No trains between Hereford and Newport until 18:00 12/06/2026

TfW has said there will be no service between 07:00 and 18:00 today on the Marches line due to signalling staff being unavailable at Abergavenny.

TfW says that it has arranged ticket acceptance with Crosscountry between Manchester and Bristol Parkway, and with GWR between Parkway and Cardiff. No mention of Crosscountry's Birmingham-Cardiff service, strangely.

My partner is travelling from Edinburgh to Cardiff at the moment, supposed to be changing at Crewe, and the train manager of the Avanti train is finding out whether they can accept his ticket (Advance single) between Crewe and Stafford, where he can pick up Crosscountry. I'm presuming that if they can't, he can claim the cost of a new ticket from TfW?

It's ridiculous that an entire line should have to close for a day because someone doesn't turn up for work. (Up late watching the World Cup? )


EDIT: The update has disappeared from their website now. Resolved, perhaps?

Must surely have been a coding error or something on a delay attribution, as one train due at 7.34 was cancelled, but the ones ten minutes before and 20 minutes after have run.
edit: I note now that the earlier of the trains referenced above was also delayed - which wasn’t showing earlier.

RTT showing 'no report' for a number of services at Abergavenny with some small delays, and 0610 Shrewsbury to Cardiff cancelled due to 'signalbox not being open'.
Perhaps Abergavenny signalbox was switched out for a while, the line operating with a long section from Little Mill to Pontrilas?

Yes, it looks like the issue, whatever it was, has gone away now.

(The Avanti train manager was aware of the issue and told my partner that he could stay on the Avanti train until Birmingham, but that now seems unnecessary.)

This was the original TfW ticket acceptance advice, so there definitely was some kind of issue.

Torfaen said:

RTT showing 'no report' for a number of services at Abergavenny with some small delays, and 0610 Shrewsbury to Cardiff cancelled due to 'signalbox not being open'.
Perhaps Abergavenny signalbox was switched out for a while, the line operating with a long section from Little Mill to Pontrilas?

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Can Abergavenny switch out? There's a loop and it has an Intermediate Block signal so I'd be surprised if it has a block switch.

To ask a more general question, on a line operating with absolute block and mechanical signalling, is it typically possible to switch out intermediate boxes if the through route has been set? Presumably it could not happen if there were level crossings controlled from the box, but can two non-adjacent boxes communicate by somehow bypassing a box in the middle?
I think there might be one or two signal boxes on the Marches line which are normally switched out (Church Stretton?) but my question is about whether there is a more general provision to bypass a signal box in an emergency, e.g. signalling staff are unexpectedly taken ill.

Torfaen said:

To ask a more general question, on a line operating with absolute block and mechanical signalling, is it typically possible to switch out intermediate boxes if the through route has been set? Presumably it could not happen if there were level crossings controlled from the box, but can two non-adjacent boxes communicate by somehow bypassing a box in the middle?

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If an Absolute block box is provided with a block switch, then part of the switching out procedure is to clear the signals. See: https://signalbox.org/block-system/closing-the-box/ for an explanation, and for a demonstration.

Torfaen said:

but my question is about whether there is a more general provision to bypass a signal box in an emergency, e.g. signalling staff are unexpectedly taken ill.

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Generally no. The Box must have a block switch. If it does not, S&T would need to attend to connect the boxes either side. It has been done - I think Appleby box needed to be closed for structure repairs and a long section was created for the duration of the work. But it's not something that can be done at the drop of a hat.

zwk500 said:

Can Abergavenny switch out? There's a loop and it has an Intermediate Block signal so I'd be surprised if it has a block switch.

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That's no reason not to provide a block switch – it means, obviously, that the loops will be unavailable and the IB will be useless, but traffic levels overnight and on Sundays mean that that can/could be tolerated. One of my old boxes used to routinely switch out from Saturday evening to Monday morning for that very reason.

zwk500 said:

Can Abergavenny switch out? There's a loop and it has an Intermediate Block signal so I'd be surprised if it has a block switch.

Click to expand...

Abergavenny cannot switch out. The only boxes on the Marches that can are Pontrilas and Dorrington.