2C26 1340 Plymouth to Penzance (175002 to Liskeard) sat down at Liskeard and sulking.
Due to a broken down train at Liskeard disruption is expected until 16:00 05/02.
Train services between Plymouth and Penzance may be cancelled or delayed.
Customer Advice
-
What has happened?
-
A train has broken down at Liskeard, blocking the line towards Penzance.
-
What are we doing about it?
-
Our engineers are working with the crew on the train to find the cause of the fault. We are currently unable to run trains from Plymouth towards Penzance. This will also begin to affect services from Penzance towards Plymouth, as trains will not be in the right place.
2C27 1255 Exeter St Davids to Menheniot Signal Dm260 now sitting at said signal for an hour now.

 
I, too, was caught up in the knock-on effects of that earlier failure of a train this morning, somewhere around Stroud apparently.

My own train towards home, from Kemble to Swindon, was initially reported as 'cancelled', then 'reinstated but 11 minutes late'.  I arrived at Kemble station, where to add insult to injury the booking office and waiting room were closed all day 'due to staffing issues'. There were many passengers, effectively out in the open, conferring about the delay to their arrival in London - a few of which, I overheard, were time-critical, for business meeting reasons, for example.

The information boards and announcements were then updated fairly frequently, with the delay increasing steadily from 11 minutes to, eventually, 29 minutes. [Image from here is not available to guests]

The other two trains involved in my journey home (Swindon to Temple Meads and Temple Meads to Nailsea) were spot on time throughout.

 
That is... really very poor. Sorry that people including you were on the receiving end of it.

Mark

 

 
What the lack of services means to an evening meeting in Trowbridge

From home at 16:05 ... at ASDA, Trowbridge, 16:55 - 50 minute journey for 17:00 meeting (bus)

The plan was 20:00 start homeward, 20:12 train, 20:22 Melksham Station, 20:50 home.
But turned into ... 19:00 from ASDA ... home at 22:20 - 200 minute journey.

We finished in good time, and I was quite happy to sit and do various writing up and things on my laptop in the "Rose end Crown" up to 20:00.  But - from "on time" the train switched to "Delayed" and eventually to 21:12 - a 60 minute delay.  At 21:12, it switched to being a few minutes later than that, the 21:25, and then it went "Cancelled".  And at 21:25, 165101 went through without stopping - I suspected it was the delayed 20:12, moving the empty train back up to Gloucester - turned out to be in service, but skipping all intermediate stations except Swindon.

The 21:22 - next train as far as Swindon - was shown as "on time", then 21:26, then 21:30. And it arrived and left at that time - 8 minutes late. It came to a halt just to the north of Trowbridge - waiting at a red signal - and we eventually go to Melksham Station at 21:45 - 13 minutes late.  Would have been home at 22:05, but stopped to get a takeaway for Lisa and me and that added time - far too late to start cooking at home.

Information at Trowbridge - appalling. Departure board "Delayed" not informative.  Impossible suggestions being made about 2 trains within a minute of each other which was clearly not able to happen. Announcemnets advising people to wait for the "next fastest train" which, however, was (yet) shown as delayed but was very cleraly going to be.   Help point when I asked about alternatives to get to Melksham offered to give me the travelline phone number to call about buses.  Train manager dispatched train at Trowbridge and disappeared into rear cab, not seen again until door opened at Melksham.  No other rail staff seen the whole evening.

Lisa suggested I was too principled sticking it out and should have looked for a taxi, though they can be sparse in the evening in Trowbridge. and with others waiting too, and five of us off the train eventually at Melksham, that might of been an idea.  It was not offered by the help point person, nor were there any indications of the train running screen or in announcements to help / mask that suggestion..  At one point I was considering D1 bus to Bath and 273 bus to Melksham with a midnight arrival home!

 

I have updated my "logging" page to strike through trains that are supposed to stop at Melksham, but run through without calling.  From a passenger viewpoint, I consider them to be cancellations.

 
Whether or not Mark Hehir would want to be reinstated given the shocking way he's been treated by Metroline is unclear, however there's a petition signed by over 135,000 people requesting it as well as the pressure being applied by political leaders of all stripes.

If anyone who hasn't already done so wishes to append their moniker, here's the link.

https://www.change.org/p/reinstate-hero-bus-driver-mark-hehir

 

By the Riverside?

 

Chaos this evening ...  WWRUG Committee meeting finished around 19:15 in Trowbridge and I have just got home at 22:30.       Particularly galling to see trains going through Trowbridge without stopping ... the young lady waiting for the 20:12 there and headed home to Stroud will still not be there.

 
20:06 Westbury to Cheltenham Spa due 22:06
20:06 Westbury to Cheltenham Spa due 22:06 will no longer call at Trowbridge, Melksham, Chippenham, Kemble, Stroud and Stonehouse.
It has been delayed at Westbury and is now 75 minutes late.
This is due to a fault with the signalling system.

 
https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:K61700/2026-02-06/detailed

Another go from Wolverton. Very late in the day.

 

 
I know our drivers have been talking about this . I can say its put a lot of drivers on edge making us drivers wonder if we have issues on the.bus why she intervene

 
175007 was in public service today.

 
Very sad to see 'real' ferries laid-up and then gone.

 

Back in October 1977 I spent a few days at the Slapton Field Studies Center as part of my A Level Geography course.  The whole group were walking back along the coast path from Start Point but myself and a few others were among the stragglers.  The ones ahead of us actually saw (and heard) a wartime mine, discoverd that day on Slapton Sands, being detonated by the bomb disposal chaps.
We didn't see or hear a thing, which rather puts a perspective on my definition of "stragglers".

 
A quality page on the last days of Stranraer as a ferry terminal.

Mark

https://www.niferry.co.uk/photo-feature-10-years-on-part-1-farewell-stranraer/

 
When I first visited the beach in the 1960s it still had the notices warning of unexploded ordnance.

 

Perhaps they should look for a northern route going the other side of Dartmoor .... oh ... wait ....

 
I read that as "I still have a large shell from the beach", and went pale.

Mark

 

Well, David Lammy is a populist jerk.

As for the Metropolitan Police, the less said about their abilities the better.

 
There was this sad case a few years ago at a ford between Greenham Common and Headley.  I used the footbridge last year. Barriers now block the ford, but presumably can be unlocked by local farmers using agricultural equipment.

There are also many videos on YouTube of drivers failing to get through Rufford Lane Ford, now closed because of the number of emergency callouts.

 
I took  part a couple of times in a cycle race that started and finished in Totnes and went along the road. I also did some recreational cycling in the very hilly lanes (on one occasion a brake cable had snapped, which made descending a bit dodgy).

On the news last night there was a reference to the tank park where, presumably, Ken Small's tank  is still parked.

I still have a large sea shell from the beach.

 
The presence of (severely deformed) sheet piling indicates that this is almost certainly the same A379 section that was destroyed by Storm Emma in 2018.

In which case Devon County Council and/or National Highways should probably be looking for a much more robust solution this time.

 
Stranraer, the service to it, passenger numbers are an interesting case.

https://www.passenger.chat/STR.html

I tend to make comparisons to places I know ... and Stranraer has about a half of the population of my home town of Melksham, and about half the passenger journeys per annum.   It does, however, differ, in that it's a the end of a line serving lots of other places along the way. 

We've seen similar in the past with buses from Bath to Easterton where the intermediate traffic from Bath has a business case, but the final Market Lavington to Easterton leg was a business case "joke" - however, and cut backs without alternative would have had a detrimental effect on both the places cut and crucially on the route as a whole, cutting off a chunk of custom that helped with the overall route economy.