A person struck by a train (1A25 16:30 Bristol TM‡ to London Paddington) this evening at Sydney Gardens in Bath and the resultant service alterations have left many crews in the wrong place this evening, compounding the other listed problems. It appears that some of the crews for the 18:32 Westbury to Swindon and 18:48 Swindon to Westbury (17:40 Cheltenham to Southampton) services were trapped the wrong side of the line closure.
I can understand the reasons ... and presumably some of the crews due to work in the Bath and Bristol area were stuck near Westbury
... and
... the 20:06 Swindon to Westbury cancelled for the same reason
... the 07:33 Westbury to Swindon cancelled due to a train fault
... the 08:49 Swindon to Westbury cancelled due to a train fault
... the 09:48 Westbury to Swindon cancelled due to a train fault and (I think) later re-instated
... the 10:47 Swindon to Westbury cancelled due to a train fault and (I think) later re-instated
That's seven services lost of out of 18 - 38% cancellation - and none of those due to issues on the line in question. If these problems were occasional, then fair enough - but overall reliability has fallen through the floor in the last couple of months.
By the way - a week ago on Sunday, I reported 12 out of 13 cancellations due to lack of crew. In a conversation today, I learned that 2 were re-instated so the cancellation rate I reported should have been 77% not 92%.
Even those of us who are keen advocates of rail find it hard not to get depressed when service after service after service is lost due to lack of working trains, lack of someone to drive them, or lack of someone to look after the passengers. I believe the franchise sets cancellation targets of 1%, or is it 2%; give us the loss of a round trip every couple of days (
and this evening's reason would have been logical for today's loss) - that's a 6% failure rate - and we can start to talk more positively again.
