SWR "Planned Cancellations"

[markle]

SWR has a whole bunch of "planned cancellations" this evening, which means:

- Chessington gets 1 train an hour
- Guildford via Chobham gets 1 tph
- Weybridge stoppers get 1 tph
- Windsor gets 1 tph

Station staff can't explain why. Cancelled services aren't listed on any departure boards as "cancelled"; they just aren't shown. I don't recall seeing any warnings about frequencies being reduced.

What's going on? The comms here is dismal.

 

[Tom]

I imagine it's related to Royal Ascot - and they're PD cancellations so they are a planned cancellation in the sense that they've not been in the timetable at all (and journey planners) since around mid-May by the looks of it.

 

[markle]

Regular commuters don't check the journey planner for each daily commute - they know the service patterns.

It's a bit poor to just "disappear" commuter services with no comms or warning.

At least for weekend engineering work we get a warning.

 

[800002]

You want the website, here:
Royal Ascot planned changes

Summer events

www.southwesternrailway.com

Train service changes
Additional services will run between London Waterloo and Reading between Tuesday 16 and Saturday 20 June for Royal Ascot. These services are expected to be very busy.

Across the five days of the event, some services between London Waterloo, Weybridge and Windsor & Eton Riverside will be diverted and call additionally at Ascot before and after the event.

Tuesday 16 to Friday 19 June
Between 0900 and 1400, and 1700 and 2200, one train per hour will run between Waterloo & Weybridge via Virginia Water. Two trains per hour will continue to operate between Virginia Water and Weybridge.

Between 0900 and 1400, and 1700 and 2200, services between London Waterloo and Windsor & Eton Riverside will be retimed and revised.

 

[markle]

You want the website, here:
Royal Ascot planned changes

Summer events

www.southwesternrailway.com

Interestingly doesn't mention the midweek changes to Chessington and Guildford via Cobham services.

 

[800002]

Interestingly doesn't mention the midweek changes to Chessington and Guildford via Cobham services.

Quite correct, it does not. My apologies.
My sight reading at geography is not what it used to be!

 

[berneyarms]

They are listed here on the "Plan my Journey" page.

Live Train Times & Travel Information | South Western Railway

Our journey planner provides live train times and train disruption information. Plan your journey and check for changes that might affect your journey

www.southwesternrailway.com

Scroll down to "Other Disruption that may affect your journey in the future".

Service changes - Tuesday 16 to Saturday 20 June

Please note that the following changes will be made from Tuesday 16 to Friday 19 June:
Guildford via Cobham services:
· The 0903, 1003, 1933 and 2033 services between London Waterloo and Guildford will not run
· The 1034, 1134, 2104 and 2204 services between Guildford and London Waterloo will not run
Chessington South services:
· The 0947, 1047, 1147, 1247, 1917, 2017 and 2117 services between London Waterloo and Chessington South will not run
· The 1034, 1134, 1234, 1334, 2010, 2104 and 2204 services between Chessington South and London Waterloo will not run
On Saturday 20 June:

• Services between London Waterloo and Guildford via Cobham will run hourly between 10:00 and 2000
• Services between London Waterloo will run hourly between 1000 and 2200

 

[TransportHub]

Especially for the midweek trains, where regular passengers rarely check journey planners, surely SWR putting a note on the guards schedule cards for the week prior saying, make and announcement about the planned cancellation of this train next week, would be the best option

 

[devon_belle]

Given SWR flood our eyes and ears with plenty of superfluous announcements, it's frustrating that they wouldn't give better comms for changes to the regular timetable that might catch out regular customers.

 

[800002]

Especially for the midweek trains, where regular passengers rarely check journey planners, surely SWR putting a note on the guards schedule cards for the week prior saying, make and announcement about the planned cancellation of this train next week, would be the best option

I doubt this would even be permissible, in that format.

Train crew can only really be asked to do something like that, and not made to, certainly.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 20 Jun 2026 ==

Given SWR flood our eyes and ears with plenty of superfluous announcements, it's frustrating that they wouldn't give better comms for changes to the regular timetable that might catch out regular customers.

Certainly the better approach.
Announcement/ notices at stations.

Which may have already been undertaken.
But we all know how deaf / blind the general commuter is to extraneous information being bombarded in their direction are these days.

 

[devon_belle]

But we all know how deaf / blind the general commuter is to extraneous information being bombarded in their direction are these days.

Yes, but as discussed elsewhere can you blame them? The announcements are excessive, and posters are usually just generic ones for the whole network which may not catch their attention.

 

[800002]

Yes, but as discussed elsewhere can you blame them? The announcements are excessive, and posters are usually just generic ones for the whole network which may not catch their attention.

I can't, no.
I also don't know what's been enacted in this case in terms of comms. It does feel, though, a little disconnected.

But I do feel in general that people do need to take better responsibility in maintaining their gerneral awareness of their surroundings.
Not applicable here, I should add, for the day of travel, but there's the possibility advanced notice was given and just wasn't heard.

 

[devon_belle]

Southern use the third line of the dot matrix displays to give info on planned engineering works on routes it is relevant to. Do SWR do the same? I find this is helpful, but I'm slightly more aware than the average commuter.

But I do feel in general that people do need to take better responsibility in maintaining their gerneral awareness of their surroundings.

I agree with this.

 

[800002]

Southern use the third line of the dot matrix displays to give info on planned engineering works on routes it is relevant to. Do SWR do the same? I find this is helpful, but I'm slightly more aware than the average commuter.

There are varying solutions employed by the different operators.
They use the same spaces available (on screen / departure boards and audio outputs) in different ways.

I've seen talk of LNER using departure board space for luggage storage info.
Chiltern have departure board space for Wemebley and other events / planned disruption.
Southeastern, too, I've seen and heard in various ways also.
I think avanti also employ audio announcements for other purposes.
And as you describe ld southern take a similar approach.

If only there was some form of national approach to the railways and it's systems...

 

[Matthew5689]

SWR has a whole bunch of "planned cancellations" this evening, which means:

- Chessington gets 1 train an hour
- Guildford via Chobham gets 1 tph
- Weybridge stoppers get 1 tph
- Windsor gets 1 tph

Station staff can't explain why. Cancelled services aren't listed on any departure boards as "cancelled"; they just aren't shown. I don't recall seeing any warnings about frequencies being reduced.

What's going on? The comms here is dismal.

All SWR staff should have access to internal information regarding planned service changes for the week ahead. The issue will be that lots of those on the frontline will ignore the email or message and therefore know nothing about it and be stumped when asked by passengers. How you make more staff aware I'm not really sure though.

 

[DelW]

Southern use the third line of the dot matrix displays to give info on planned engineering works on routes it is relevant to. Do SWR do the same? I find this is helpful, but I'm slightly more aware than the average commuter.

I don't recall having seen or heard that on trains (though I might have tuned them out), but on SWR stations they do have both audio and departure board warnings of forthcoming engineering works, usually playing for a few days beforehand. For major works (notably the several 9-day half term closures for resignalling on the Direct), banner posters were attached to platform fences some weeks beforehand.

 

[norbitonflyer]

They also do this every time there's a rugby match at Twickenham - diverting Shepperton services that way, and consequently halving the service at Kingston. Yhey never give any prior notice, unlike closures for maintenance work.

 

[boiledbeans2]

They also do this every time there's a rugby match at Twickenham - diverting Shepperton services that way, and consequently halving the service at Kingston. Yhey never give any prior notice, unlike closures for maintenance work.

Did the diversions for Royal Ascot or Twickenham also happen before COVID? Or was it purely extra trains, without existing services diverted?

 

[davews]

But it didn't work very well on Thursday:

Attendees at the Royal Ascot yesterday were stuck on a train back to Reading after a car towing a horsebox collided with a bridge.

https://www.bracknellnews.co.uk/news/26209999.reading-trains-delayed-horsebox-collided-bridge/

The irony of a horsebox striking the Broad Lane bridge!

 

[norbitonflyer]

"Attendees at the Royal Ascot yesterday were stuck on a train back to Reading after a car towing a horsebox collided with a bridge."

That doesn't look like a towed horsebox - more like a lorry-type one.
It looks like it would have made it if it had stayed within the white "goalposts" painted on the bridge.
I note what looks like an Irish registration plate. Foreign vehicles sometimes hit bridges because the driver is unfamiliar with Imperial measures, but in this case the bridge is marked in both metric and Imperial.

In the Good Old Days, the horses would have travelled by rail.

 

[davews]

I see today there are loads of SWR cancellations due to the 'forecast severe temperature'. For instance they have removed one whole diagram on the Reading service. Although shown on journey check as 'cancelled' they just don't show in the schedules at least as seen on RTT, they have just been removed.

 

[Siemens Staines]

I see today there are loads of SWR cancellations due to the 'forecast severe temperature'. For instance they have removed one whole diagram on the Reading service. Although shown on journey check as 'cancelled' they just don't show in the schedules at least as seen on RTT, they have just been removed.

From the list of cancellations on journeycheck it looks to be an approx 25% reduction in the number of diagrams across the board for Metro & Windsor line services. So the removal of one of five 2*458/4 diagram and the removal of 12 of 48 701 diagrams. The cancelled trains do show up on LRR as cancelled, they are just missing from RTT.

 

[Tom]

The cancelled trains do show up on LRR as cancelled, they are just missing from RTT.

They are not missing - they are under the CAN filter. Because they come under scheduled cancels banner rather than on the day due to when and how they were cancelled.

 

[Siemens Staines]

They are not missing - they are under the CAN filter. Because they come under scheduled cancels banner rather than on the day due to when and how they were cancelled.

But they are VCN cancellations and not CAN. For example 2C15

Realtime Trains | 2C15 0748 London Waterloo to Reading | 23/06/2026

Real-time train running information for 2C15 0748 departure from London Waterloo to Reading on 23/06/2026. From Realtime Trains, an independent source of train running info for Great Britain.

www.realtimetrains.co.uk

which LRR shows as cancelled at 0549 which as a layman I would have thought of as on the day cancellation. Obviously I am missing out on the subtleties of how cancellations are described, so I do not have the full picture.

 

[Tom]

A VSTP CAN (VCN) is still a CAN.

These are what is known in the industry as the notorious 'P codes' (PG) as opposed to PD codes which are the usual done-in-timetable-long-before. They can use P codes as long as they are agreed before 10pm the day before operation (hence the Planned Timetable of the Day thing in NRCoT for a while)

That particular train would have been cancelled on call (hence 0549 you see the message, almost exactly 2 hours ahead). The cancellation would have been done via the VSTP process - hence why RTT will have hidden it at the point at receiving that bit. The cancellation message would have been on call, but it was cancelled long before.

Edit: actually that's an hour before - as we're in a different timezone. The train was called at 0648 local, so was cancelled at 0649.

 

[Siemens Staines]

A VSTP CAN (VCN) is still a CAN.

These are what is known in the industry as the notorious 'P codes' (PG) as opposed to PD codes which are the usual done-in-timetable-long-before. They can use P codes as long as they are agreed before 10pm the day before operation (hence the Planned Timetable of the Day thing in NRCoT for a while)

That particular train would have been cancelled on call (hence 0549 you see the message, almost exactly 2 hours ahead). The cancellation would have been done via the VSTP process - hence why RTT will have hidden it at the point at receiving that bit. The cancellation message would have been on call, but it was cancelled long before.

Edit: actually that's an hour before - as we're in a different timezone. The train was called at 0648 local, so was cancelled at 0649.

Thank you. I did wonder if this was as a result of P coding but the 0549 time stamp is what threw me. Thank you for explaining

 

[Big Jumby 74]

It looks like it would have made it if it had stayed within the white "goalposts" painted on the bridge.

Looks like the driver did stay within those markings to my eye, as they appear to line up with the kerbs which form a narrower passage on the road surface, the camera angle making this less obvious. If the image had been taken from directly behind the wagon, one could gauge it more accurately. It does however look like the front drivers side of the bodywork is rising up - horse(s) standing at the rear tipping the front end by just enough to make a difference, or just a result of the vehicle body jamming under the arch and the driver still having their foot on the loud pedal?

From the list of cancellations on journeycheck it looks to be an approx 25% reduction in the number of diagrams across the board for Metro & Windsor line services

Was reliably informed yesterday of pre planned cancellations in the New Forest area first thing this morning due to (quote) 'Adverse weather' predicted. How true I know not, not having delved any further in to same?

 

[James H]

Was reliably informed yesterday of pre planned cancellations in the New Forest area first thing this morning due to (quote) 'Adverse weather' predicted. How true I know not, not having delved any further in to same?

The Bournemouth to Winchester stopper is not running today.

 

[Robert Carroll]

On Wednesday evening, the down main slow was closed from Waterloo to beyond Wimbledon and everything was using the down main fast. The up main slow was still in use as far as the West Crossings. So, it seems that an issue with the track on the down slow is the root cause of the severe reduction in services. What was left was running very late too.