Chiltern timetable, it seems that only about 4tph from London stop there in the peak (although this might be altered for matchdays?)

Putting it into perspective, although in my opinion it will be quite a small percentage of football fans (or whatever the event is) that use Wembley Stadium station, that will still be a lot of people for the large events that take place there. A better wording for my phrase would have been "Wembley Stadium seems to be very close to the ground, though I can't imagine as many people use it compared to Wembley Central and Wembley Park".

Make sense?