Swindon <-> Westbury service updates and amendments, ongoing discussion - 2026

[whole diary]

[JohnM]

There are some minor changes to TransWilts timings all day, all week this week.  Some mainline services also affected. 

Arrived at the usual time, 6:27, so just a couple of extra minutes taking in the Melksham station scenery

...and not only that, the 6:46 Trowbridge-Bristol service was 4 carriages instead of the usual 2. Happy days

Same today - perhaps the 2 are related?

Never seen a 4 carriage train on this service before yesterday, previous max was 3.



Edit note: Quote marks fixed. CfN^▸ (Chris from Nailsea, an administrator on this forum).

[grahame]

13:14 Swindon to Westbury due 13:57
14:18 Westbury to Swindon due 15:01
15:14 Swindon to Westbury due 15:58
16:23 Westbury to Swindon due 17:06


16:23 Westbury to Swindon due 17:06 will be cancelled.
This is due to a broken down train.

[bobm]

The latter pair were re-instated.

However now...

20:06 Westbury to Cheltenham Spa due 21:46

20:06 Westbury to Cheltenham Spa due 21:46 will be started from Swindon.
It will no longer call at Westbury, Trowbridge, Melksham and Chippenham.

This is due to a road vehicle colliding with a bridge.

21:16 Westbury to Swindon due 21:58

21:16 Westbury to Swindon due 21:58 will be cancelled.

This is due to a road vehicle colliding with a bridge.

22:31 Swindon to Westbury due 23:12

22:31 Swindon to Westbury due 23:12 will be cancelled.

This is due to a road vehicle colliding with a bridge.

[TaplowGreen]

12:07 Westbury to Swindon due 12:49
12:07 Westbury to Swindon due 12:49 will be starting late from Westbury.
This is due to a fault on this train.

[bobm]

Well it was on time when I caught it at Melksham at 12:23.   

[grahame]

15:39 Swindon to Westbury due 16:21

15:39 Swindon to Westbury due 16:21 is being delayed between Chippenham and Melksham and is now expected to be 12 minutes late.
This is due to congestion.

[bobm]

Waiting for a diverted London Paddington to Penzance service to clear the single line at the Bradford Junction end.   In turn that had been delayed by a late running train up from Newquay.

[grahame]

Waiting for a diverted London Paddington to Penzance service to clear the single line at the Bradford Junction end.   In turn that had been delayed by a late running train up from Newquay.

I spent yesterday on local trains with a lot of single track sections on the border lands between Switzerland and Germany, and some of the lines include single track bits with some very long distance services.  I'm sure it can go belly up, but in my experiences on these lines that's not happened, and I asked myself what's different to the UK^▸ (United Kingdom)?

* There are frequent passing loops
* Passing loops and trains are modern unlike places like Yeovil and Maiden Newton
* Trains are electric and designed for local work - you fall over with the accelleration and accurate braking
* Schedules are generous enough to include time for "awkward" passenger stops and recovery
* Wide doors, mostly level access. generous corridors make for quick local access
* There's a "stop" button just like on buses for you to use if you want to get off at a halt
* Good notice of upcoming stations make sure than even new passengers are ready

From Rheinfall station yesterday:

As I arrived at the station, the 16:01 to Zurich was calling



The departure board then offered



A Zurich to Stuttgart express passed through



And all within quarter on an hour, my train arrived

[Mark A]

Have you noticed scottish-borders-rail-style* dynamic loops that allow trains to pass without stopping, by the way?

Mark

* Dynamic loops aside, I believe the borders railway isn't blessed with a surfeit of 'ordinary' passing places and also the junction with the East Coast Main Line is poor quality until it's sorted.

[IndustryInsider]

I spent yesterday on local trains with a lot of single track sections on the border lands between Switzerland and Germany, and some of the lines include single track bits with some very long distance services.  I'm sure it can go belly up, but in my experiences on these lines that's not happened, and I asked myself what's different to the UK^▸ (United Kingdom)?

Whilst you've been away, the TransWilts has been largely behaving itself well, so perhaps a German visitor to England may have formed a similar opinion?

Four cancellations on trains stopping at Melksham (and one delay of 50 minutes) on the 4th June, but otherwise everything ran last week to give a 96.6% reliability score, and with the previous four days to that also seeing no cancellations, that equates to 97.8% of trains running over the last 11 days.

Rather better than the Deutsche Bahn's cancellation rate on regional trains of 5%.  From an article last year:  https://www.thelocal.de/20250213/train-passengers-in-germany-see-rising-number-of-deutsche-bahn-cancellations

Note how I've deliberately listed the percentage of trains running as a 'reliability' score, because that looks better that saying 3.4% of trains were 'cancelled', and that I've only gone back 11 days because the previous three days during the heatwave and Bank Holiday weekend saw multiple cancellations.  I've also only listed trains calling at Melksham, with no mention of whether they started/terminated early and would be defined as a 'part cancellation' and in some cases might have affected passenger journeys just as much as a full cancellation would have.

Statistics, eh?  Gotta love 'em! 

[grahame]

I spent yesterday on local trains with a lot of single track sections on the border lands between Switzerland and Germany, and some of the lines include single track bits with some very long distance services.  I'm sure it can go belly up, but in my experiences on these lines that's not happened, and I asked myself what's different to the UK^▸ (United Kingdom)?

Whilst you've been away, the TransWilts has been largely behaving itself well, so perhaps a German visitor to England may have formed a similar opinion?

Oh indeed. I'm always minded that what I see on wider travels may not reveal the trials and tribulations that come to the surface on social media and industry feeds in the UK.  And I am also very conscious that as a traveller out of the norm in Swizerland (as yesterday was) or today in Germany, I may well see some of the quiter trains.

My own statistical feed confirms the huge improvement last week compared to the week before on the TransWilts - sadly, the indusrty feed that I've captured and used for https://www.wellho.info/sh4.php shows a worse cancellation rate because the 20:22 "M" service flags cancelled and a "Z" extra service has been added; makes no difference to the public, and I am not going to risk a coding change from the ICE train I am on at the moment!   I would agree with quoting the running rate as being more positive; I would, though, argue that the rate should take account of trains declared as cancelled and later re-instated, especially those that are declared cancelled for quite a while anr re-instated late in the day. I haven't a clue how to take them into account in a reasonable, robust, automatic way though!

Where my comparison makes a difference, though, is in the service frequency that the Swiss train can run at, it seems, reasonably reliable, on a single track railway with long distance expresses sharing.   Through Melksham we have somewhere around 2 paths per hour, and Maiden Newton perhaps offers similar.  The departure board at Rheinfall shows 5 stopping paths, and in addition there were Zurich to Stuttgart expresses passing, and that is where the difference is massive.  If the infrastructure allowed it, and a single platform might still manage it, we would be looking at a 30 minute "Bath and Wiltshire Metro" service and in addition paths each way each hour for something else.  But it would be a fool's spec at the moment to try to schedule that without .... dynamic loops, crisp signals, trains that accelerate sharply, and perhaps flyovers / graded junctions where the London - Bristol and Cardiff - Portmouth main lines are joined.