16:23 Westbury to Swindon due 17:06
17:35 Swindon to Westbury due 18:19

17:35 Swindon to Westbury due 18:19 will be cancelled.
This is due to a shortage of train crew.

Due to the emergency services dealing with an incident between Evesham and Worcester Shrub Hill the line is blocked.
Train services running through these stations may be cancelled, delayed or diverted. Disruption is expected until 07:30 23/12.
Customer Advice
-
What has happened?
-
A person has been struck by a train, leading to the line being blocked.
-
[...]

Last Updated:23/12/2025 06:47

05:16 Worcester Shrub Hill to London Paddington due 07:24 is being delayed between Pershore and Evesham.
05:23 Hereford to London Paddington due 08:24 will be diverted between Worcester Shrub Hill and Reading.
06:43 Worcester Shrub Hill to London Paddington due 08:44 is being delayed at Worcester Shrub Hill.
07:00 Worcester Shrub Hill to Didcot Parkway due 08:46 will be started from Moreton-In-Marsh.
07:13 Great Malvern to London Paddington due 09:43 will be delayed at Worcester Shrub Hill.
08:18 Worcester Shrub Hill to London Paddington due 10:26 will be starting late from Worcester Shrub Hill.
08:56 Great Malvern to London Paddington due 11:27 will be started from Oxford.

05:53 London Paddington to Great Malvern due 08:38 will be terminated at Oxford.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czdg795m5epo


But are they really in chaos, or is it planned?   

Or if they are in chaos at Christmas, are they in chaos the rest of the year too?

Complete and ongoing fiasco from Day 1 of the procurement process.

A major traffic for East-West rail via the Marston Vale line - from the BBC

By chance, an aerial view of the site on the following link:


https://tinyurl.com/mtv3phyh

Very close to some lovely industrial archaeology - and also the rail over road bridge under which passed the driveway for Nynehead Court, though the architects/builders of the station perhaps will not be able to take advantage of that.

Mark

This never happened on Rosie and Jim

Looks like a mega-money repair will be needed.  Not sure what recourse to funds the C&RT has, these days.  I imagine they're not all that well off

Not travelled extensively in mainland Europe, several years back, on a Paris to Toulouse train colloquially known at the 'POLT', a puzzling structure across the fields on the east side of the train that ran on, unbroken, for some tens of kilometres.

I couldn't work out what it was but of course it was the inverted 'T' section test track for the experimental french suspended-on-air passenger service, built in such a location that it could be of utility should the principle have been adopted as a transport system.

Mark

18:37 Westbury to Swindon due 19:21
20:12 Swindon to Westbury due 20:56

20:12 Swindon to Westbury due 20:56 will be cancelled.
This is due to more trains than usual needing repairs at the same time.

... What looks like a theme park monorail car sits next to the river Nene, surrounded by miniature railways, old locomotives and a landscaped wildlife haven with ponds and waterfalls. But this relic is more than just a transport curio. It could have transformed the way we travel ...
... “It used so much power they needed special permission to switch it on” ...
... The RTV 31 hit 100mph in testing, but was expected to reach at least 300mph on a longer track ...
... Silver believes that with proper funding there could have been hovertrains zipping from London to Birmingham in 20 minutes, or to Scotland in 90 minutes. He even claims there were plans to export the idea and build lines in North America and Africa ...

Team spirit praised in community container clean-up


Foam insulation covered the sea wall at Selsey

Fragments of metal, pieces of insulation foam and plastic remain on West Sussex beaches after 11 shipping containers containing bananas and avocados washed ashore.

Communities praised the "team spirit" of volunteers and contractors as the clean up continued at Bognor Regis, Selsey and Pagham Harbour, after the containers fell overboard from the Baltic Klipper cargo ship in the Solent shipping channel on 6 December.

West Sussex County Council said six containers have been removed, but Gavin Jones who lives on Selsey seafront said there were "bits of metal poking up through the sand".

The Marine Accident Investigation Branch said the containers might not have been properly secured.

Seven containers washed up in Selsey, two at Pagham Harbour and two at Bognor Regis.

Selsey Beach Little Ninjas are among those who have helped with the clean-up operation.

(BBC article continues)

As an occasional poster in this forum ... My thanks to Chris from Nailsea for his kind reply ... My apologies if I have posted in the wrong place.

There were no reports of any casualties, West Mercia Police said

A major incident has been declared over what police have called a sinkhole at a canal in Shropshire, leaving boats either stricken in a gaping cavity or teetering on the edge of a drop.

Pictures appear to show that the structural integrity of a stretch of waterway in Whitchurch has completely given way, raising flooding fears.

Two narrowboats at the scene were said to have sunk into the hole shortly after 04:00 GMT, with another two at the edge. Water there looks to have drained away completely.

Shropshire Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) said it was responding to a landslip and confirmed a canal was affected. Scott Hurford, area manager at SFRS, which sent 50 firefighters, said crews received reports at about 04:20 GMT that a canal bank had collapsed and there were large volumes of water in surrounding fields.

According to West Mercia Police, there are no reports of casualties at the scene, in an area of Whitchurch called Chemistry. The force asked people to avoid the area and seek alternate routes.

The Canal and River Trust described the incident as a breach on the canal, and said its priority was the safety of boaters and those in the immediate area. "We are carrying out initial investigations into the possible cause of the breach and will provide more details in due course," it said. "We will also seek to return water levels either side of the breach as soon as possible and are providing support to the boaters affected and those in the immediate area either side of the breach."

Mr Hurford told BBC Shropshire: "The information we've had back is that the canal bank failed and that's what put the emergency call in. The water from the canal has leaked out of the canal into the surrounding fields… There are up to 15 people who had to be moved out of the way to safety, and there's a number of canal boats that have been affected, some of those have gone into the field and some are at the bottom of the canal." He added: "Our job is the response phase, so we're there to save life, protect property and the environment, but we will support in the recovery phase."

Andy Hall, a councillor in Whitchurch, said: "We've got two boats at the bottom of the sink hole that have fallen down, and we've got two boats that are teetering on the edge that could go in at any time," he told the BBC. "Obviously [the fire service is] going to make those safe." He added: "[People] thought that there was an earthquake. To the right, we've got the field which has taken probably about a million gallons of water out of the canal." He said the fire service had put in a flood gate to stop the flow of more from the compromised waterway.

"The most important thing is that the canal itself has been secured by fire and rescue," he said. "Their biggest worry was that the canal was going to burst even more and flood residents in the town." He said that no one was on board "the two boats that went down", adding that people on the boats "teetering over the edge" had been helped to safety by fire crews. He said that contrary to speculation on social media, there had been no bridge collapse.

Lorraine Barlow, who lives on a boat called The Singing Kettle and was moored near the site, said: "About 04:20 this morning I could feel that there was something amiss, there seemed to be a current coming from underneath the boat, and bubbling, it sounded really unusual. Then I was tilting to the middle of the canal, I could feel the ropes were getting tight." She said she left the boat and could see the fire service as well as search and rescue teams. "There was no water on the canal," she said. "I was worried about the ropes and about my canal boat hanging there. It's an awful thing, I was worried about the other people."


Police have asked people to avoid the area