Yes, plenty of allowances for pathing and engineering works on that one.

I think the quickest I noted last week did the full Oxford to Bristol journey in 1h 5m after starting a little late from Oxford, so I guess that is pretty much the optimal time using an IET.

 
agree.

 
Feat. Peter Hendy.

Mark

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/may/25/south-western-rail-nationalisation-peter-hendy-rollout-reliability

 
Note NO Gatwick, Heathrow or Stansted Expresses.....Hopefully, that means the ed of their inflated fare structures too

 

Wouldn't dream of it!

I don't think even you would attempt to polish that particular turd II, especially given performance today and over the last week or so! 

 

A slightly rushed post yesterday.  I meant to refer to the TransWilts year so far as upgraded from 'woeful' to 'poor', not GWR wide as I said - though that has also improved quite significantly with the cancellation percentage down 38% on last year...perhaps from 'atrocious' to 'woeful'?

As for the TransWilts, you can indeed use the word 'woeful' for a two consecutive trains cancelled scenario, much as you could use the word phrase 'very good' for the 21 day stretch early in the year (according to Graham's stats) where there were no cancellations at all at Melksham, and a 16 day period within that with no delays over 15 minutes.

So, for me, the year so far on the TransWilts has improved from 'Woeful' to 'Poor'...but that's only my description.  It would be interesting to hear Graham's thoughts on that.


I think it's largely due to a general improvement from Network Rail in terms of providing more reliable infrastructure in general.

Please don't paraphrase that into suggesting I am saying the infrastructure is reliable.

 
Wikipedia has a long piece about the Manchester & Milford Railway and how it went wrong.

Eventually, the builders turned left at Strata Florida and went to Aberystwyth instead.

 

Unlikely. Scotrail is devolved and is the responsibility of the Scottish Assembly.

 
................here we go again 

Cancellations to services between London Paddington and Reading

Due to a fault with the signalling system between London Paddington and Reading trains have to run at reduced speed on some lines.

Train services running to and from these stations may be cancelled, delayed or revised. Disruption is expected until 15:00 25/05.

 
"Great British Railways | Sleeper" - are Scotrail's sleeper services to be prised from their hands?

Mark

 

Fair point - easiest to remember that all of them are what used to be known as the London Overground - now renamed and equipped with brand new (virtue) signalling 

 

There was a discussion yesterday about "atrocious" and "poor" and how to qualify the performance.  And over the last 7 days now cancellation rates at Melksham are 16.1% (plus in my view trains cancelled but re-instated very late) but "Shortage of Train Crew" is now far less common.    Contrast, perhaps, to other services where today (a lovely Bank Holiday Monday) there are around 30 cancellations and short runs, the majority of which are attributed to lack of staff.   On that basis, GWR locally to us have been doing a little better - though train faults, signalling problems, and congestion have been unusually rampant and seem to have taken "a while" to fix ...

 

Arrived 08:11 - 1 minute late.  Top mark (nearest prediction) to Real Time Trains.  JourneyCheck - and it's a pattern woefully pessimistic which means that if someone turns up to catch the train at the time it predicts later on the journey, they will miss it!

 

I am still having trouble in London knowing my Sufragettes from my Windrushes though I suspect I'll get used to them in time - so perhaps I'm thankful at this current and (?) interim stage the names are recognisable to the previous operations.

Into the future, we may end up with operation divisions such as diesel trains and local bimodes based out of Bristol and Salisbury, under the heading "Wessex Trains",  local and regional trains based out of Exeter and Plymouth as "West Country Trains", diesel services based out of Reading, Oxford and Aylesbury as "Thames Valley Trains", etc ... and I would rather quasi -geographic names rather than "Brunel", "Trevithick", "Whitworth", "Beeching" and "Williams-Shapps".

 

15 late into Salisbury ... where the 12 minutes timetabled to be spent in the station is more than is needed, and so it left there just 3 minutes late. Scheduled into Southampton at 08:10. Journeycheck suggests 08:24, Real Time Trains suggests 08:12.    Personal educated guess - around a quarter past eight.   We could open a book and have great fun betting on the final arrival times of delayed trains, couldn't we?

 

Is that list really the best they could come up with?

Only civil servants could manage to make it that dry..........I can almost imagine all the "working parties", consultations and Conferences that were necessary before arriving at it..............

 
Apparently there was a premium price to travel in those!

 
So ... all correct and just no. 5 left to identify

1. Stratford - eightonedee
2. Melksham - Chris from Nailsea
3. Swindon - Fleming Way - Oxonhutch
4. Oxford - stuving
5. ??
6. Beaulieu Park - stuving
7. Trowbridge - RobT
8. Paddington - Oxonhutch
9. Parkstone Quay (a.k.a Harwich International) - TonyN

Here is the remaining picture - anyone ??

 
I should clarify - "Sleeper" referred purely to the GWR sleeper being its own operating division, and "Anglia" is Greater Anglia + C2C ; LNW has become "North Western" with no mention of London.   

ChrisB - I did a screen capture then used an online .png to text converter to OCR the attachment into something I could include in a post - left out the old names because it gave me those as separate line and it would have taken significant time to correlate and check  ... thank you for the source material ...

Yes, the names geographically "stretch" it - as they have done under the franchise / management contract system. No changes.

 

Come, come ... those are the prime experience seats and are at a premium. Mind you, Sevenoaks to St Leonards Warrior Square is one experience, and Tonbridge to Inverness is quite another.

 
If these names are described as applying to TOCs, in place of their current names, then surely they can only by interim names. If new geographical partitions are created later, which I though was the intention, then I'd expect them to get new names. Whether such names will apply to train services and so be visible to passengers, or just to the organisation (like NR region or route names) is another matter.

 
I hope that there was a discount and ear defenders for anyone travelling in the driving motor coaches....

 

It's a bit of an odd mix of old TOC names carried forward and some elimination of old commercial identities. It does indicate that we'll be stuck with a lot of the anomalies of the current system if this reflects the management structure underneath the new labels.

A few thoughts occur-

1 - How will the much-vaunted vertical integration work when (for example) "West Coast" "North Western" "West Midlands" and "Northern" will have considerable geographic overlap of the lines they use and "Cross Country" largely (almost exclusively?) uses track in other divisions' areas. We also seem to be left with a mish-mash of some that cover all trains in their area (like GW) and others split local and long distance/express services (like Northern and Trans-Pennine)

2- Does the separate "Sleeper" identity indicate that the two sleeper networks (GW and Caledonian) will be consolidated or that the former is for the chop?

3 - Are these just marketing names?  If so, I agree that some seem to merit revisiting.

It does indicate that re-nationalisation will not be the panacea some claim.

 
This weekend the Branch Line Society ran a three day excursion from Tonbridge to Inverness and back. This used the Hastings Diesel Limited units. Details can be seen on Blue Sky @hastingsdiesel.co.uk and searching Hastings DEMU on X
Timings on RTT

https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:U85247/2026-05-22/detailed

https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:U85251/2026-05-23/detailed

https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:U85250/2026-05-23/detailed

https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:U85254/2026-05-24/detailed

 

Glad to see that there is more dark, than light blue; but then I might be biased. 

 
9. Parkstone Quay

 

One of the class 701 Artiero fleet used in London suburbs has appeared with its new GBR South West branding.

I used to think of South West as Somerset, Devon, Cornwall etc.
Clearly DfT has now defined it as Surrey and Berkshire

Is it just me, or does anyone else think some of the names are geographically stretching it.   Another example : West Coast has about 50 miles within about 10 miles of western coast, about 80 miles near north coast of Wales, and over 400 miles that is better described as inland rather than near any coast.

 

But that is Ireland rather than Great Britain



wikipedia/commons/4/40/British_Isles_Venn_Diagram-en/size]

 
I had a major dilemma choosing where to phot the railtour. It was due to pass Pinhoe at 13:15 and arrive at St David's at 13:24. I did not want to phot the tour at either Pinhoe or St David's as both places would be crowded (based on past experience). The choice was made harder as D1015 'Western Champion' was also due to pass St David's at 13:17 on The Golden Hind railtour. So, I chose the approach to Exeter Centgral for Clan Line and chose to miss out on photting Champion.

If only humans were born with an inbuilt sense of Foresight! The Mule can be chaotic with late running trains - and sure enough Clan Line was 20 minutes late arriving at St. David's! If I had gambled on that happening, I'd have photted Champion at Red Cow Crossing and then caught the 13:25 Up Waterloo back up to Central still been in position to phot Clan Line approaching Central! Of course, if I had gambled, you can guarantee that both tours would have run to time! Oh well, such is life! I did, however, manage to phot both railtours passing Cullompton on their respective return workings.

 
Just to bear in mind, it is a Whitehall based Department for Transport document.