Great Western Coffee Shop

question as in the header

which is "services cancelled is there a published list?" ...

No single list, I don't think - it depends on when they were cancelled.

* Some services are cancelled permanently or until an alternative is provided - such as the through trains from Trowbridge to places like London (Waterloo) and Brighton, the "super fasts" from Bristol to London, the Bristol to Manchester service, etc

* Some services are cancelled weeks ahead because of engineering works, or because the trains that would normally be used are diverted onto services for Glastonbury or the Cheltenham Gold Cup.

* Some services are cancelled a few days ahead for reasons such as industrial action or predicted extreme weather

* Some services are cancelled overnight when it turns out that the rail industry doesn't have enough people to actually run them, or not enough trains in working condition, or there's predicted flooding of the line on the Looe branch or something.

* And some services are cancelled "on the fly" - points or level crossing failure, train broken down, staff member taken in, person hit by train, etc

Sorry - no single list.

And then there are trains shown as running on time which become cancelled after their due time.

Train in shown as on time on station's screens, then when its running time arrives, the screen suddenly shows it running a few minutes late. After a few minutes it then shows many minutes late, and after many minutes passes, it suddenly shows it as 'cancelled'.

This has happened a few times when I've been waiting at Oldfield Park over the years. I assume in each case, it was late running train that it was decided to run through the station without stopping. It is certainly very frustrating.

I have a couple of unusual cancellation tales

About a year ago my old school friend who now lives in Berlin was over in the UK and announced that he’d never travelled on the Melksham line and, as he was going to be in Chippenham anyway I tagged along with him. The plan was to go down on the 1310 or so ex-CPM and come back on the 1415 or so. The first leg went like clockwork.

We got back in the train at Westbury. The booked departure time came; the booked departure time went. After about 10 minutes the TM came on the PA saying that there was an incident between Chippenham and Swindon and that the train would terminate at Chippenham. It idly crossed my mind that that might have caused a platform occupation problem at Chippenham.

A few minutes later the TM came on again to say the train was now cancelled and we should travel via Bath. We ended up at Bath and waited for the 1532 ex-Bristol. This train was showing as on time on the platform departure boards but was showing as cancelled on whatever online web source he was looking at. Eventually an IET turned up running wrong road and a trainload of passengers got off and we were told this was the 1543 to Paddington

I found out when I got home that this “incident” was actually this train that had been held for an hour at Swindon and had clearly been terminated short at Bath to regain its booked working

I’ll tell the other tale later as this post is already rather long!!

My other cancellation story comes from July 2018 when I was off on a pilgrimage to Rose Grove. For our younger members this was the site of one of the last 3 operational steam depots on BR, the other two being Carnforth and Lostock Hall, and they all closed in August 1968. This was in connection with a “50 years on” series of photographs that I was producing at the time.

I was also taking the opportunity to travel on the Todmorden to Burnley line via Copy Pit, a line that had little if any passenger trains in 1968. I therefore presented myself at Manchester Victoria for the 1304 departure via the route. The train was showing as on time on the platform information screen.

Suddenly the screen changed to “cancelled.” Muttering curses because I wouldn’t now be going via Copy Pit, I crossed the footbridge to get a train to Blackburn via Bolton, but by the time I got there my original train was showing as on time again. Muttering more curses I crossed back to the original platform but found the train cancelled again. But a few seconds later it was showing as on time again. It was clearly time to ask questions about what the devil was going on.

It turned out that there was a signalling failure at Wigan and the train, a Southport to Blackburn via Manchester ad Todmorden, was the wrong side of it. But trains couldn’t travel in the other direction either, so someone had the initiative to take a 2 car Pacer (for it was 2018) that was working a Blackburn to Southport that wasn’t going to get beyond Manchester, and send it back to Blackburn as a replacement for the unit stuck at Wigan

It appears that the changing information display was happening because someone was trying to manually input the information whilst the automated system “knew” the train was cancelled so kept overriding the manual input

I did get to Rose Grove via my preferred route.

On case anybody is interested, here is my album "50 years on" on Flickr

https://www.flickr.com/photos/93122458@N08/albums/72157684758170682