Great Western Coffee Shop

Another dreadful day, with 6 out of 14 trains cancelled at Melksham, and various other cancellations around the area too.   You would have thought that having cut services in a plan ahead of time they could have matched up available crews and available lines, without having to take a second bite of the cancellation cherry, wouldn't you?

When you look for a comparison with airlines, look at the Which survey from last month (https://www.which.co.uk/reviews/airlines/article/best-and-worst-airlines-a5EhC8N851et)



If 2% is "dreadful", what is the GWR performance at Melksham, which is 9% late cancellations over the last six months.  Yes, they haven't been as bad for the last few weeks and I notice that Real Time Trains ranked them 1st out of 2500+ on 15th January - but drilling down I realised that only 2 out of 18 trains had been left after engineering work cancellations ... and they ran exactly on time that day.   Our regular commuter to Southampton, who normally gets there at 08:10 (needs 08:30) didn't drag in until 10:10 on the "rail replacement bus" - the buses were clean, and ran to their schedule, but replacements allowing people to go about their normal daily routine they were not!

Seeds of improvement until this weekend - but the Which? report reminds us what a long way there is to go to reach the reliability standard of other modes of transport, and what the paying customer should be able to expect.