Don't post here very often but a staff member has just told me that the branch is re-suspended UFN^‡(resolve) after dislodged ballast was found by the checking train.

Looked in here to see what people knew about the current service cancellations.

I went up towards London last evening, my train was cancelled so I get half my single ticket price back for a half hour delay, came back today on time but I noted lots of cancellations on the journey checker.

Had a chat to the guard (no weekend first class upgrades were being collected so a slightly better seat was had gratis) and he said there was still a lot of annual leave needing to be taken by the end of the year, only a day can be carried forward to next year. so that was partly behind yesterdays cancellations. It seems some managers were begging drivers in particular to cancel leave in the autumn of this year and now they are running out of time to take it.

On the guards side, he said earlier in the pandemic leave had to be taken even if it meant sitting at home on lockdown, it couldn't be swapped to free weeks later in the year and that that hadn't gone down too well with some staff.

Seems that there are some covid cases and some people isolating but not a huge number but it's felt the company will use covid as an excuse for everything now. Very few of the trolley people are back yet and there's a worry for their jobs when the government get the pandemic and brexit closed off.

For some reason a 1311 ran BTM^▸ (Bristol Temple Meads (strictly, it should be BRI)) to Severn Beach, platform bloke was as surprised as I was.

Thank you @Grahame and @Broadgage for your welcome and engagement. No engagement from "the man" on the subject though, and latterly he says he only wants to talk trollies. 

Chatted to the nice trolley person this morning on my way to the big beer festival in London. While the train was stopped mind you, due to the pantograph being faulty, we went forward on diesel according to an announcement, they said many trollies are static due to staff ailments/restrictions or trolley defects. They recommended a cold drink vice the tea/coffee, water was not hot enough. It was a 9 car however so if you really were in need of the caffeine they'd text message the other host to bring you one down in a bag. Was that in the spec ?

Some staff are too good to the company it seems.

Well it is very strange then that on other web fora it has been admitted by well known insiders that the market research carried out that returned preference for trollies rather than buffets was carried out after the DFT^▸ (Department for Transport) signed off the trains.