Big delays today around Cheltenham, what happened?

[38Cto15E]

I have just looked at RTT to see how many special trains were going to Cheltenham Spa today and noticed that many trains in the Gloucster/Cheltenham are were being delayed by around an hour from mid morning, any members know the reason? TIA

 

[tomh72]

Cheltenham Festival

 

[zwk500]

GWR reported trespassers on the line near Gloucester earlier this morning on their website.

 

[38Cto15E]

If it was trespassers, it caused delays of nearly one hour to most trains in the area, lasting for a period of approx four hours.

 

[zwk500]

If it was trespassers, it caused delays of nearly one hour to most trains in the area, lasting for a period of approx four hours.

Initial incident will have backed trains up, all rammed to the gunnels with race goers. Turning those trains back to recover service would have simply caused worse crush loads.

Cheltenham Spa only has one platform in each direction; trains terminating there from the London/Gloucester end have no option but to shunt between platforms, and there is only one turnback siding.

GWR were running extras from London as well for the races so the stock workings were presumably tighter than usual as well.

Im not surprised that traffic took a long time ro recover given what was being asked of the railway.

 

[ABB125]

Slightly late reply, but I have a screenshot from Traksy of the disruption, because I was catching a train during it.

There was a lovely queue of trains heading north, not helped by 1G11 being a service from London that terminates at Cheltenham then runs into the turn back siding on the east side of the line, as well as staff having to ensure the train is empty (which adds dwell time), the southbound Tesco freight seen on the map passed through at exactly the time the terminator could have departed (which, given the 40mph line speed through the station means it takes a long time for the freight to pass through).

It possibly would have been more sensible to slightly delay the freight in order to allow the ECS to cross into the siding and reduce delays to the following services: there was no immediately obvious reason for not doing so - no train behind the freight for a long time, and nothing that would get in its way down towards Chepstow if it was slightly delayed - but maybe there were other factors considered by the signaller(s).

 

[45Fox]

I understand there was also a problem with the track (I've heard a broken rail) on the Birmingham-Bristol line today; not being all that familiar with the route, I'm not sure where, but it probably didn't help matters.

 

[The exile]

I understand there was also a problem with the track (I've heard a broken rail) on the Birmingham-Bristol line today; not being all that familiar with the route, I'm not sure where, but it probably didn't help matters.

It didn’t!

 

[Oxfordblues]

Many years ago I worked in the Train Planning Unit at Swindon. One March we had a new recruit who'd been given basic training and it was thought a good idea to set them a little project for them to gain real-time experience and see how well they did. So they were put in charge of compiling the train plan for the Cheltenham Festival. In those days there was a long single-line section from Swindon to Kemble, severely constricting capacity. Unfortunately the new train planner failed to include sufficient performance allowances or recovery margins and what started as a few minor delays snowballed into near-chaos. Most trains were late and a few arrived at Cheltenham after the first race had been run, leading to an avalanche of complaints.

Sometimes it's best to leave sensitive plans like that to the old hands!

 

[bleeder4]

Many years ago I worked in the Train Planning Unit at Swindon. One March we had a new recruit who'd been given basic training and it was thought a good idea to set them a little project for them to gain real-time experience and see how well they did. So they were put in charge of compiling the train plan for the Cheltenham Festival. In those days there was a long single-line section from Swindon to Kemble, severely constricting capacity. Unfortunately the new train planner failed to include sufficient performance allowances or recovery margins and what started as a few minor delays snowballed into near-chaos. Most trains were late and a few arrived at Cheltenham after the first race had been run, leading to an avalanche of complaints.

Sometimes it's best to leave sensitive plans like that to the old hands!

I can imagine being a train planner is a fascinating job. I imagine nowadays AI can be a great help. Feed the relevant timetable into it and it can probably help to identify spaces where a path may be possible. Obviously you'd still need a human to check the suggestions and account for speed, braking distance etc

 

[Segedunum]

I can imagine being a train planner is a fascinating job. I imagine nowadays AI can be a great help. Feed the relevant timetable into it and it can probably help to identify spaces where a path may be possible. Obviously you'd still need a human to check the suggestions and account for speed, braking distance etc.

Timetable Planning software these days will have presets for timing loads and performance already in, so if you tell it you want to go from A to B, it'll generate a path. Its then up to you to add in allowances and make it workable.

Some newer software can identify clashes and turnarounds that are too short etc (so long as those rules and presets are input into the software) but it certainly won't fix it for you. That's still a human job!

 

[zwk500]

I can imagine being a train planner is a fascinating job. I imagine nowadays AI can be a great help. Feed the relevant timetable into it and it can probably help to identify spaces where a path may be possible. Obviously you'd still need a human to check the suggestions and account for speed, braking distance etc

Speed and Braking distance are accounted for in the database of runtimes (BPlan) and the Timetable Planning Rules. No human judgement in those elements (NR has a whole building of timetable planners, and then there's the TOCs, so it'd be far too variable if left to judgement alone). Some rarer movements like heritage stock or trains with specific characteristics (e.g. on tests) may be adjusted but in general it's a logic puzzle.
NR has systems to help with some elements of this checking, although a lot of it is still manual because there's loads of exceptions all over the place that require the checker to be overridden. (and a lot of the checks are set up to fail-safe, so return false positive errors).

AI isn't used at all, partly because it's very new, and partly because a lot of the decision made by planners would be very counter-logical, normally due to a specific market requirement or resource constraint. Some timetable planning systems offered an algorithmic element to find new paths, but in general an experienced planner will be able to tell you (sometimes without looking at the graph!) as quickly, if not quicker than any technology could know whether or not you can adjust the timetable to fit it in.

 

[The Planner]

Many years ago I worked in the Train Planning Unit at Swindon. One March we had a new recruit who'd been given basic training and it was thought a good idea to set them a little project for them to gain real-time experience and see how well they did. So they were put in charge of compiling the train plan for the Cheltenham Festival. In those days there was a long single-line section from Swindon to Kemble, severely constricting capacity. Unfortunately the new train planner failed to include sufficient performance allowances or recovery margins and what started as a few minor delays snowballed into near-chaos. Most trains were late and a few arrived at Cheltenham after the first race had been run, leading to an avalanche of complaints.

Sometimes it's best to leave sensitive plans like that to the old hands!

They got stitched up then in my opinion. If they produced something that was compliant and no one suggested looking at adding resilience then they didn't do anything wrong. A new planner is not going to know to take a step back and think wider. The same thing would happen today.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 13 Mar 2026 ==

Timetable Planning software these days will have presets for timing loads and performance already in, so if you tell it you want to go from A to B, it'll generate a path. Its then up to you to add in allowances and make it workable.

Some newer software can identify clashes and turnarounds that are too short etc (so long as those rules and presets are input into the software) but it certainly won't fix it for you. That's still a human job!

Attune comes out with some right old nonsense and false positives. You have to double check as you say.

 

[WelshBluebird]

I imagine nowadays AI can be a great help.

I imagine it is just as likely to be a great hindrance too. AI may know what's in the official numbers but won't know how things actually work out in the real world. Essentially just like that newbie in the original comment.

They got stitched up then in my opinion. If they produced something that was compliant and no one suggested looking at adding resilience then they didn't do anything wrong.

Agreed. Infact it almost sounds like hazing to me - give the newbie a job you knoe they will mess up because they don't have the experience yet.

 

[The exile]

As an aside, yesterday’s fun and games resulted in RTT showing a passenger train as terminating at Charfield (2E66 14.03 Westbury -Charfield). Looking at the entry it got that far before being turned back - I hope! Otherwise, the poor passengers are going to be very bored by the time there’s a station for them to get off at!

 

[ChiefPlanner]

I continue to be amused , many years on , about a new planner back in the day who was tasked with a timetable plan for a Bank Holiday on the Southern Region.

"Do as we did before he was told" - so he duly prepared a plan that had very thing stopping at Plumpton for "race traffic" - including a standby crewed unit at Lewes as a hot spare , - luckily it was spotted in time so no harm done. He lived with the unoffical office nickname of "Plumpton Races" for a very long time. There would , in any case no race traffic as there was about a foot of lying snow at this time ! Racecourse closed anyway

 

[oscarthecat92]

There is also a 20mpg TSR through Cheltenham during races week presumably for safety reasons in case inebriated racegoers take a tumble onto the tracks which slows down operations

 

[dk1]

There is also a 20mpg TSR through Cheltenham during races week presumably for safety reasons in case inebriated racegoers take a tumble onto the tracks which slows down operations

Was also the same at Chelmsford back when V Festival took place.

 

[father_jack]

As an aside, yesterday’s fun and games resulted in RTT showing a passenger train as terminating at Charfield (2E66 14.03 Westbury -Charfield). Looking at the entry it got that far before being turned back - I hope! Otherwise, the poor passengers are going to be very bored by the time there’s a station for them to get off at!

Old Ends crossing had a broken rail in the crossing surface in the up direction. That train ran wrong line back stopping at Yate and crossing back to the down line at Westerleigh Junction. Coaley ground frame which would have been an "official" cross over point would have needed an operator but has been unusable for ages.

 

[38Cto15E]

As the OP, thank you all for contributing to this thread, I 'm a lot wiser now.