Minor point of order; I’ve corrected the name of the ticket you’ve quoted - I was struggling to get my head around an “Anytime” ticket having time restrictions, although with the fare system in this country I suppose I shouldn’t really be surprised if such a thing existed (maybe it does?).

Motherwell, to Glasgow Central via Hamilton, or Whifflet, or Uddingston.

Wimbledon to Clapham Junction and Waterloo can be done direct via Earlsfield, in the opposite direction via the Kingston Loop, and early in the morning (except Sundays) via East Putney, sharing the tracks with LU’s District Line - it’s a journey I’ve managed to make successfully a couple of times!

Too big a ‘stretch’ for my OCD, that one

I will add Sunderland to the list.

Haymarket and Leicester are two more examples.

Yeovil Pen Mill

Perhaps I’m missing a solution that is blindingly obvious to others here, but to me it seems that stopping diverted IETs^▸ (Intercity Express Train) at Melksham must have potential to add congestion to the system.

The TransWilts service is, by and large, operated by a single train so it cannot delay itself whilst occupying the single line. But once you start diverting multiple trains in both directions, there’s potential for trains to present at both ends of the single line simultaneously, forcing one to wait, and thus delaying everything else caught behind it.

Were you to be planning and timetabling these diversions, as would be the case for Portsmouth to Cardiff becoming Portsmouth to Swindon for engineering works, you’d create a plan which avoided more than one train needing to occupy the single line at a time, but ad-hoc diversions for unscheduled line blockages would have to fit as best they can around the rest of the service. (The irony of this statement, when the solution is to take out the TransWilts services, is not lost on me, but I can sort-of understand why it is as it is).

I guess that other arguments against using diverted trains to substitute for the TransWilts may be that the regular service is so sparse that the diverted trains are unlikely to match well with the published timetable, so intending passengers will still be turning up at the station at the scheduled times, and requiring some form of alternative transport provision. In addition, if the diverted trains are truly substituting for the TransWilts you are looking at additional stops at Swindon, Chippenham, Trowbridge and Westbury, as well as Melksham, which is going to eat up more line capacity.

That’s not to say I don’t think diverted IETs should stop at Melksham, but it is ‘complicated’.

Situation as at 11:00 this morning - only one passenger train has run in either direction along the TransWilts; the 05:11 Gloucester to Southampton called at Melksham three quarters of an hour late at 07:20, eventually terminating short at Salisbury, and the 06:35 Salisbury to Worcester Foregate Street (which lost an hour at Westbury) called at Melksham 68 minutes late at 08:28, eventually terminating short at Gloucester 74 minutes late (info from RTT^» (Real Time Trains - website)).

Everything else cancelled so far;
07:45 Westbury - Swindon,
08:45 Swindon - Westbury,
09:46 Westbury - Swindon,
11:05 Swindon - Westbury,
12:17 Westbury - Swindon,
13:15 Swindon - Westbury.

Journeycheck messages finally started filtering through for the 09:46 cancellation, but the earlier two cancellations appeared to go un-noted.

B&H^▸ (Berks and Hants - railway line from Reading to Taunton via Westbury) still shut east of Westbury and between Castle Cary and Taunton, so no West of England passenger services diverting via Melksham, although stone trains likely to be diverting via the TransWilts to reach London. Also, with the ongoing flooding at Chipping Sodbury, the line via Box is being used by diverted South Wales and West of England services as well as London to Bristol services which have been reduced to an hourly service.

The unit from yesterday’s TransWilts service appears to still be sat in the bay platform at Swindon, where it’s been since it arrived at 17:08 on Thursday afternoon.

Appears to have carried on from Swindon to Paddington as the 18:40 (which should have started from Weston-super-Mare, and then formed the 19:53 to Hereford, so the TransWilts’ loss ended up being the North Cotswolds’ gain.

Now showing cancelled throughout.

Left Westbury 56 minutes late….
Running it through to Swindon will presumably have a knock-on effect to the next round trip.

Real time trains gives the cause as
So maybe the fault with the signalling system caused the late arrival of crew from an inbound service?

2. Shanklin

Grahame, I think (and I dare say you would agree) that this is far too short a timeframe to draw any meaningful conclusions.

Nevertheless, even over this period, the 18:44 from Swindon stands out to me as being especially unreliable. It would be interesting to look back over a longer period (12 months) at this particular train, and the 20:06 from Westbury to Cheltenham.

I suspect you might find a deterioration in reliability since May 2023 when I understand a decision was implemented to change the crewing arrangements for this pair of trains, with associated implications for the type of train to be used.