Great Western Coffee Shop

This morning (23/07/2007) being the first working day after the weekend of the great deluge I was surprised that the service between Gloucester and Bristol was expected to be near normal except that in the early hours an engineering machine decide to misbehave and derailed itself at Wickwar.

It was however indicated that single line working would be in operation with one train an hour in either direction and delays of up to 45 minutes..

I took a friend to the station at Yate to catch the 0742 into Bristol and was met at the station by the ticket seller who had posted a notice on the ticket machine stating that the service was a bit of a hit and miss situation this morning and to buy tickets on the train or at the barrier at BPW or BRI.

At about 0750 he told passengers to make their way to the up line
(Gloucester) platform as the 0742 would arrive on that platform and would be about 18 minutes late.

Passengers did that and at 0800 a Virgin service passed through the station travelling north. With that I went and found my friend and remarked that no train would arrive for Bristol for at least another 50 or more minutes as there is no crossover between Yate and Cam & Dursley so with a 20 minute allowing for a reduced speed journey to CDU for the Voyager, 10 minutes faffing about with the ground frame at CDU to cross over a southbound service to the Up Charfield line and then 20 minutes for the FGW service to get to Yate.

My friend and another two persons left and travelled into work by car which the driver had already paid a parking fee for.

Meanwhile my estimate wasnt too bad as about 0845 the headlights of a Voyager appeared round the bend north of Yate travelling at a slow speed so it looked as if the Voyager was going to make a special stop as they have done so in the past when there been cancellations of peak period FGW services.

Hopes were raise by the waiting passengers, umbrellas were lowered and the Voyager just continued on through the platform NON STOP at 10MPH.

And the passengers just waited and numbers diminished as further passengers set off into Bristol by other means, and they waited and.patiently waited and very patiently waited until at 0926 a 4-car 158 (2 X 158) drew to a stand at Yate.

So much for our totally disjointed privatise railway system, why could'nt the southbound Voyager been given a special stop order this morning in view of all the chaos ensuing as it seemed that there was a blanket ban on providing road replacement transport this morning but as I was leaving the station 2 coaches drew up to convey the passengers into Bristol of which there were of course none because thay had left 5 minutes earlier by train.

Having returned home I logged on to the NRES site and found the following, The service, due Yate at 0742, is the 0702 from Cheltenham to Taunton departed Cheltenham 0712, 10 minutes late and Gloucester at 0728, 12 minutes late which would have made the 18 minutes late advised to passengers at Yate, a realistic statement. However the NRES record of this service shows it took 55 minutes to get to Cam & Dursley, a journey which is scheuled for 13 minutes. No doubt it was held at Gloucester South Yard Junction for the Voyager. Then for the journey from Cam & Dursley to Yate NRES showed this part of the journey took 54 minutes against a schedule of 13 minutes.

I also established form the NRES site that the incident happened before 0400 this morning so in my opinion there was ample time to issue a stop order on the said Voyager to stop at Yate

MG 23072007

Here is a Bristol Evening Post article on this (link below.)
http://thisisbristol.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=145365&command=displayContent&sourceNode=145191&contentPK=17926469&folderPk=83726&pNodeId=144922