Great Western Coffee Shop

I am looking to you, my "in the Know proffesionals". I am due to go to Exeter from Reading tomorow for the weekend, returning on Monday. However, as someone who was trapped in my house for 4 days last year, I am concerned with snow on the way, not being able to get back to Reading.

How bad would it need to be for the trains from Exeter to be affected?

Any thoughts?

I know its really hard, becuase depending on which weather forcast you look at, depends on how bad its supposed to be.

I have pre-booked tickits, leaving Reading about 10ish tomorow and leaving Exeter on Monday, about 1130ish.

Thanks

shouldnt see it being a problem, hope it isnt actualy as im going the opposite way to you on saturday morining

Even if it does snow, Devon snowfall is never usually that spectacular.

Even when it was really bad snow early last year, HSTs were still making it from the SW to Paddington, even though the media had "mass disruption" reports.

the HSTs were about the only units running without much disruption last year

One of the User Groups (Tarka Line I think) did a brilliant poster about how well the local trains performed in the snow last year. The media didn't want to know of course - only being interested in bad news about public transport.

Rain can be more of a problem here than snow - the main line north of Exeter sometimes gets flooded. As it's been dry for several days I can't see that being a problem this weekend!

It's incredibly rare to get weather in November that could be bad enough to disrupt trains in the south-west.  I know the climate's slowly going mad, but I'd be very surprised if you had any problems.

Thanks everyone, Im going and I have every confidence that I will get home on Monday.

Welcome to the Coffee Shop forum, Ross H.

CfN.  :)

It's only ever the horns on the 14x / 15x that give trouble in snowy conditions. The snow bungs up the gauze on the trumpet and stops them sounding. Easily cured by remounting them on the back of the cowcatcher facing downwards rather than forward.

We went, we had a fab time (though very cold). No snow and we got back no problems. Except for the fact our reserved seats were not reserved, due to the late arrival of the batch? I turfed out the person that had sat in our seets anyway, and enjoyed the trip home.  :)

Good job it wasn't me sitting in your reserved seats or you wouldn't have got very far ;)

If the reservation labels aren't put out on a train then your seat reservation is deemed not to have been provided, so technically you can't "turf" someone out of a seat because even if you have the reservation coupon for it they have every right to sit there.

Glad you had a trouble-free trip though.