This lead to a rather interesting couple of hours for me yesterday!
I arrived at Newport station to see that the 09.15 Plymouth was still in platform four, and going nowhere. They then announced that a train had broken down in the tunnel and everything was on stop until it could be removed.
Following this, I was told by the conductor on the Plymouth train that the recovery train had gone to rescue it, but that it couldn't couple up to it, so they had had to send a fitter to look at the problem. Passengers for Bristol and the South West were told to get the London train (09.39), which would be diverted via Gloucester and change there.
So, we all went over to platform three and got on the London train. This was on time, and made good progress towards Severn Tunnel Junction. Just before we got there, a request for the train manger to contact the driver was heard, followed by another announcement saying that the tunnel was now clear and we'd be using it after all.
We were told to change at Bristol Parkway, which we did. Unfortunately, Parkway was absolute chaos, with trains everywhere and regular announcements being made asking us to move from one platform to another and back again - some of them were totally contradictory. I felt really sorry for the despatcher on platforms three / four - he confessed that he didn't know whether he was coming or going, as the situation had changed so many times!
Whilst we were moving from platform to platform, though, there was an example of British black humour at it's best. We'd been told to go to platform four, and then told to go back to the bridge and wait. So, having gone down the stairs to the platform and then been turned around to go back up them (meeting lots of people who were still coming down), a voice rang out (from behind me, so I don't know who the speaker was): "It's all Donald Trump's fault, this wouldn't have happened if Hillary Clinton had won!"!!
Anyway, we were told to get the Westbury train to Temple Meads and change there for Salisbury (which is where I was going). By this time, I'd missed the original train from Newport to Salisbury (09.44) and although I thought that I might be able to catch up with it at Temple Meads, this wasn't the case. I ended up getting what I thought would have been the 10.44 from Newport, although it looks as if it might have been cancelled from Cardiff as it started from Temple Meads.
Still, I did get to Salisbury - and onwards to my eventual destination, Andover - albeit an hour late, although I did have a spare hour there so I wasn't late getting to where I wanted to go. It was an interesting couple of hours, though!
