Great Western Coffee Shop

Is this a record?   53 services schedules along the Thingley to Bradford Junction line today;  Paddington to Swansea running from Reading to Swindon via Berks and Hants, Trowbridge, and Chippenham.

7 a.m. to 7 p.m. - 40 services scheduled - which I make a service every 18 minutes.  Geeeeeze!

Trainspotter's paradise.   ;D

That's a song by Stevie Wonder isn't it?  :P ;) ;D

A train every 18 minutes for 12 hours ... over a single line section that takes a minimum of 12 minutes to pass over.  That's best junction-to-junction time, Thingley East to Bradford Junction. Add a minute for getting the train clear and the next one coming the other way onto the junction, add a further minute or 2 to 12 of the trains for a Melksham stop, and a couple more minutes for a couple of freights that were in there, with our of pattern and train problems on at least one freight train yesterday and a remarkably good job was done.   I know it's all in the course of a normal days work, but congratulations to all concerned.

Yes - one of the Transwilts trains was diverted / reversed at Bathampton (but thank you for laying on taxis to / from Melksham;  I hope passengers and taxis got properly connected which is an ongoing logistical nightmare.  And a number of the trains were a few minutes late; in this context "is that all" unless there was an ongoing connection into an infrequent service to be missed.  Finally, one train turned around at Chippenham to pick up its schedule; passenger counts show that up to about half of the passengers on a train leaving Chippenham for Trowbridge actually join at Chippenham so it wouldn't have been empty - but I do hope suitable arrangements were made for those who turned up for it as scheduled at Swindon.

To some extent this is a "log post" where I can look back and remind myself what's possible - testing the limits.   An intermediate block signal would have allowed the saving of around 5 minutes on trains that followed each other, a crossover (and perhaps a higher speed one) at Thingley main junction would save around 2 minutes on each cycle, more doors available at Melksham would save up to a minute on some services there; that's a far less exact science as you only need to have to get the wheelchair ramp out ..., but becomes much more of an issue as passenger numbers rise.

The line only survived from 1966 until 1985 because of freight and diversions - so in spite of some holdups and issues yesterday, the general mood amongst the knowledgeable should be well content, congratulations to everyone who helped it go off so smoothly, and a huge THANK YOU for not replacing the local trains with buses as that decimates, disappoints, damages, de-motivates, drains our customer base.   We do all need to strive together to ensure that on these occasions things work just as well, or even better; with the line maturing we're moving out of our "honeymoon period" and into a period where many / most of our users don't know fully the history or the operational issues, and are unlikely to be quite as forgiving.

.......not looking too good today?  ???


Cancellations to services between Westbury and Chippenham


Due to a fault with the signalling system between Trowbridge and Chippenham the line is blocked. Disruption is expected until the end of the day.
Train services between Westbury and Chippenham will be cancelled.
Further Information
We are attempting to resource road transport to cover the train service. Details of the road replacement will be publicised once it is confirmed.
For more detailed information please contact a member of station staff or make use of the Customer Help Point systems available.

The signalling system was obviously overworked yesterday, it's never had to do so much!

Yeah ... I swore when I saw that


Noting "Disruption is expected until the end of the day."  ... and thank goodness (I suppose) that it wasn't a fault of the same sort / taking the same time to fix somewhere like Reading West!

Points failure at Bradford Junction.

Hmmm ... I would suggest a Melksham to Swindon shuttle ... if we had facilities like toilets and cafe available at Melksham Station ... next year, perhaps ...

Are you hinting that it would have been given much higher priority (and sorted sooner) had it been at Reading West?  I reckon it probably would.  It probably would have been yesterday as well with all the diversions going through Melksham.  Fortunate that it didn't happen then?

I was wondering, yes.   Not so much hinting but more asking.

I'm not sure what it's like now with the new Didcot control centre covering to Thingley, but rumour had it that in the days when Swindon passed trains to Westbury, the system they used was only one step newer than a block bell, and so old that it would routinely fall over and be hard to get the spare parts for.  In the days there were 4 trains a day passing through Melksham, this ancient equipment was no big deal. Now we have days with 53 ....

So I suppose I'm asking "does it take so long because it's old and hard to fix, or because it's low priority, or a bit of both?"   Or (if it's a points failure at Bradford Junction) could it be that the points are clipped for the secondary main line to Bath, and the engineers don't want to take the junction out of traffic completely for a period while they install fully working replacement components?

Probably a bit of both to be honest.  If it is a tricky to find spare part then of course it's much less likely you'd have such equipment signalling trains at a more critical location in the first place, but there's no doubt the pressure from GWR would have been much greater to sort it out had it happened yesterday, indeed, NR would themselves have been under much more onus to reduce the delay minutes which would have racked up quickly. 

I don't have access to the internal systems today to find out more details unfortunately, though if anyone does...?

Thanks - I'm not screaming for an answer today, but a message (personal if preferred) over the next few days would be good to help us understand the metrics;  we know the TransWilts is a bit of a balancing act at times and want to be pragmatic, without always being the last to be fixed because we're too darned tolerant  :(

Unfortunately I believe your thinking to be correct, had it been yesterday then most likely would have been done ASAP.

How long would this normally take to fix? Closing the junction for say an hour may be tolerable, if its likely to take 2-3 + hours however then closing the line for that long, with the level of service it has today (with extras to Paddington etc) for the sake of (I'm sorry to say) just 11 Transwilts services means it would be very low priority indeed, and more worthwhile fixing at the end of service, especially as all passengers on that route (excluding Melksham) have an alternative option (via Bath)

Is there a case to double track this area?

Single tracking is all well and good on seldom used lines, but the success of TransWilts and the use of the track this weekend suggests that double tracking should be considered, or at least in part.

Double tracking is no longer the silly idea it once was, but even it wouldn't in itself sort out the issue of freight trains leaving Westbury and having to keep ahead of passenger trains behind them catching up - no lay-bys to Swindon.  Technically the main line through Chippenham is bi-directional, but the chance of the second line being available for an overtaking move is low, and signallers have to be careful as one of them discovered with the sleeper last week ... with two trains waiting for the single line at Chippenham - one on each line - and one coming up the single line.  Double track may come back in the next 20 years, but would/will require a second platform at Melksham, I suspect a rebuild of the bridge over the Avon, and realignment of much of the existing track; not cheap, though I don't know of any significant (building) construction on the old trackbed.

Much, much more modest than doubling - see upthread - are an intermediate signal to allow trains to follow at (say) 10 minute headway, and relaying of the junctions with higher speed limits and (at Thingley) the crossover close by where the 'branch' leaves the mainline. But these little fixes only give some extra capacity.   Going further, a loop at the junctions (becoming double junctions so that a train can wait clear of the main line and one can pass it going the other way) would help with robustness.  Lay that out such that it can be used as a bypass / holding line too, and your getting somewhere useful.   A long bi-directional loop alongside the unused platform face at Chippenham would also provide for this bypassing, and would allow a train to be turned whilst expresses and freight passed both ways. Would have been useful, I suspect, on Saturday when a TransWilts train was turned at Chippenham amongst the heavy traffic - but I suspect the main use would be for bypassing, with trains in the future - coming up from Southampton (previous stop Melksham) and Bristol (previous stop Corsham) carrying on to Royal Wootton Bassett and Swindon as a minimum.

A loop somewhere near Melksham could also be useful. At the station means doubling the station or having it only as a bi-directional freight loop. Platforms on both lines means cost and (unless bidirectional) removes the overtaking possibility.  Platform on the loop and on the same side off the end of the loop (Penryn solution) also a possibility.

I'm not best informed to evaluate the options - or what might be needed.  Nor to evaluate whether a significant increase in capacity between Westbury and Chippenham would result in a new but wider (wide enough?) bottleneck from Royal Wootton Bassett into Swindon, or to the east of Swindon if the majority of traffic carried on to the Didcot area.  Much depends on what all this extra traffic (on a regular basis) would be ... performance envelope, need to run to time and possibility of running late, etc.     You could have the Southampton service, and the Taunton to Nuneaton train, each running hourly.  Passenger traffic also on the Bristol Metro - phase 5 adds half hourly trains looping Bath - B-o-A - (restored chord) Melksham - (restored chord or Chippenham reverse) Corsham - Bath. Then you have the London to Weymouth IEP which runs every hour, following the old road from Paddington to Swindon where it detaches from the Gloucester and Cheltenham Spa service and carries on via Westbury, Castle Cary, Yeovil Pen Mill and Dorchester. The TransWilts also handing major freight traffic from Southampton to the north.  Much of this sounds fanciful - with it all, I suspect you need to double and lay-bys ... but who knows in the next 50 years?

I wonder if it is fixed this morning??

Not clever ...


... having said which, it's 06:48 and I'm seated on the 06:38 from Melksham to Southampton coming in to Bradford Junction ... admittedly just stopped at the signal off the single line.

And 6 more cancellations ... looks like I caught the ONLY train to call at Melksham from start of business yesterday until later this afternoon.    "Technicians on site from 4 a.m." I understand ... which beggars the question "why did they wait until 4 a.m. to start fixing it?"     

Not a happy bunny this morning.  I'm all right folks, but most passengers aren't going to be ... and I can't believe it should take 36 hours to fix a failure!

Improving capacity through Melksham and possibly reinstating Bradford North Loop would be a fraction of the cost of HS2.

The rest of the money for HS2 could the spent on similar schemes throughout the country to relieve bottlenecks and imoved capacity.

It would benefit far more people than HS2.

Ideally we would have a rolling programme of electrification and capacity improvements using the GWML team Newbury to Westbusry and Bath and Thingley to Trowbridge with the Bradford North Loop then Swindon Severn Tunnel Junction, South from Bristol (Westbury?) to West Country Country.

The Midland Team could do Bristol Derby (all routes: Main Line, Via Worcester, Kidderminster Camp Hill Line, Nuneaton Leicester)

Back to normal now apparently.

And again ...


With trains shown as cancelled up to and including the peak commuter train home ...

And again ...

And

......you'll be getting that LTV feeling Graham.....except you seem to get prompt (ish) road replacement! Good Luck!

Unusually, due to the severity of the disruption described above, the TransWilts CRP asked GWR for feedback on what went wrong ... and we have received a good and substantive response which is available on the CRP board at http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=17620.0 (that's the board that adds TransWilts minutiae into your feed - please let me know if you want to be added there. In summary - a problem that turned out to be harder to reliably fix than it had appeared at first, requiring possession of a section of line that (on Sunday) was the only way through from London to the Bristol area, and on Monday was pretty darned busy too.

Many thanks to BobM for following this up .. to Network Rail for the fix, and to GWR for informing us well after the event. During the event, alas, it's really hard to track and forecast fixes and there were a couple of curved balls in this case which meant that feedback on prognosis turned out to be optimistic, and fix time extended.  I'm reassured that failed components have been replaced and the problem should not recur.

Blooming Transwilts unit getting in the way  ::)

Both should be right time by destination, and my understanding is that in railway terms, that's all that matters  ;D

Seriously - three trains every hour on the single track's as close to the wire as the main line out of Paddington on a Friday evening; an intermediate signal would help - or "they" could simply call all the HSTs at Westbury, Trowbridge and Melksham in lieu of the 153, and I'm sure we would not object.  Heck - with notice, we would promote day trip opportunities.

With the journey time to/from South Wales already greatly increased I feel that three additional calls would be too much of an ask. A call at Westbury would also entail a second reverse. The diverted South Wales services are already reversing at Swindon.