Great Western Coffee Shop

Sharing here - from https://www.gwr.com/Strike - I may merge ths with the general strikes thread at a later point.  What a damaging thing to be happening in the UK rail industry!   A business that says to its customers "seek alternative ways to make your journey" in anything but exceptional circumstances is doing itself no good for its future.

Friday 4 November

Trains will run as planned with some minor changes to late-night services. Please check before you travel.

The Night Riviera sleeper service will not operate.

Saturday 5 November – Strike Day

An extremely limited service will operate. Services will start at 07:30 and all journeys must be completed before 18:30.

Rugby fans attending the Wales-New Zealand Autumn International at the Principality Stadium should not travel by train as there will be no services after the match.

A very limited service will run on the following routes between:

London Paddington and Bristol Temple Meads
London Paddington and Cardiff Central
London Paddington and Oxford
Reading and Basingstoke
Oxford and Didcot Parkway
Cardiff Central and Westbury via Bristol Parkway
Bristol Temple Meads and Weston-super-Mare
Branch lines serving Windsor and Marlow
Avoid travelling and seek alternative ways to make your journey. If you are intending to travel on these routes, please only do so if absolutely necessary. Trains that are operating will be extremely busy.

Sunday 6 November

Trains will continue to be disrupted. Trains will start later and there will be a reduced level of service throughout the day.

Avoid travelling and seek alternative ways to make your journey. If you are intending to travel on these routes, please only do so if absolutely necessary. Trains that are operating will be extremely busy.

The Night Riviera sleeper service will not operate.

Monday 7 November – Strike Day

An extremely limited service will operate. Services will start at 07:30 and all journeys must be completed before 18:30.

A very limited service will run on the following routes between:

London Paddington and Bristol Temple Meads
London Paddington and Cardiff Central
London Paddington and Oxford
Reading and Basingstoke
Oxford and Didcot Parkway
Cardiff Central and Westbury via Bristol Parkway
Bristol Temple Meads and Weston-super-Mare
Branch lines serving Windsor, Marlow and Henley-on-Thames
Avoid travelling and seek alternative ways to make your journey. If you are intending to travel on these routes, please only do so if absolutely necessary. Trains that are operating will be extremely busy.

The Night Riviera sleeper service will not operate.

Tuesday 8 November

Trains will continue to be disrupted. Trains will start later and there will be a reduced level of service throughout the day.

Avoid travelling and seek alternative ways to make your journey. If you are intending to travel on these routes, please only do so if absolutely necessary. Trains that are operating will be extremely busy.

The Night Riviera sleeper service will not operate.

Wednesday 9 November – Strike Day

An extremely limited service will operate. Services will start at 07:30 and all journeys must be completed before 18:30.

A very limited service will run only on the following routes:

London Paddington and Bristol Temple Meads
London Paddington and Cardiff Central
London Paddington and Oxford
Reading and Basingstoke
Oxford and Didcot Parkway
Cardiff Central and Westbury via Bristol Parkway
Bristol Temple Meads and Weston-super-Mare
Branch lines serving Windsor, Marlow and Henley-on-Thames
Avoid travelling and seek alternative ways to make your journey. If you are intending to travel on these routes, please only do so if absolutely necessary. Trains that are operating will be extremely busy.

The Night Riviera sleeper service will not operate.

Thursday 10 November

Trains will start later than usual with some morning services cancelled. A reduced timetable will be in operation, please check before you travel.

The Night Riviera sleeper service will operate.

That will cause utter chaos in Cardiff - it's normally hard work when the trains are running.

You can bet your bottom dollar that the bruvvers will have their eye on the matches coming up at Twickenham on consecutive weekends too.

Ironic really that with the collapse in business travel and rise in hybrid working, midweek strikes are really causing no more than inconvenience, but weekend action like this will really create problems.

Yes, that's why they're often targeting Saturday's as I suspect pre-covid it would always have been a weekday.

Not sure that Rugby fixtures are big enough to target specifically though.  By and large whatever Saturday you choose you will cause lots of inconvenience, especially this time of year with Christmas markets about to start and shoppers trying to head out in their masses, along with full programmes of football fixtures and so on.

.. and then add in planned engineering works...
As an example, Sat 5th & Sun 6th buses should replace trains west of St Austell and on the Falmouth branch.
Now I presume these won't operate on the Saturday but will on the Sunday

That is what happened during the Oxford works! They saw no point in running the booked buses from Banbury via Oxford to Didcot if you couldn't get further. But trains did run Didcot to Reading, and Reading Basingstoke, so some journeys might have been made.

Presumably cheaper to forego the likely fates & cancel the buses. So the DfT instructed that to happen.

ON the better side, note more services to more destinations than in previous strikes.

On Saturday, 5th ... I'm headed out for Act 3 of Interail.  So it's bus to Bath, bus to Bristol Airport, deep breath through the horrors of that airport as reported by JayMac and off to somewhere that's strikingly warmer and strikingly not striking railways .  At GWR's request, I have sought and found an alternative; for their sake, I hope it's not so good that I stick with it when trains are running normally again.

Hopefully your experience will be nearer that of Mrs T, who was on the A4 bus to Bath only 35 minutes after landing at Bristol Airport (with hold bag to collect).