Great Western Coffee Shop

Yikes - that's a lot of key commutes!


OK ... so it is running - just shorter.

That will be very packed indeed from Warminster to Salisbury, and from Romsey to Southampton.  It runs pretty close to the path used in "normal" hours by the Cardiff to Portsmouth service, but it's too early in the morning for that service to have woken from its slumbers!   ;)

Good case in future timetables when the Gloucester to Swindon leg becomes a through IET to London for the Cardiff to Portsmouth to take over south of Trowbridge in its regular pattern, and the Swindon - Southampton leg to drop back around 20 minutes, feeding into the Three Rivers service from Salisbury.

Noting that JourneyCheck tells us that there's a new train if we know where to look, OpenTrainTimes is showing 9M02 (its new calling code) between Melksham and Trowbridge as I write, and Tiger is showing it as normal.   However, I understand that text messages sent out to tell of its cancellation as 2M02 didn't notify of a new train in its place, and that it's shown as cancelled on the app;  nice way to reduce passenger numbers to fit into a 153, I suppose!

Another example of the recurring problem of the inability of 153s to use platform 3 at Salisbury

I have tweeted GWR on more than one occasion to point out that this duplication of trains when headcode changed to Class 9 but the Tweeter people are the "messengers" and not the people who are behind decisions.   I suggested that they just didn't publish it in the public domain to avoid unnecessary confusion but the reply eventually received was that it was automatically generated.   That doesn't wash because whenever a Turbo is put on a Cardiff run and has to be amended to run as a Class 9 due to the restriction through Platform 1 at Newport, these instances haven't been shown on Journey Check.