Unmagical Mystery Tour

As reported in the Post the rail regulator is leaning on Network Rail to clean up its act on disruptions to the rail network. This summer may not have brought much sun, but it's been a bumper season for shutting down the line to London and telling passengers they need to get on a bus (not what they paid their over-priced fares for...)

Having suffered a 3 hour nightmare bus journey to London from East Anglia recently, I sympathise. To be fair to NR, problems they may create by poor maintenance or unnecessary line closures are magnified by incompetent handling of passengers by train operators once we are forced to get off the train. In my case no information was given about journey time or destinations, so many of us got on a bus that stopped at all the intermediate stations to London when we should have been on the other bus that was heading straight to the Smoke. To cap it all, our driver didn't know where the stations were and we eventually decanted at Romford tube station after a very unmagical mystery tour courtesy of train company National Express East Anglia.

The national passenger body, Passenger Focus, has demanded a national code to tackle disruption. This will set out the sort of information passengers need and the plans each operator should have in place to manage any disruptions. But should it really be necessary to tell all these well-paid train managers how to manage?