What a shambles

This piece is going to start with the text of the seven emails received via the London Midland email alert service as I think these quite nicely tell (part of) the story of the mess at London Euston this afternoon:

London Midland at 1630: "Disruption has been reported to services between your selected stations London Euston to Bletchley.  General disruption along the line caused by a trespass incident may lead to cancellations and delays to the following services: The 17:24, 17:51, 18:05 and 18:29."

London Midland at 1704: "Services from Euston were suspended this afternoon due to reports of a person walking along the tracks, and further disrupted by a London Overground train breaking down just outside the station a couple of hours later."

London Midland at 1750: Disruption has been reported to services between your selected stations London Euston to Bletchley.  The 17:34 will be delayed by about 20 minutes due to an earlier broken down train."


London Midland at 1810: Disruption has been reported to services between your selected stations London Euston to Bletchley.  The following services will be delayed after leaving: - The 17:51 by about 17 minutes caused by an earlier broken down train. - UPDATE: The 17:34 by about 35 minutes caused by an earlier broken down train."

London Midland at 1828: "Disruption has been reported to services between your selected stations London Euston to Bletchley.  The 18:05 will be delayed after leaving by about 20 minutes due to an earlier broken down train."

London Midland at 1847: "Disruption has been reported to services between your selected stations London Euston to Bletchley.  The 18:29 will be delayed after leaving by about 10 minutes due to an earlier trespass incident."

London Midland at 1851: "Disruption has been reported to services between your selected stations London Euston to Bletchley.  UPDATE: The 17:34 will be delayed after leaving by about 38 minutes due to an earlier broken down train."

At London Euston all of the VDUs mentioned the trespasser but not the broken down train.  I arrived at 17:40 and waited on platform 8 for the doors to the delayed 17:34 to open (rumour had it that they couldn't open the doors because they had no train crew).  At one point they announced that passengers for Watford Junction, Berkhampstead and Tring could get on the 17:46 on platform 7.  This left half-full around 17:50. 

Afetr another ten minutes or so (with the doors for the 17:34 still not open) they told us that the 17:51 would go from platform 13 so I ran round there.  That left shortly afterwards (significantly less crowded than usual) and got into Bletchley at 19:07 (two minutes short of the half an hour needed for London Midland to pay out the less than generous £4.00 in rail vouchers for a delay of 30-59 minutes...)


Questions:

1. Why did the Virgin Trains appear to be unaffected by the problems this afternoon?
2. Why do London Midland not initiate the same sort of contingency arrangements used by Silverlink when this kind of problem occurs - Half hourly all stop services from Euston to Northampton (fully utilising the trains and crews available, and ensuring that passengers going to some stations are not unfairly disadvantaged)?
3. Why was the train crew from the 17:46 not put onto the 17:34 which called at the same stations plus a few more?
4. Why at the station were we only given the trespass incident as the cause of the delays?  Why no mention of the broken down train?
5. Why weren't passengers allowed to board the 17:34?
6. Why was there no apology issued either by tannoy announcement at Euston or on the delayed train?
7. Why when passengers are paying £3,000+ for their season ticket and London Midland are receiving £185 million as this year's government subsidy can't we have a better service?  OK, so the trespasser incident was a problem not of their making and trains do break down, but why did this cause so much disruption?