The shape of the city centre doesn't help. Maybe it needs a City Loop like Melbourne...

The best thing they could do to improve dwell times is to put more effort into ensuring that trains are the right way round, with First Class at the Up end, so that we get rather less of the amusing display of passengers running back and forth up and down the platform. At the very least, the worst possible configuration of a 10-car train with First Class in carriages 4, 5, 6, and 7 should be actively avoided, as the reality is that Standard Class passengers are accustomed to waiting in the middle of the platform at most stations, and presenting the centre of the platform with two kitchen doors flanked by two First Class doors on either side is inevitably going to lengthen dwell times.

The carriage lettering in those awful 5-car sets (can we please give them to another operator and order some proper trains instead?) should be sorted out so that A-E are always in the unit at the Down end and G-L always in the unit at the Up end -- I understand that this can be changed on the fly and is not difficult.

I think the lack of caring about other people's lives derives from all to many of them being unempathetic failures in life. If only they had jobs to go to, or at least were actively looking for work.

Why terminate it quite that far short? They should still be able to make Truro and form the return journey on time.

It has to be Broadgage. He has the appropriate appreciation of what constitutes a really useful engine.

The recommendations are a bit toothless and faintly delusional. "Network Rail should review how it manages the risks associated with the use of workers on zero hours contracts" etc. The whole point of zero-hour contracts is that they transfer responsibility for managing these risks onto the individual employee. If they want to manage these risks, then they need to employ safety-critical staff full-time, so that they will not be looking for more hours elsewhere or holding a second job (section 112).

So continuing Oxonhutch's journey, a brisk cross-London transfer would get onto the 1645, first stop Chippenham at 1815. Then 1855 from Chippenham arriving Melksham 1911.

Now we need someone with a London Midland Region timetable to offer the sensible route Bletchley to Euston, Metropolitan Line (Hammersmith and City Section) to Paddington, and then try getting to Melksham.

It's still the least awful route between the Station and Magdalen Bridge. I have visions of double deckers accidentally being routed via the Broad and getting stuck under Hertford College...

Yes, terminated at Temple Meads at 1652 (13 late). Fortunately for passengers as far as Westbury, across the platform there was the 1706 to Warminster, which got to Westbury at 1801 (8 late). Then the train right behind it on platform 1 was the 1805 to Exeter, calling at all stations except Frome and Bruton. This train is then scheduled to sit at Exeter for 40 minutes before going back up to London; so there was plenty of time to have it pick up the extra two stops. Not sure why they didn't, as it would clearly have been helpful, and even at Sprinter timings it would only have ended up 10 late at Castle Cary.

If we're running people in Queen Street over with trams and drawing magic-marker maps, here is one from my archives:

A few footnotes from my experience of the disruption surrounding this sad incident:

1) Given what's been said about the replacement bus operation (and quite how rammed those Bridgend/Maesteg stoppers are at the best of times), I definitely feel I made the right call in going up to Merthyr for the X75, rather than changing at Central and Bridgend. It was a very pleasant, fast ride down the Vale of Neath that could only be improved by running more than three times a day (and with steel wheels on steel rails of course).

2) No-one asked the company operating the X75 to accept rail tickets (so I had to pay £6 up front) – to be fair, I'd anticipated this would probably happen – but the railway staff were brilliant. Got a smile from the Taff Vale guard who understood exactly what I was doing. And the guys in the ticket office at Neath were their usual helpful selves and provided me with a claim form and stamped a bit of paper to point out to customer service that this was to do with the disruption.

3) Pleasantly surprised that both the Capitals United and the train half an hour later ran the following morning. Ended up on the later of the two as I worked out I probably didn't need to rush.

4) Good to see that the "do not travel; use your tickets tomorrow" advice went up – this saves so much hassle – managed to use the return half of Wednesday's First Class excess on the Thursday night (rather later than usual – 2344 from Cardiff – thanks to my reprobate colleagues abducting me to the local Wetherspoon's and force-feeding me gin and bubbly to celebrate my birthday).

There goes my evil plan to work from home tomorrow! I'm expecting that it'll be one of those not enough trains in Swansea mornings with lots of cancellations, but they really have done a brilliant job to get the railway working again so quickly.

I needed to head north from Cathays just after 3 for my rather pleasant attempt to emulate the Vale of Neath Railway to work; but good to know that they finally found some buses to fight their way through Cardiff traffic.

Ouch. Poor sods. Think I'm going to try heading up to Merthyr later and getting the last X75 of the day down the Vale of Neath, as I imagine it'll not be fun trying to head directly west from Cardiff when they find some rail replacement buses.