Well despite leaving Westbury ten minutes late, arrival in Weymouth was on-time.

And no-one else will be inconvenienced by this faulty loo today, because that train spends all afternoon in the Jersey Sidings at Weymouth, prior to hitching a ride back to Bristol on the rear of the last GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) departure of the day from Weymouth.

Well it was deemed worthy of having another two carriages attached at Bristol to make it back up to 4 cars; something to do with a certain Mr Sheeran performing in Cardiff I believe 

I’m intrigued by your planned return journey; via Reading presumably to get the 20:45 from Swindon?

It’s unfortunate you weren’t doing the journey yesterday, when the 20:06 from Westbury to Cheltenham was a guaranteed connection off the 18:24 from Portsmouth Harbour, as the train to form the Cheltenham was split off the rear of the Portsmouth - Cardiff train due to a train failure earlier in the day. But then yesterday of course, the 16:30 from Brighton ran through to Southampton as booked!

A single Jubilee Siding remains available for use, but it’s a very far cry from what used to be there, as shown in the track diagram you posted.

The relatively recent addition of sleepers across the London ends of the two remaining Jersey Sidings prevents their use for run-round moves these days. I’m unsure whether Network Rail would make special arrangements for them to be removed if a train operator did require to use this facility.

As an aside, going back to the OP^▸ (Original Poster / topic starter), the headcode for this train was 1Z65, 155R being the obfuscated version displayed on RealTimeTrains, Traksy, etc.

My educated guesswork would be that the unit workings wouldn’t match-up if they were to have run through to Ludlow from Hereford, making the southbound return workings late. You also have traincrew diagramming to consider, as I expect Shrewsbury would normally be a point where crew would changeover and take their breaks, which instead would perhaps be taken at Hereford during the layover between the northbound arrival and southbound departure.

Fortunately, the line has now reopened.

My understanding is that the “not valid on trains timed to depart before 0930” restriction is applied to the starting point shown on the ticket I.e. Swansea in your example, and that is irrespective of where you actually board the train. Hence the Off-peak Day Return from Swansea would not be valid on the 0923 from Swansea at any point of the train’s journey between Swansea and Cardiff, even if you were to board after 0930 at Neath.

I therefore surmise that the Anytime Day Return was the correct ticket for your journey.

Oxford?

This one ended up leaving Swindon only a couple of minutes late after a commendably swift turnaround there, and ran via Melksham as scheduled.

I believe it was a late train from London to Bristol that went in front of the TransWilts service.

That being the case, any passengers off that delayed London train wishing to connect onto the TransWilts train would have been able to successfully make their connection at Chippenham.

Once you have late-running, surely it’s inevitable that some (but not necessarily all) connections will end up being broken?

Had it not been swapped for the 3-car 158 at Bristol on the southbound journey, the 17:30 from Weymouth would have been a 2-car 165 (165134, according to RTT^» (Real Time Trains - website)).

That’s not to suggest that 3-cars was ideal, but it was looking likely to be much worse earlier in the day...

Suggests to me that there must be some people at SWR^» (South Western Railway - about) who are also still smarting from the decision to remove their services between Westbury and Bristol; and not just the passengers who used to use said services….

For the record, an hour or so later the 15:05 and 16:03 trains were shown as reinstated.

Not been a good day on (and off) the TransWilts…

11. Wurrul (or, if you prefer, Worle  )

14. Parson Street