Great Western Coffee Shop

In no particular order.

Signalling problems at Bourne End no Marlow service
Cancellations Paddington Reading stoppers
Southern cancellations strikes etc.
Major disruption Euston Milton Keynes
Derailment at Eccles (yesterday)

 I am sure there are more.

a part possibly. discuss

And the 1736 Swindon to Westbury cancelled too.  >:(

They are not falling apart as such, they are creaking at the seams.

The age of some of the equipment and the skill base and resources to maintain and repair it, the response times to faults is a major concern in the Route I work in.

There are more and more trains running, faster, longer trains and less and less time to get onto the infrastructure to maintain / repair.  The rules for working on open railways are a lot tougher now so it is difficult to do work "between trains"

A number of the problems on the GW Mainline currently may be down to some staging / temporary works in readiness for Christmas which might have compromised some of the stability.

Also the weather has gone from being quite mild and benign to wet and windy with all the leaves knocked down last week to cold this week, yes I know its just British weather

Yep ... been a poor month.

I'm currently on an Arleen Coach (rather nice) which is running the service this evening in place of the 153377.  Information fed in well at staffed stations .. help point at unstaffed MKM telling people or the 16:27 to SWI to wait for the next train at 19:47 and that the problem is an effect of major issues at MKC (Milton Keynes Central).

I thought that unit's next round trip also cancelled? Was on journeycheck last time I looked?

MKC was a fatality I heard...was the driver there at the time? Otgerwuse why would it affect just one unit 100+ miles SW? Odd

18:32 and 20:06 were initially cancelled but re-instated around 18:20.

How well did that work?  I'm guessing if a coach is ready and waiting, and leaves on time the time penalty or inconvenience may not be too great.  Although from the time you posted, I'm guessing you were at least 20 late arriving at MKM?  And other passengers have to go the long way round of course.

How does an incident in Milton Keynes cause a cancellation on the trans Wilts?

The cancellations on the TransWilts earlier this evening may have been as a result of a bridge strike at or near Hungerford causing West of England services to be diverted ?? ??

Sounds more likely

Should have left CPM at 17:53 arrived MKM 18:03. Coach arrived CPM at around 18:10, left about 18:20 after waiting for the next train from Swindon for extra passenger(s) and arrived at MKM Station at about 18:45.    Around 12 passengers on the coach - mostly arrived at CPM on the 17:32 from Swindon (which left there at 17:36  :D ) - only one extra passenger off the following train from Swindon.   Quite  a few lost to lifts with friends, and some grabbed a shared taxi rather than wait as we didn't really know how long it would be before the  coach arrived.  So 40 late or so but still a lot better than waiting for the next train which would have been a further half hour.

General reaction / feeling - grateful for the coach, understanding that things will go wrong occasionally but not very thrilled by the service unreliably recently, but utterly committed to it as part of their daily life and very happy with what it offers.   Clearly that's a generality of comment / flavour and may not be shared by all.

I suspect this story came from a call centre operative confusing MKC and MKM!   


Possible, but I actually doubt that in this case; decisions to cancel the TransWilts are not taken anything like as lightly as seemed to be the case in the past.  I'm pretty sure it was a train fault that lost the round trip. 

Today (Monday December 5) I'm on the 15:22 from Paddington to Worcester Foregate St. We sat at Charlbury for 30-odd minutes as a result of the train in front of us (the 14:21 from Paddington to Worcester Shrub Hill) having brake problems.

Eventually passed the offending train at Moreton-in-Marsh.

But now we're 40 late away from Pershore and we're being told that this one will terminate at Shrub Hill.

And we've just waited at Norton Junction while the GWR train from Warminster to Great Malvern, which would have been a useful connection, is sent in front of us.

I'm not familiar with the layout at Shrub Hill. Would the Great Malvern train have been able to get past if your train had gone in first?

No. But there is the option to share the platform (its divided by a 'mid-platform' signal) so the Malvern train could have been held in the front part and the Foregate Street train accepted in the rear part.

To be fair, the next train to Hereford was due only 10 mins after the service from London arrived, so the delay wasn't that excessive.

Excellent diagram showing Worcester layout at http://www.roscalen.com/signals/Worcester/

If ever there was a layout that was not fit for the modern railway, then just take a look at that layout at Worcester!  The map is slightly out of date now, as the cattle/milk dock platforms alongside Platform 1 are now lifted, and the siding at Henwick is no longer connected to the main lines, though I think there are still plans to alter the layout and provide a turnback siding there for the new IET services.  Minor alterations at Shrub Hill will also be required to accommodate 10-car IET's, assuming they're not going to use SDO which would limit the efficiency of the layout even more.

As for the mass of sidings and freight lines north of the platforms - the less said about their usefulness these days the better!  Rip it up and start again.  Though lack of money and architectural importance of the station buildings make that unlikely!

Indeed so. The Warminster - Great Malvern is operated by GWR, and would be on the same platform, whereas the 10-minutes-later Birmingham - Hereford is operated by London Midland and goes from the other platform, over the bridge. Personally I'd've thought that holding the GWR train would have given the delayed passengers the impression that GWR cared about them.

Alas, not the case.

Please don't get me started on Shrub Hill, though I suppose that it is an example of how the railways are falling apart. The maintenance of the buildings is non-existent. Most useful thing would be another visit from the Queen - the place got painted last time she came (a long time ago).

The "architectural importance" of the buildings isn't all that great, though it would be enormously improved by demolishing the dreadful 1960s office block in front of the station.

The car parking is minimal (and extortionate) and what there is is all on the west side of the station. It'd be sensible to have a car park on the east side of the station, probably on the (largely unused) freight lines.

The City Council missed a trick when the Warndon Villages housing was put in - they should have insisted that the developers paid for the rebuilding of the Newtown Road underbridge at the south end of the station. It's a single lane with traffic lights.