Cotswold Line - 21 November

[whole diary]

[charles_uk]

Not a good morning - a combination of slippery rails and a broken down train took out the early part of this morning's up service.

As far as I could tell, the 05:11 Worcester Shrub Hill to Paddington service broke down at Evesham, which in turn held up the 04:50 Hereford to Paddington which was already running late due to slippery rails and eventually hit Wolvercote Junction 53 minutes late (and add on 25 or so minutes for those waiting for the earlier cancelled service). That had a knock on with the 05:28 Hereford to Paddington (also affected by slippery rails) delayed by half an hour, the 07:10 Moreton-in-Marsh to Paddington started from Oxford, and the 06:53 Worcester Foregate Street to Oxford being held at Charlbury whilst the 06:52 Paddington to Great Malvern was put onto the single track first.

To be fair, this has been an especially bad morning - and the rain didn't help - but the reliability of morning up services on the Cotswold Line has not been good this autumn. Certainly slippery rails appear to be causing more problems than for many years.

[Busboy W1]

05:11 from WOS^» (Worcester Shrub Hill - next trains) was on one engine only (OEO^▸ (One Engine Only (class 43 HSTs with problems), or Oxford Evening Out (ticket), depending on context)) and it was decided that it wouldn't make it up the bank east of Honeybourne. Hence the delays in the Evesham area whilst the set returned to WOS.