CANCELLATIONS, delays and overcrowding on trains at Chippenham Station over the last few weeks have been making commuters cross.

Great Western Railway introduced new trains in October but has recently been having issues with infrastructure, which is affecting the journeys of hundreds of people travelling to and from Chippenham.

The issues have meant that new trains, which consist of ten carriages, have been arriving at stations with half the number of carriages, leading to some uncomfortable overcrowding at peak times.

Kathryn Price, 59, of Bulkington, has been travelling to and from London for almost two months and said that the majority of her journeys have been disrupted one way or another.

She said: “It is interesting, the old trains seem to be more reliable than the new ones. There has probably only been once or twice where it has worked the way it should have done. Many regular commuters are fuming.

“When I first started travelling the reservations weren’t working.

“More recently, there have been two occasions where the ten-carriage trains have only been five at peak times and you can imagine how packed it is.

“Last week I had an issue with a cancellation. It had left the station and then it got cancelled at Reading and I had to find my own way back.”

Others have also taken to Twitter to also complain about their journeys including a number of people who had to stand all the way to London, a woman who missed her flight because of delays and cancellations, and a pregnant woman who said she got jammed into a busy carriage.

A spokesman for GWR said: “We do everything we can to run our services with the planned number of carriages, however sometimes it is not always possible.

“Our Intercity Express trains are considerably more reliable than the older high speed trains they are replacing, travelling around a third longer between potential incidents.

“In addition, they offer more flexibility, enabling us to operate them with just five carriages if we need to, where we would previously have had to cancel a service outright.”

“The Intercity Express Train continues to perform well, having successfully completed over a million miles in passenger service and provided more than half a million extra seats than the trains they are replacing.”