Great Western Coffee Shop

* Target running rate - 99% of trains
* Across the FGW area for the last 48 hours - 97.90%
* Yesterday on the TransWilts - 33.3%
See http://www.savethetrain.org.uk/running.php

First ran just one service out of three.

20080601        17:20   Westbury        18:05   Swindon complete cancellation, staffing issues
Full report: "This train has been cancelled.This is due to a member of train crew being unavailable. "

20080601        18:25   Swindon 19:07   Westbury        complete cancellation, staffing issues
Full report: "This train has been cancelled.This is due to a member of train crew being unavailable. "

The subject line asks "New high in cancellations?".  Sadly not.  What is sad is that it's still happening a lot more than it should.

I'd say there isn't much of an option cancelling the Swindon - Westbury if you cancel the Westbury - Swindon as they're formed from the same unit and same traincrew!

Wasn't so much the cancellations this past weekend, more shortrunning services due to unavailable train crew. I thought we had seen the back of this problem.

From the purely selfish (I am a passenger, not a railway expert) viewpoint, I look at 3 trains scheduled and only one actually ran as being 66% cancellation.   

I consider cancellations to be more serious ones if (a) there's a long gap to the next service and / or (b) there's a lot of passengers who would use the service.  In the case of TransWilts on a Sunday, the gap is 12 hours so that applies.  In the case of passengers, the Southbound train is only just staring to recover after not running at all through 2007, so there are considerably more empty seats than passengers at the moment