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Temple Meads-Gloucester during the recent blockade

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mm333

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I was looking at the XC timetable book earlier today.

On Sundays, from 18 September to 23 October, there were rail replacement buses running between Bristol Temple Meads and Bristol Parkway.

But the XC Timetable book had a number of services running between Bristol Temple Meads and the North.

For example:
0831 dep Bristol Temple Meads, next stop Gloucester 1001
2150 dep Cheltenham, next stop Bristol Temple Meads 2320.

What route did these take?
 
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ushawk

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Possibly via Severn Tunnel Junction with a reversal there, only thing i can thing of.
 

Mojo

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Possibly via Severn Tunnel Junction with a reversal there, only thing i can thing of.
The line was closed between Filton and Temple Meads (Severn Beach line services were also affected) so this would still involve the trains travelling through the affected area.

At a guess; they were diverted via Swindon and Bath. XC have run to Swindon before on diverts.
 

TEW

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I've just checked and they did indeed divert via Swindon. 0831 Bristol-Edinburgh, 1455 Glasgow-Bristol and 1707 Edinburgh-Bristol. First time I've seen booked XC diversions via Swindon in a long time. Raises the question of why XC forced people on to buses all day, they should have been able to run a two hourly service via Swindon.
 

Mojo

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I've just checked and they did indeed divert via Swindon. 0831 Bristol-Edinburgh, 1455 Glasgow-Bristol and 1707 Edinburgh-Bristol. First time I've seen booked XC diversions via Swindon in a long time. Raises the question of why XC forced people on to buses all day, they should have been able to run a two hourly service via Swindon.
Possibly for speed. Most customers will want to travel from Birmingham (and other Northern cities) to Bristol, and Bristol Parkway provides access to a lot of Bristol from which people can drive/be driven, cycle or catch a bus to/from.

Even for customers who want to visit the parts of the city for which Parkway is not convenient could catch the replacement bus which took little time at all, so it would only be advantageous to those who wanted to travel South of Bristol.
 

TEW

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There's still a large amount of people who travel beyond Bristol on XC, Exeter seems to be particularly popular on XC trains. It's not exactly convenient having to take all your bags of a train, just to lug them on to a bus for twenty minutes before catching another service.
 
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