Once bitten twice shy?

Following the balls-up on 23 March I wrote to NXEA complaining about them allowing the connection at Witham to leave without waiting.

I posted their reply here.

They've now written again and this is what they say:

Dear Mr Xxxxxxxxxxxxx,

Thank you for your email.

I apologise for the delay to the 18:06 from Stratford that evening. I have
asked the Manager of our Control Centre to investigate your comments. Owing
to the disruption on the down mainline, caused by a Network Rail emergency
speed restriction at Forest Gate, services were queuing. Where it was
possible and safe to do so trains were diverted onto the electric lines,
the Braintree service being one of these. It would not have been possible
to divert all of the trains on to the electric lines and this did mean that
some services overtook others.

Once again, I apologise for the delay to your service that evening and
thank you for contacting us.

Yours sincerely,


Customer Relations Advisor
National Express

OK fair enough, but no-one appears to have even had a single passing thought for the passengers being f*cked up when their connecting trains were diverted onto the "electric lines" whatever they are; all of NXEAs lines have overhead power so they're all "electric lines".

I have one or two more questions for them yet.

But it appears they may have learned something because the self same thing happened again tonight, Network Rail put in another bloody silly speed restriction and once again all the trains were backing up at Stratford. Yet again I got the 1806 Ipswich train, somewhat earlier than last time which probably made a difference, because the Braintree train, despite having again been allowed to overtake the earlier Ipswich train was still at Witham unlike last time.

Moreover, unlike last time it was also held to await the scheduled connecting Clacton service. This was also earlier than last time but was still almost 15 minutes late at Witham.

I'll post my questions and any reply from NXEA when I get round to it.