Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast. It's Thursday the 13th of April and I'm back where I was yesterday, if you were kind enough to listen, at what I then described as my happy place, overlooking the concourse at London Waterloo Station, the busiest station in Britain, except it's not today

because overnight there was a massive signalling failure as a result of which almost

all the main rail platforms, one to 14 inclusive, are out of use.

That simply means that trains from Portsmouth, from Southampton, from Bournemouth, from Woking,

from Winchester are not running here.

There are some trains running from the other end of the station, in particular

to Reading, to Hampton Court, to Windsor, but the vast majority of Waterloo's trains are not

running today. I am doing my utmost to try to find out what the problem is, but unfortunately

I'm not got any responses yet from Network Rail, and ironically, I'm right outside their main office.

Their HQ effectively is at Waterloo station and well I will perhaps go and knock on the

door quite soon if I can't find out anything more this is coming at a really really

difficult time for travellers there will be tens of thousands of people hit by the closure today and it also is

going constantly continue the destabilising of passenger confidence bear in mind that we've

had dozens of days of no trains due to the strikes which have been taking place over the past

uh gosh 10 months now no further strikes on the horizon but we are also seeing failings such as

the new num viaduct in oxfordshire which is the main line from Manchester and Birmingham to the south coast.

That is closed at least until June because of damage to the Viaduct.

Network Rail is looking into this.

But from the passengers' point of view, and I'm just watching here, there's a succession of people going to talk to the staffer on the platform here, try and figuring out what to do, and effectively trying to rearrange their days.

And this is just a tiny proportion of the people affected. These are all the people who journeys are starting from Waterloo not the many many thousands who will be trying to come to

Waterloo and the sign I'm looking at here where possible do not travel well it

does suggest that the reliability of the railway is such that well as I've been picking up from

...