Let me guess ... because the crew are coming in on a delayed Berks and Hants semi-fast .... this arrangement does not seem to be robust.

I haven't been doing a daily travelogue ... to busy travelling, and "the next town is" can get repetitive and less interesting.  So instead here are some "seen in France" things from recent days - all with a rail connection and mostly at or near stations

London to Birmingham is 118 miles
At 225 m.p.h., that's 32 minutes
At 180 m.p.h., it's 40 minutes
At 140 m.p.h., it's 51 minutes
And at 125 m.p.h. its 57 minutes

Of course it will take longer - you have to allow for accelerating and breaking, and allow for the two minutes that you need to be there for closing of the doors, and time to get to and from the stations and platform.  Rather more I would ask about the freqency and how long you'll have to be at the station to check in before your train is called - one hopes not as long as Eurostar.

I find myself remaining of the personal opinion that 140 m.p.h. would have been quite fast enough, with half of the extra money spent to raise the speed limit on good access in and out of that backbone.

Questions - for what proportion of the journey will the trains be running at their top speed or even over 200 m.p.h., and are the ends engineered to a less fast standard - Old Oak Common to Perivale  - 4.5 miles - at 225 m.p.h. would take a minute and 12 seconds.

Indeed - there were people who absolutely slammed me in Melksham for poor publicity for the through trains to Weymouth. "You should be ashamed of yourself and have got professional help - we only heard about them after they had finished".   Ah yes, but the trains were busy all the way, and full and standing beyond Yeovil. The marketing was tuned to be enough to get a darned good load on a sunny day without having trains too full for comfort or even unable to board.

Only once did it go really wrong when there were too many passengers on the return at Westbury and taxis had to be arranged for the excess.

Clearly, different approaches were used when we had a 153 versus when we had a full length HST^▸ (High Speed Train (Inter City class 43 125 units))!

A good question ... very little history for the Weymouth Wizard, but memories of Saturday runs to Weymouth were not of services being disrupted due to cancellations or short runs on the day, so it wasn't the major concern it is now.

We did have very serious cancellation issues indeed on the TransWilts at the time that the new FGW^▸ (First Great Western) / GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) regime took over on 1.4.2006 and slashed services that December.  I remember one manager (no longer with the company) assuring me that they were running the right number of carriages - but at times combining them into one train a day rather than two shorter ones.

Memories of Weymouth trips a decade ago are of controlled marketing to ensure we didn't overcrowd, and of 5 and 6 car dmu-s with a mixture of 15x stock ... splitting on the return at Westbury.  With Melksham being a single carriage platform in those days, our volunteer team helping to get people out for the day at Weymouth into the correct part of the train on the return trip.  Front carriage for Chetnole, Thornford and for Avoncliff, front 3 carriages for Bradford-on-Avon and beyond, 4th carriage for Melksham, rear 3 carriages for Chippenham and Swindon.  Any carriage for other stations to Trowbridge.

Then there was the day that for operational reasons the front and rear portions were switched around as the train was underway, and we had to shift everyone travelling beyond Trowbridge from front to rear and rear to front.

and


Yeah, right ... the southbound train failed at Swindon, stranding a crew there ... so at Melksham, that's 06:32 cancelled, 07:21 cancelled ... first train (we hope) 08:02. It's not a Saturday, it's not a Sunday, and the train to form the 07:21 was in working order ...

Following up from the weekend just gone ... the Swindon, Chippenham, Melksham to Weymouth through service ran ... as far as Westbury! Offputting to the public who had planned a day out, and it does long term damage to the railway's reputation, use, and whether people will risk it again for a very long time.

Is there any commitment to employ enough trained staff to run a train service reliable enough for people to use once the line and stations are provided?

Commonplace indeed.   There was no shock over the weekend that half the service was lost, and no external cause - "act of god" - to explain it.

The industry's position is indeed odd, and frustrating.

Not for the airport (though it might manage gradients) but do not rule out the Wuppertal system for suspension about the Avon - I have suggested it for Bath in the past, from Park and Ride at Batheaston Meadows to the Park and Ride at Newbridge.   Hands will be thrown up in horror of course, though I would bet that if it had been installed in Victorian times, it would be a major part of the cit's heritage and hands would be thrown up in horror at taking in down / closing it.   It is, of course, steel wheels on Steels rails, Red Squirrel - just that the rails are above the passengers not below them!

Totally agree.

Not fit for purpose ...

It started 111 minutes late ... on such an easy schedule that it has just passed Slough only 16 minutes late.  It's now around 05:00 in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom), due in to Paddington in 4 minutes. Journeycheck is still forecasting an 06:58 arrival, and real time trains 05:18