Mark is back!

I've missed him soooooo much!


Dear Dom

Thank you for your emails. I know Sue has been responding to your correspondence in my absence.

Taking the Plymouth train on Monday was indeed a clever plan, had we not caused you to miss the connection, of course. I hope you will accept my apologies and I am glad ‘Big Brother’ managed to cheer you up when you got home.

Our 08:06 from Oxford on Wednesday was late because of over-running engineering works, which caused a considerable level of disruption through the morning peak period. We follow up all such incidents with Network Rail and they too accept it is not good enough. I am sorry you were affected.

On Wednesday evening another service with a mechanical problem delayed your train through Reading. Yesterday morning a service leaving the depot had a mechanical problem which briefly held your service up. The driver quickly fixed the problem, keeping the delay to a minimum.

I appreciate that our explanations of the causes of delays as congestion, knock on effects etc, and our apologies (which are indeed genuine) are starting to feel a bit meaningless. I wish I could offer you something more tangible as ‘proof’ of the hard work and dedication our staff put into tackling every issue.

The rail infrastructure we have today is complex and we do face constraints. That said, I completely understand that, as our customer, you look to us to simply provide the reliable service that you pay us for. We want this too and we will continue to make every effort to achieve this.

Kind regards

Mark