I was "talking trains" with one of our elected representatives (town and regional) yesterday, and he raised with me the frequent cancellation on the TransWilts section. With a huge relief, I can confirm that the frequent cancellations
are now historic; gone (for the last couple of years) are the days when the first train to be cancelled was the TransWilts service on its Swindon to Westbury section.
The "train issues" map we have at the top of this page was originally written to give an immediate flag up of TransWilts issues, and I noted an ominous line this morning ... turns out to be:
05:18 Gloucester to Southampton Central due 08:09 This train has been delayed at Gloucester by 34 minutes and is now 33 minutes late at Chippenham.
This train will be terminated at Romsey at 08:28.
This train will no longer call at Southampton Central.
This is due to waiting for a train crew member. Message Received :30/07/2012 07:17
OK - now that is a
sensible revision in the circumstances. Passengers from Salisbury and Romsey for Southampton will already have caught the train 15 minutes later, and any through passengers from Warminster or north thereof to Southampton will only have a 20 minute wait. In days gone by, I wouldn't have been surprised by "this train will be terminated at Swindon and restarted from Westbury", with a knock on change to the 07:04 Westbury to Cheltenham starting from Swindon.
My conversation yesterday, though, reminds me of the need to continuously champion the steady and significant performance increase. Somewhat late running trains from time to time are not a huge problem, and indeed a turnback at Chippenham of a TransWilts train, or at Westbury (if the Portsmouth calls at Dilton Marsh) won't be a problem. But - based on a sad history that transcended from the Wessex days to the early part of the current regime, there's still a lot of work to do in changing the perception of frequent cancallations.
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