Great Western Coffee Shop

What happened today?   Two trains cancelled due to safety checks and 2 due to staffing issues.

Question to me on Facebook ...


I'm pretty sure it wouldn't simply be "not turn up", rather sick, delayed on an incoming train, or pulled off to run another service.  Can anyone tell me  ;) ... I'm pretty sure that a good explanation will satisfy the enquirer ...

More to the point, what did FGW do to assist passengers? I was on the 1730 departure from SWI (actual departure 1735 1/4) towards Chippenham, and didn't see or hear any information advising passengers for the 1736 to board our train. Nor any on train announcements. 

I note that the previous 16:15 Westbury to Swindon was also cancelled. "A member of traincrew being unavailable" is a very vague explanation. It is highly unlikely a member of traincrew didn't just turn up.

Given that just the one return trip was cancelled, this is only a guess, but a possible cause may have been the driver and/or guard being late from somewhere else on another journey and the spare crew(s) being used on other services. Sometimes a member of traincrew being unavailable is also a euphemism for a rostering cock-up. It could also be because of illness or something else such as an operational incident.

Is it not 2 return trips that were cancelled?

Yes my bad, I got a little muddled up. One return trip because of a train fault, the other because of no traincrew available.

On the Cotswold Line and other services out of Worcester we very frquently get cancellations due to unavailability of staff. I think there can be many reasons apart from staff sickness but it is often that the train crew cannot get to their boarding point because because they rely upon another train to get them there and it is delayed or cancelled. So many rail problems are "knock on" from previous problems. The more frequent your Trans Wilts rail service becomes the likely that you will see these problems.

From Facebook (name quoted since the name is there in public)


Rather explains why the first pair was "emergency checks" and the second pair "staff"

My reply, for the record ...

Emergency stops where a signal goes back to red in front of a driver, or he finds a red after a green without any yellows in between, are VERY rare (a). They can't swerve to avoid any obstruction (b), and it takes longer to stop than a car would (c) - so it is a real shock that's different to having to slam a car's brakes on.   One of the questions that arose from our (Community) end was "what alternative arrangements were made / how did they work?".  I see you dropped back to the following train; it's an important question that we're taking further with regards the trains from Swindon, where the gap is longer / overnight in terms of the return working from the 6:38.

Edit to correct typo - Lee

Taxis were laid on for the two later trains from Trowbridge/Chippenham.  Not sure what arrangements were made for the earlier pair of trains.

And again ...

20:12 Swindon to Westbury due 20:55
This train will be cancelled.
This is due to a train fault.

 ... and I believe the up train cancelled too

Hmmm..and the 16:15 from Westbury was 18 late into Swindon following reports of a trespasser on the line between Westbury and Trowbridge.

Oh dear and the 19:32 from Westbury was over 15 minutes late into Swindon on its way to Cheltenham after "waiting for a member of train crew" at Westbury.