Looks like a positive development.

In Darlaston and Willenhall's case it looks like they are perfectly spread out with the existing Shrewsbury service in one direction - 30 or so minutes apart heading towards Wolverhampton, but very badly spaced the other way, just four minutes apart, giving two trains an hour to Birmingham New Street, but with a 56 minute gap.

 

Yes, I've always thought that a bit odd.  Other internal and public systems, RTT for example, do make allowance for allowances (if I can put it like that?) and even if they're usually a little on the optimistic side...a delayed train is more likely not to get 'greens all the way'...they are often not too far wide of the mark.

 
Bristol -> Paddington services still disrupted, 14:30 and 15:30 cancelled.

 
My longest is Shrewsbury to Pwllheli

 

Agreed on how hard and human intense the systems are at the moment.  It feels like they are too much "fair weather specified" systems at present - and the example at Oxford rather confirms this.

AI?  We already have machine intelligence of a sort - AI is a fancification of that, if you like - but much of it is rudimentary.  Many of us can look at what we are told, especially at times of service going wrong, and quietly chuckle. 

It's a fast moving world, so some of these things may have been fixed, but examples I have seen include multiple trains expected from the same platform at the same time (at Trowbridge), and also a Swindon train show as "On Time" when the incoming train hasn't even passed on its way to Westbury and there's no way without time travel that it will arrive on time.  Journey Check seems to have a habit of thinking "once delayed, then delayed for the rest to the journey", even for trains like the sleeper, and the 05:11 Gloucester to Southampton which when running to schedule twiddles its thumbs at Salisbury and often makes up.

 

It would be very interesting to know if that's official policy or something decided or guessed at by a member of the gate staff.

And it has me thinking - what happens if you want to access the lost property office but aren't on a train journey at the time?

 

It's very hard to provide accurate data with serious disruption anyway - you have a small number of control staff trying to deal with dozens of trains at several locations at once.  But there have been recent cutbacks to some operations staff - for example the morning Area Operations Manager shift at Oxford has now gone - which means the number of staff trying to coordinate things is woefully short.  And then we have the chop-and-change diagramming which means more trains have a change of staff en-route than they used to, which works fine when things are going well, but adds another layer of complication when things go wrong.

Perhaps AI can help sort it out before it takes over the world?

 
I believe that the Marlow-Maidenhead issue is one and the same as the Twyford incident but with train crews caught out of position/unable to get to depot.

 
I was denied access at the east entrance today when asking to use the ticket office and even showed my disabled railcard . I was told we dont want the public using this as a walkway. You will have to go back down cattle market road and up the ramp....surely this isn't right.....

 
Lines now reopened according to National Rail but as can be seen from the map, cancellations and delays continuing for some time, although there now seems to be a similar incident between Maidenhead and Marlow.

 

That makes sense, thank you. In the GWR area, then, the only exceptions where it may not apply when GWR cancel a service are Cheltenham Spa to Gloucester and Severn Tunnel Junction to Pembroke Dock inclusive of all intermediate stations.

 

24 September 2026 is earmarked as the date for the first “refreshed” one to be delivered to Laira.

Other units planned to go back to Wolverton from Laira. 

 

SWR is already in the scheme, the list from Sunday is :
c2c
Gatwick Express
Greater Anglia
Great Northern
LNER
London Northwestern Railway
Northern
Southeastern
Southern
Thameslink
South Western Railway
Transpennine Express
West Midlands Railway
Avanti West Coast (new)
Chiltern Railways (new)
CrossCountry (new)
Great Western Railway (new)

 
Consider this reply "Liked" 


The downside of my laptop having tight security, I do have second laptop but through a Government network, I will give that a try later

 

I remember a crossing to St Peter Port, Guernsey, from Weymouth back in the late 1980s on the "Condor" hydrofoil.  There is no way you could describe it as "comfortable" even though the sea was moderate.  There was much swaying, bumping and banging.  Good fun for the seasoned traveller.  Less so for those who had to resort to the brown bags supplied

The return journey was by air because the sea was too rough for the hydrofoil, which was cancelled

 

Bus-only roads are hardly exotic and standard road signage covers this. Also, since it's a road, and the bus has a driver aboard...

 

A step in the right direction ... and of potential general use.   What about SWR?   One can only hope that this applies uniformly across all train operators once nationalised (so perhaps not lines like Paignton to Kingswear).   One can only dream of this applying to intermodal changes allowing you to use a following train if the bus is late, or a following bus if the train is late.

 
Signalling cable theft (according to the on-train announcements) between Evesham and Worcester messed everything up yesterday - the 1428 from Hereford sat at Norton Junction for 50 minutes, was changed to be non-stop from Oxford to Paddington, and arrived 93 minutes late. Several other hour-plus delays and cancellations.

Today isn't looking much better!

 

One freight train was allowed through on the up relief to allow a rescue train behind to crossover at Twyford East and draw up alongside the train involved; possibly to evacuate passengers who have been stranded for around three hours.   Currently all lines are closed again.

 
And from the BBC


Oh look - a new standard incompatible with the old one?


To some extent it's right that technologies move on and modern systems are used, but the fragmentation of vehicle and trackway standards is unfortunate.

 

I can't make this, but this meeting especially, anyone who is thinking of attending, please go along. When the WWRUG says 'All welcome', that's sincerely meant, and especially at the moment, the more people who are well informed about two or three issues with Wiltshire's rail service the better.

 

National Rail tends to be the most reliable and informative in my experience - they have major disruption now until midday......(updated 0900)

https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/service-disruptions/maidenhead-20260914/

 
GWR is joining the scheme where a passenger whose train is cancelled can use any train up to 2 hours before or 2 hours after with original ticket even if it alternative train is with another operator (or by any reasonable alternative route)  No need to buy replacement or extra ticket.

Avanti West Coast, Chiltern, Cross Country also joining.

East Midlands will remain outside common scheme for now (don't think it applies to TfW, Scotrail, Merseyside either)

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/your-cancellations-covered-new-scheme-to-help-stranded-rail-passengers-arrives-this-weekend

 
Trains just starting to move on the relief lines through Twyford now.

1A02 (presumably the unfortunate train involved in the incident) is blocking the up main just past Twyford station.

 
It’s seems this mornings incident has caused data feeds to stop. Looking across various sites (this one, RTT, GWR, National Rail) you get a very different picture painted of actual trains running.

Very hard for the average traveler to determine what is correct. Clearly a very fluid and disruptive situation, where accurate data for the traveler would help.

Just an observation on the state of our travel assistance websites.

 
From memory the 'best' taxi ride I can do is 29 miles; on 17th August 1986 I was returning to Singapore after a short break in the UK and got caught up in the Cogload Junction cement train derailment delays. Got as far as Taunton where we were put on an RRB to Temple Meads. Then took a train to Reading where I had intended to use the Railair bus to Heathrow. But realising I did not have enough time the journey was done by taxi and I made my flight 'Gate Closing' with 15 minutes to spare.

 
On Wednesday evening (14.9.2026), Peter West, OBE, will be speaking to the West Wiltshire Rail User Group in Trowbridge (at the Bethesda Church Hall). All welcome.

Peter was the Rail Sector Commercial and Strategic Manager at the Department for Transport who looked after the First Great Western franchise from the time that First took over the Greater Western franchise from Wessex Train in our are right thorugh the shock of the covid changes and beyond. 

At a time of rail industry re-organiastion - a time of great opportunity but also grear risk - Peter will be giving us an talk on "The Rail Review - update" - looking at where we are and where we are headed.  This is one not to miss.

Doors open 19:00 for tea / coffee and Peter will be "first up" when we start at 19:30.  There's planned to be an opportunity to ask questions too.  The Church Hall is just across from Trowbridge Station - up the street behind Trinity Church off the Bath-bound platform.  The meeting is organsised by the West Wiltshire Rail Users Group (WWRUG). For paid up WWRUG members, the meeting is included in your £8 subscription. Guests welcome, with a £2 donation requested - why not join instead on the night?

We'll be finished by 21:10 - in time for "carriages" at 21:18 (to Bradford-on-Avon, Bath and Bristol), 21:22 (to Melksham, Chippenham and Swindon), 21:31 (to Westbury, Frome, Yeovil), 21:52 to Avoncliff and local stations to Keynsham, and 21:58 to Dilton Marsh, Warminster and Salisbury.  Many connections further afield (in and out) too but, sorry, no direct trains from London these days.

Event on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/events/1719354635990390 - it would be appreciated if you're not a regular but intending to come if you could let us know there, but like the trains in our area at the moment, you can still just come along and pay on the evening.

 
Cancellations to services at Twyford

Due to the emergency services dealing with an incident at Twyford the London Paddington line is blocked.
Train services running through this station may be cancelled or delayed. Disruption is expected until 10:00 14/09.

Customer Advice
What has happened?
-
A person has been struck by a train at Twyford, and we are not able to run a train service between Reading and London Paddington until the incident has been dealt with in a safe and dignified manor. British Transport Police and other personnel from the Emergency Services are attending, but at this stage we do not have a time scale for when our service is likely to resume.
-
What are we doing about it?
-
No services are able to run between Reading and London until further notice.

 

Sounds like it might have been a classic case of "the frighteners" in the original message - things like "until further notice" and simply "delayed" on a train.

The rail industry is in a difficult position with what to say when something's not available at short notice, especially if that's unplanned and undiagnosed.  I do note the common but not universal use of "this will be updated in two hours" which is somewhat useful, and I'm aware of the very limited real estate on display boards to say much. So what might you or I do if I was asked to suggest how to do it better?

In the cases like the example at Westbury we're talking about, I would be tempted to add "[this] has just failed and we don't yet know how long it will take to fix.  Check back tomorrow (14.9.2026)".   I also question over-optimistic advice such as yesterday's suggestion to ask staff to replatform a train - or could / did that really happen?  How about "delays expected until 18:00" which then stretches being replaced by "delays until at least 18:00" giving a best case scenario, but not then failing . being wrong if the scenario is missed.  Little things, big difference is how it's seen by the customer?

 
From Beautiful Britain


The longest (and it was rail replacement transport) taxi ride my family took was from London (Euston) to our home in Easterton, nearest exStation Lavington, in Wiltshire.

The Motorail train on return from holiday in Scotland had come to a halt Watford Junction because the overhead lines were down, and whilst we as passengers could complete the journey by local third rail train, our car could not.   We all waited a while in Euston and then (with a bit of persuasion) a taxi was laid on for [name redacted] and the kids to get home. I got the car, later in the day, and had a peaceful drive home.

I do recall making the case against underground to Paddington, train to Swindon and taxi from there with two children who hadn't, slept all that well. It was a Sunday morning and the trains were few and far between in those days.

What is the longest rail replacement (or other) taxi journey YOU have made?