Great Western Coffee Shop

Got up this morning to severely disrupted services on the Cotswold line, all lines blocked at Wrcester due to signal failure. Guess I will be using the car today. Also between Swindon and Bristol due to signal problems.

(edited to correct autocorrection of morning -> boring)

So was getting up this morning so boring???? Or was seeing yet again delay even more boring! :-p

Sorry, autocorrect correcting my very poor and inaccurate typing!

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Good short book called "Damn You, Autocorrect!" if you're stuck with signal failure, etc

At the moment, I think it would be easier to quote routes which are operating normally  !!!    Bring back Semaphores !!!

Reading about all the various signalling problems been had recently, I do fear that all that money recently promised to replace all the old signalling in Cornwall won't do much to improve reliability down here

Yes, old fashioned semaphore is perhaps more resistant to lightening, but it still fails. Wasn't there a failure at Worcester recently?

However Twyford is hardly new signalling - that is why it is being replaced! Also many of the problems are presumably down to disturbing the existing life expired equipment to fit the new stuff. 

I assume that moving from track circuits to axle counters should improve the resilience to lightning as track circuits do give a very large target!

... or "this morning" as we say in the trade.

Whole of Shrub Hill area failed this morning.

I arrived at Foregate Street to catch the 07:00 to B'ham to find the 06:14 HST to Padd'n still sitting in the platform.

Our train managed to avoid the chaos by using the other line (the track layout at Foregate St is a tad odd), so I got to B'ham on time.

But the 06:14 to Padd'n gave up - never made it beyond Foregate St. Dunno what happened to the HST that was an hour behind.

The 08:16 arrival at Foregate St from Padd'n never made it beyond Evesham - it turned round and went back to London.

I'd love to know what went wrong with the old-fasioned lumps of metal that caused such extensive chaos.

I noticed this today especially since I pulled up into Worcester Crowngate bus station at 0830 to the 0835 Worcester - Evesham service 550 to find a crowd of passengers all with rail tickets travelling to Evesham.

There was a good number awaiting me at Evesham heading to Pershore and Worcester which caused some fun when trying to keep to time on my way back to Worcester due to longer dwell times are Pershore Railway station etc

Perhaps these chaps could help:

http://broadwaygwsr.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/the-bracket-post-arrives.html