They've annoyingly cancelled the wrong trains between Cardiff and Carmarthen. And there's a really unhelpful GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) change on there (moving the Carmarthen service off 1B21, which is good, but onto 1B22 (which might as well terminate at Cardiff) rather than 1B20 (which really needs not to terminate at Cardiff just where it's getting busy – even splitting it at Cardiff into 5 cars to Carmarthen and 5 back to Paddington for an early bath in North Pole Depot would be better)) plus a particular bit of TfW dog-in-mangerism that will ruin GWR's reliability (the stoppers either side of 1L11 – which could do with retiming a minute earlier to make connections at Cardiff Central into the 0841 Aberdare service for Queen Street and Cathays officially work – have their stopping patterns the opposite way round from what's helpful). Does anyone know where the corresponding GWR consultation is? GWR really should be driving this rather than letting the regional rail operator wag the dog.

I find it slightly surprising that the 38th busiest destination from Neath is Birmingham Moor Street. Yes, it's possible to go there on a Birmingham Stations ticket, but you'd basically have to be mad to try it.

This is a silly service pattern. Cathays is Wales's 6th busiest station and the busiest station on the entire suburban network north of Queen Street. Cathays is overwhelmingly a south-facing station – the suburban network should be called the Vale of Glamorgan Lines. Very few Cathays passengers want Cardiff Bay. In general, they want Central, interchanges at Central, or stations Cogan to Llantwit Major/Barry Island. If we're messing with the Bay shuttle, it should go to Caerphilly/Coryton as the less busy branches.

Cathays is probably an interesting one.

The frequency of these events on the line through Berkshire makes me think this is an infrastructure problem: there ought to be better physical obstacles to prevent these people from a clearly troubled part of the world from accessing the line. Do we need better fences? Maybe electrified? Maybe topped with razor wire?

I hope the digger owner's insurers have paid for replacement DMUs^▸ (Diesel Multiple Unit).

It's really stunning that SWR^» (South Western Railway - about) chose to cut sensible services that performed outside peak hours, rather than, say, reducing Guildford via Cobham to a Parliamentary service, as its ridership fell and still only existed for two hours a day.

Poole is annoying. It's got a railway right up to the ferry terminal and plenty of terminating trains that could be sent along the branch, but no Poole International station.

I tend to offer to swap seats with people who would benefit from them. But if people go about things by banging on about nuisance cheapo Advance Purchase reservations on quiet trains where they are thankfully switched off, I'll point them to the next carriage (there really should be a £10 fee for reserving a seat to deter the bargain basementers).

If the London Underground counts, then there are loads of answers. Paddington to Baker Street, Paddington to Liverpool Street, Paddington to Embankment...

Margate, Broadstairs, Ramsgate. Dover Priory. Cosham, Portchester, Fareham.

The bit that I tend to wonder about when something goes awry in the Thames Valley is why route knowledge is not maintained via Greenford and Oxford. Yes, it would be slow, but it would give a realistic alternative route between Paddington and Swindon.

The weather today has been significantly better in Cardiff today than it has been all week. The panic about the weather today quite frankly felt bizarre.

Until you realise that "a" service means stealth cancelling the 0558, 0658, and 0743 from Swansea at 10pm the night before -- the 0743 is a particularly bad one to cancel, as it is the 0835 arrival at Cardiff. They'd really do much better to leave those three trains running and cancel the awkwardly timed ones between them. I know the daytime service leaves Swansea in an unhelpful part of the hour, but the morning peak doesn't have to follow that silliness.

But really the worst bit is the whole pretense that Chipping Sodbury somehow mightn't be wet later -- I'm okay with the evening trains being half an hour out from normal, but let's have an emergency timetable that they can run to, rather than having to keep an eye out in case something is suddenly magically sent right at Wootton Bassett and effectively runs half an hour early. If it dries up, then that's when 10pm decisions about tomorrow are an appropriate decision-making strategy.

Urgh. Sounds like I should stop watching Traksy for Chipping Sodbury to dry out at this rate...