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I was heading down to London on Saturday and checked the Live Running before I left home for Honeybourne to see that the train had been started from Foregate St and had left on time. I arrived at Honeybourne 10 minutes later to find that the train was running 10 minutes late but the Honeybourne stop was cancelled.  I debated waiting to see if it would stop, but they decided I could just make Moreton in Marsh. Unfortunately I arrived on the platform at Moreton just in time to see the train heading out with no further trains for 2 hours.

Does anyone on the Forum (Industry Insider?) have any idea why they would eliminate a stop at such short notice when the train was only 10 mins late and nothing for two hours? Signalling problems perhaps?

In the end, headed off to Banbury and took Chiltern instead.

There was a problem with the middle engine which had to be isolated - at reasonably short notice I believe.  A Turbo running on only two out of three engines would struggle to accelerate up Campden Bank immediately east of Honeybourne, so it's usual that the Honeybourne stop is removed in order that the train can arrive at the bottom of the hill at speed and make sure it makes it up the hill!  Slight overkill in my opinion if you still have two out of three engines running - unless there was bad wheelslip - you'd usually make it to the top eventually, but essential if it's a 2-car and one engine is out.

Thanks Industry Insider - that explains it. The train left Foregate on time but was 10 minutes late leaving Shrub Hill. They must have looked at it there and decided to run on the two engines and miss out Honeybourne. If I hadn't wasted 5 minutes at Honeybourne checking the live running I would have just made it at Moreton. I'll know next time!

Threads like this make me really proud of this board.  Thank you, Buckham for your question and IndustryInsider for your answer.

We should add Honeybourne to that exclusive list which also includes Totnes and Bodmin.   Are there any others?

What provision is made at Honeybourne Totnes and Bodmin if the train dosen't stop do you just wait 2 hours?

I wiuld hope a taxi be provided to at least take you to moreton to get train hour later, rather than two...

If you the original post it states that there was no onward train from Moreton-In-Marsh for two hours and looking at the timetable there's a pretty poor service towards London on Saturday lunchtimes with trains at 11:15, 13:04 and 15:01 (all of which call at Honeybourne, and the latter two - annoyingly - still find themselves sat at Evesham for 8 minutes!), so when a short-notice problem like that happens it's an awkward situation.  If there had been another service an hour later omitting Honeybourne then I would expect an additional call to be inserted, but unless you taxi from Honeybourne as required as far as Oxford, in this case a two hour wait is pretty much the only option.

But would FGW put on a taxi all the way to Oxford?

Depends on the time saving....how long it would take to order & arrive + Journey time, plus whether other calls needed to drop off & pick up....possibly quicker to go to South Cotswolds & transfer via Swindon?

The response from FGW when a train is cancelled seems to vary, perhaps depending upon who is on duty. Where there is another train following the cancelled one but not timetabled to call at that station, that is often rescheduled to to stop at the station missed by the cancelled train. This happened only yesterday when the 17.31 down stopper from Oxford failed en route and was terminated at Charlbury. The following HST, the 17.22 ex PAD picked up everyone left at Charlbury and then stopped at the two Halts, Ascott and Shipton that should have been served by the stopper. When it comes to taxis, there may be a taxi or coach provided but just as likely not. For a coach it depends upon whether it is school term time or not, because in term time at peak moring hour, the coaches are usually out on school trips.

So basically what you are saying is that you will get an uncertain response from FGW.

So what it amounts to in my mind is that if it was important for me to get to my destination by a certain time I would catch the train before the one that would get me there on time if it runs, because it's not guarenteed it will run.

In fact I used to do that all the time when we only had an hourly service from Taplow and do still if it's a connection at Reading/London  I still get the one half hour before I need to.

Hmm. On a smaller, more local, scale: I, too, tend to aim for the train before the one that would get me into Bristol on time for any important meeting there - just in case ...  ::)

On the other hand, I'm perhaps a bit spoilt, in that we have a half-hourly service from Nailsea, so that's not too onerous.  :-[

It never even occurred to me that I could call FGW to get a taxi to come and pick me up. It's not the first time I've ended up at HYB to find the train is heavily delayed and my fallback is to drive to Banbury which takes about 40 minutes.

Which does illustrate the key point; I don't even need to know the train times from Banbury, because they are at least every 20 minutes and the Chiltern service is pretty reliable. If there had been a reliable hourly service on the Cotswold line I would have just gone back home and come back for the next one.

Interestingly since Chiltern introduced its Mainline service, I know of a number of people who live in the Vale who now drive to Warwick Parkway, simply because of service frequency and reliability. Hopefully the lobbying being done by the local MPs for an hourly service will find its way into the new franchise.

Indeed.  As I said, it's a disappointing service at that time of the day, though with those two gaps at around midday and 2pm from Worcester aside, the service for the rest of the day is pretty much hourly.  The midday-ish departure could be plugged (and remove the only 2-hour gap in the other direction) if a 09:21 Paddington to Worcester service operated.  The other one would be more difficult to sort out, but perhaps the 12:51 Paddington to Oxford could be extended to Moreton-In-Marsh and restart back from there at around 14:50 so that at least east of Moreton-In-Marsh the service is hourly all day.

Certainly over the summer there is sufficient demand I would have thought?

The 16:00 from Penzance to Paddington is missing out Bodmin Parkway today - but there's no mention of it missing out Totnes.

Climb is steepest heading westbound from Totnes - it's not so much the station, more the line heading out from it

From FGW JourneyCheck:


 ;)