First Great Western documentary

In this first episode, we meet Paddington’s duty station manager Simon Jeffery on one of the toughest shifts of his career. Just two months into this senior role, he faces a major disruption. A fire has caused a significant signal failure, leaving passengers hot and extremely bothered on the concourse. All services are delayed or cancelled, and it is Simon who must take the flak.
We also climb aboard one of the notorious Swansea to Paddington late-night services with glamorous train manager Jodie, as she picks her way through the party-goers and tries to get boozy passengers on and off the train –without causing any delays.
The programme ventures under the belly of an Intercity 125, following maintenance engineer Will Ginieres on his night shift. In Britain’s most southerly train depot in Penzance, Will gets down and dirty under the units to check the brakes, oil and axles – working against the clock in an attempt to get 11 trains ready for service for the morning.
Monday morning rush hour is no picnic for indomitable duty controller Dave Slater. We meet him after an emergency 3am attempt to try to re-route all rush hour services. A power cable has collapsed, disabling signals along the Great Western network’s ‘golden triangle’ – the commuter stretch from Reading to Paddington. This is catastrophic, and it falls to Dave to sort it out.

*hides behind sofa and cringes*

Haven't seen this yet of course as it usually takes at least 6 months for such shows to find their way down under, but why

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*hides behind sofa and cringes*

Is this series really that bad, and if so, why? You are saying this before the first episode has even aired! I liked the Underground series recently - cheerful and intended for the travelling public, not the experts.

lazzer is a driver for FGW. Perhaps he makes an appearance? :laugh:

Someone I went to school with who became a driver may also appear on this documentary as he along with another Bedford driver I know both transferred to Plymouth as drivers in the 1990s & as far as I know are still based at Plymouth. However I've looked through the listings on the TV tonight on channel 5 & this documentary isn't listed, so whether it has been re-scheduled for another day I don't know. I've selected the prohramme shown for 2000 start in case what the TV listing shows is wrong.

*hides behind sofa and cringes*

" said:

*hides behind sofa and cringes*

Fortunately I was suffering "holidayitis" when they came looking for me at work (having been nominated by a loevely colleague!), phew, bullet dodged! :laugh:

" said:

" said:

*hides behind sofa and cringes*

Fortunately I was suffering "holidayitis" when they came looking for me at work (having been nominated by a loevely colleague!), phew, bullet dodged! :laugh:

The viewing public can rest easy then Bro Biddle :p

PC

These doc.s are all very good but... They always show the railways as if things are going wrong all the time, seemingly to be passing over the fact that failure rates for trains often are into one fail per tens of thousands of miles, and flooding/signal failures are very uncommon...