Connecting with Cross Country at Cheltenham/Gloucester 6/12/23

[whole diary]

[ellendune]

On Wednesday I was travelling to Birmingham and caught the 7:54 from Swindon planning to change at Cheltenham as advised by Journey Planner on to the 9:15 Cross Country to Edinburgh.

During the journey no staff appeared to inspect my ticket or to sell tickets to those who joined at Stonehouse (which is unstaffed?). 

We arrived at Gloucester at 08:40 (five minutes early) and were due to depart at 08:54.  At 08:48 the Nottingham Train arrived, departing at 08:49 on time. 

At 08:54 the engines were turned off and only after going out onto the platform did we find a staff member who told us there was no driver one was coming in a taxi but they did not know when.  No attempt was made to inform the passengers as to what was happening. It appeared that most of the (very few) passengers were wanting to connect onto cross country as well.

Did the regular passengers all transfer onto the Nottingham because they knew this often happened? 

Had we been informed of this we could have transferred to the Nottingham train without difficulty (especially as we were early) but no information was provided. 

Eventually a driver arrived and we left 18 min late at 9:12.  At this point I assumed I had missed my connection, but I checked and saw that it too was running late, but is was a close run thing as to whether it was going to be ahead of us or behind us at Barnwood Junction. According to RTT^» (Real Time Trains - website) we passed Barnwood Jn at 0914¾. At this point 'the railway' knew we would make our connection, but we did not (the cross country train passed at 0919½ according to RTT).  We only found out when we got onto the platform at Cheltenham and looked at the platform information displays. 

At no time did I see any GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) on train staff, between Swindon and Cheltenham. Were there any?