Subject: RE: 17:02 and 18:09 cancelled again!
Date: 28 October 2006 09:48:12 BST
To:   graham@wellho.net

Graham

It has not been a good fortnight for infrastructure problems and train availability.  The former will certainly improve as more of Network Rail's £750m investment in the region starts to effect, and a big difference will be seen with the latter when our new £8m maintenance depot at Bristol Marsh Junction is fully operational early next year.  This will replace the outsourced maintenance from the depot in Cardiff, which unfortunately has not been able to deliver consistently either the required number of train units into service each day, or the freedom from failures in traffic during the day.  The targets we set for train reliability are not unreasonable, and taking this work in house will greatly facilitate their achievement.

Avoiding train cancellations is a very priority for us - it is a central element of the Public Performance Measure by which we are judged.  Put simply, if we fail to make the grade with regard to sufficiently few cancellations then we are in trouble with the Department for Transport!

On the day you mention we were short of train units at the start of the day and the position deteriorated with two more failures during the day.  Unfortunately from the Melksham perspective, your service is the easiest one to replace with a bus and affects the fewest number of people, which is why it suffers disproportionately.

Occasionally these problems work the other way round.  That same day I was on the lunchtime service, which was formed of a two-car unit due to earlier stock displacement.

I hope this explains the current position and how it will improve.

Best wishes,

I've had some interesting thoughts on the text of the answer, but rather than cloud any views others might take with my own, I've posted it without initial comment.