| Landslip west of Axminster - message from SWR Posted by grahame at 19:12, 13th January 2026 |     |
Dear all,
You may have had the message below directly but I wanted to provide a bit of additional context for you as key stakeholders, particularly around train options and journey planners.
The e-mail below explains the issue with the landslip to the west of Axminster. The current 5mph restriction has been causing delays of 3-4 mins per London bound train which of course then creates further delays across the day on top of any other disruption. It is there essential that the permanent repair works take place next weekend.
As explained the Waterloo service will start and terminate at Crewkerne. Please do however note the fact that Crewkerne station car park is closed to enable the buses to turn (though a couple of accessible bays will be available). Anyone who wishes to drive to a railhead from the west is therefore encouraged to drive to Yeovil Junction instead.
We did look into the possibility of a Honiton – Exeter shuttle rail service. Unfortunately this wasn’t possible from an SWR point of view given the very limited timescale to rebuild the crew diagrams. We also discussed options with our friends at GWR. They were unable to help due to only having a very limited pool of high speed drivers that currently sign the route – this group of drivers is already heavily committed at weekends. In addition the movements of the engineering trains for the works meant that Honiton station was unavailable for a shuttle train service on this occasion. We will however look at options as to how this could be achieved in future as the railway moves towards integration and rolling stock / training programmes progress.
Station calls west of Crewkerne were removed from online journey planners last night (Monday). Industry system restrictions mean that the bus replacement services cannot be loaded into journey planners until 24 hours before (which is different for long term planned engineering works). We have therefore included a bus timetable on our website in the interim. As a result online journey planners will currently show no results for stations west of Crewkerne. This is obviously not ideal but which is why we’re keen to make customers aware of the need to go to SWR’s website to view the detailed information.
I would be grateful if you could use your communication channels to spread the message to customers as widely as possible, pointing them to SWR’s website. Both SWR and Network Rail have issued press releases and have social media posts planned. Please feel free to reshare our posts.
Let me know if you have any queries.
Regards
Andrew
Andrew Ardley
You may have had the message below directly but I wanted to provide a bit of additional context for you as key stakeholders, particularly around train options and journey planners.
The e-mail below explains the issue with the landslip to the west of Axminster. The current 5mph restriction has been causing delays of 3-4 mins per London bound train which of course then creates further delays across the day on top of any other disruption. It is there essential that the permanent repair works take place next weekend.
As explained the Waterloo service will start and terminate at Crewkerne. Please do however note the fact that Crewkerne station car park is closed to enable the buses to turn (though a couple of accessible bays will be available). Anyone who wishes to drive to a railhead from the west is therefore encouraged to drive to Yeovil Junction instead.
We did look into the possibility of a Honiton – Exeter shuttle rail service. Unfortunately this wasn’t possible from an SWR point of view given the very limited timescale to rebuild the crew diagrams. We also discussed options with our friends at GWR. They were unable to help due to only having a very limited pool of high speed drivers that currently sign the route – this group of drivers is already heavily committed at weekends. In addition the movements of the engineering trains for the works meant that Honiton station was unavailable for a shuttle train service on this occasion. We will however look at options as to how this could be achieved in future as the railway moves towards integration and rolling stock / training programmes progress.
Station calls west of Crewkerne were removed from online journey planners last night (Monday). Industry system restrictions mean that the bus replacement services cannot be loaded into journey planners until 24 hours before (which is different for long term planned engineering works). We have therefore included a bus timetable on our website in the interim. As a result online journey planners will currently show no results for stations west of Crewkerne. This is obviously not ideal but which is why we’re keen to make customers aware of the need to go to SWR’s website to view the detailed information.
I would be grateful if you could use your communication channels to spread the message to customers as widely as possible, pointing them to SWR’s website. Both SWR and Network Rail have issued press releases and have social media posts planned. Please feel free to reshare our posts.
Let me know if you have any queries.
Regards
Andrew
Andrew Ardley
