After an abysmal couple of weeks, with First Great Western having trouble running even the restricted timetable that they drew up for Christmas, we've started the New Year with yet another cancelaltion - the 09:05 Westbury to Swindon is not running, so the first service of the New Year will be (if it runs) not until the middle of this afternoon.

Problems are not unique to our line, though - it seems that there's a crew shortage in many places, as there also was on December 27th:
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=8214

The railways have only been around for 150 years - you would have hoped that they would have a system to avoid the need to cancel / short run a significant proportion of the trains they themselves schedule by now.   The odd incident is fine - but December was, once again, one thing after another and it's too much of a co-incidence to suggest "just bad luck" / "circumstances beyond our control" every time.  Plans should be made to be deal with external circumstances, and to have sufficient robustness to handle things most of the time that there are bad luck issues.

And I had really hoped to start 2011 with an upbeat post 

I hate negative threads ... we really should not have to be moaning and groaning about cancellations at a level which make a mockery of even the limited service that's required in the franchise.

So ... I'm delighted to be able to report that things have really improved over the first couple of weeks of the New Year;   I've noted a couple of short runnings - the 16:49 from Great Malvern to Southampton which forms the 18:44 from Swindon on the TransWilts has started from Worcester a couple of times, and the train has been shortformed a couple of times, but these are practical things we can live and work with (as we can short delays).  Good step forward, FGW.