That cancellation hides another.   With the train not coming up to Swindon, the return service to Weymouth will start from Westbury.   Effectively a cancellation for the northern leg.

You mentioned yesterday services to Hereford.   The TransWilts cancellation has now been joined by a through service from London Paddington to Hereford and tomorrow morning's return train.

 
I was going to post this in "lighter side" as a quiz to have you guess the only place that GWR have cancelled a train so far this morning, and to have you guess why.  But it's not funny.

Sadly, it's all too common place to see cancellations between Swindon and Westbury when there's nothing else being culled, and it's all too common to see it being "This is due to a shortage of train crew" with the only passenger advice being that you can get your money back ... I would write "passenger alternative" being offered, but it isn't.   Getting your money back does NOT transport you from - say - Swindon to Melksham which an alternative of road transport would.



Yesterday, I was looking through and analysing data and came up with these reminders of the numbers of individual customers who are travelling typically each day.  The data feed warns me that it does not take into account ticketless travel which is a significant issue especially in the evening here in Wiltshire.   I commented to a train manager who was travelling "on the cushions" the other evening and as he put it "it's not worth the hassle of going through the train to check tickets" ... effect seen in the graphic?



And here - again ticketed journeys - is a note of just how far and wide people book to travel to and from Melksham.    Six of the top ten involve a change of trains, and each of those fares brings not only revenue to the line / service itself but also to other lines and services which would be running anyway so that more rail income without more trains (I look forward to the day that main line trains need more carriages because of the big Melksham flows!)



P.S. One of the three service updates in the original graphic is ... guess what ... the Swindon -> Westbury -> Weymouth will only run from Westbury.  So that's a second cancellation.  And it's described as a crew shortage too.