Saturday, January 20, 2007

Greenford Station and the FGW line to Paddington

Greenford Station is in Travelcard Zone 4 on the West Ruislip Branch of the Central Line. It is the only station on the London Underground that has an escalator that takes passengers up from street level to the trains.

The station has a short bay platform between the two Central Line platforms, used by the 1/2 hourly (Mon - Sat) First Great Western service to and from London Paddington.

The station is operated by London Underground.

At the end of the FGW platform there are three notice boards for use by that Train Operating Company. As of yesterday (19th January 2007), one of the noticeboards had an up to date timetable, one had a notice about altered train times on 16th December 2006 and the third was a poster about engineering works between 2nd December 2006 and 1st January 2007. The departure screen for the bay platform (operated by FGW) was blank, it has been non-functioning for a while now.

Four stations down the line, at West Ealing, both platform clocks are still broken. They have been broken for several months.

A few years back I was given to understand that the FGW service to/ from Greenford was subsidised by the London Borough of Ealing. I do not know whether this is still the case, but I do struggle to see how the line can be economically viable without some kind of extra subsidy.

The lack of attention given by First Great Western to stations along the Greenford line does make me wonder whether (a) FGW management have forgotten about the service or (b) FGW are hoping the passengers will simply go away so that they don't need to run any trains.

What a sad state of affairs.

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