Great Western Coffee Shop

Tweet from GWR:

Upgrade work between Bristol Parkway and South Wales continues until next Friday 6 July. On Sunday 1 July the diversionary route via Gloucester is not available, trains to South Wales from London will terminate at Bristol Parkway for buses to Newport.

Lets hope GWR make every effort to run as many trains between London and Bristol Parkway as possible, unlike the last time the route via Gloucester was unavailable a couple of weeks ago.

1. At the risk of appearing a bit thick, isn't the idea of a diversionary route that it remains open while work is being done on the closed route?

2, Is there some reason that London - Hereford trains can't extend to Newport and west from there?

You would think so wouldn't you. But that's too much like commonsense, something that is lacking at times on the railway.

Do Train Managers sign Hereford-Newport? Also, isn't the pool of drivers who do sign (usually only ECS moves from Bristol St Phillips Marsh/Stoke Gifford-Hereford) somewhat limited?

Network Rail have a stated objective to minimise disruption to rail passengers due to Engineering works.
One would hope they have an exceptionally good reason to block
the diversionary route between Swindon and S.T. Jn via Kemble, Gloucester and 
Lydney for one of their Customer's major routes.
Running GWR trains from Paddington to Newport via Hereford is quite feasible with a little joined up thinking using pilot crews from other Passenger and Freight TOCS and it would allow passengers to avoid dreaded Bustitution, but it would likely mean longer journey times.
However at minimum GWR should get ATW to allow GWR passengers to use ATW services between Hereford and Newport / Cardiff for those passengers understandably wanting to avoid Bustitution.

It would be interesting to know what actual works Network Rail have planned that are also closing the S.Wales diversionary route on this coming Sunday 1/7/18

The closed line on Sunday is STJ to Newport, listed as OLE work and also "Track Maintenance" and "Remove Rail Defects". So while there are ATW shuttles from Gloucester to STJ, nothing is going through to Newport. NR may have a good reason to do that on one Sunday of the tunnel work, who knows?

For those on coaches, going to Newport is not such bad news as it's pretty direct by motorway. However, it's hard to tell whether they are running direct buses (or do they call at STJ?) and whether the resumed train is timed from them. Plus, of course, the time allowed for loading and unloading the coaches. Still, it probably beats an even longer diversion, if such exists tomorrow.

Well in that case there would have been no Padd to South Wales services anyway, so doing it during the Severn Tunnel closure looks the best time rather than having no services another time!

I suppose you could go via Craven Arms and Swansea!

Just for once I looks like GW have come up with the best solution in difficult circumstances (assuming that is that they hire adequate replacement busses). The line to Hereford is a long slow journey (3 hours plus), has I believe two longish single track sections and then it's another 50-odd minutes down to Newport.

An hour and a half to Parkway, say 15 minutes to get on your bus, and forty minutes to Newport doesn't look too bad as an alternative. I hope they have air conditioning!

Trains running from Newport to Hereford ... so that could be offered as an option.  Agreed it is much much longer especially in journey time and with line capacity issues, etc, there would be all sorts of considerations.  Agreed it's much easier just to run buses and not extend any existing North Cotswold trains to / from Swansea, but I do wonder if the passenger experience of a much longer rail journey would be far preferable to a bus for many.

Agreed the best solution IF GWR run the full timetabled train service between Paddington and Bristol Parkway to connect with the buses that will run. That’s been the problem that on Sundays GWR have failed to provide enough crew to run the planned timetable between Pad and Parkway.

Follow up on why people might choose to go via Hereford - http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=20022

And sadly, as some suspected, GWR didn't run the full timetable Parkway - Paddington.
At very least, the replacement bus I was on to Parkway (which was as far as I was going, so I didn't mind) had some passengers who were annoyed that GWR had cancelled the 16.45 service from Parkway to London, their choices then being either a train to Temple Meads and a 25 minute wait for the next London train, or an hour wait for the next direct service from Parkway. No idea if either of those options were cancelled too, but certainly some passengers getting pretty annoyed and surprised when asking the RRB driver if he could carry on to Temple Meads too, to just get back in reply "I've no idea whats going on with the trains". I suspect passengers probably expect there to be some competence and up thinking, maybe even having a rail employee on each bus!

The hourly South Wales service hasn't fared too well either.   

The 09:15 to Swansea was cancelled due to the points failure at Paddington
The 13:20 from Swansea (the return working of the above) was started from Bristol Parkway
The 14:15 to Swansea was terminated at Swindon due to a fault
The 18:20 from Swansea is cancelled.

Given that the normally twice an hour service as far as Cardiff is already reduced to hourly there have been some crowded trains on the route.

Yes sadly as expected quite a few services each way between Parkway and Paddington were cancelled.

Looking on the bright side, GWR did manage to run the full timetabled service between Swansea and Newport. Not much comfort if you were trying to get to/from London I know.

Certainly been done in the past. Not sure why it's not an option this time however.

Remember taking this photo a fair few years back...

I can remember when there were regular services run from Bristol - Hereford and beyond via the Severn Tunnel and Maindee East Curve avoiding a station stop at Newport. Also travelled the Maindee East Curve on Mystery Tours in the late 60's which ended up variously at Rhyl, Llandudno and Aberystwyth. Them were the days.