Regulation is done to PPM (unless the TOC involved requests differently). So the right decision was made, 1 train fails PPM, 1 makes it in PPM. If that 9 late train then becomes 14 at exeter by losing its path, then the same issue occurs later on the up. Annoying as it may be for the people on the train, by hammering one service it stops the delays snowballing.
I agree with the PPM approach and this used to happen all the time pre-SWR and makes sense normally, though not in this case (except for the SWR crewing issue). It is annoying but at least consistent use of the PPM approach gives passengers/crew a level of certainty and you knew that past a certain number of minutes late you were pretty much guaranteed to be held at Honiton for example but not any more, as the past couple of weeks have shown clearly.
Also, had we have been let through we would have almost certainly made up all of our 45 minutes and been on time by Basingstoke, if not sooner due to the padding. Based on what Right Away said, both decisions in this case were crewing based decisions (ie SWR screw ups) and therefore not signallers or NR, despite what others claim...or is TRUST lying? Sounds like SWR took the decision to save a bit more cash and not double crew either train like they normally do and even managed to screw that up as timing tight crew breaks on WoE with so much single track and the Yeovil diversion was never going to work. I see the 1655 also ran out of service back as far as Salisbury due to crewing issues. Every day you think they can't screw up the WoE any more than they have done and they still surprise you! I feel so sorry for the guards who understandably are as frustrated as the passengers as the line which the crews take great pride in is being systematically destroyed by SWR.
The guard was finally told by SWR that we were running through to Waterloo and so walked through the train to tell everyone, only to find on arrival at Salisbury that instead our 6 car 159 was arriving in Platform 2 but the 1527 was another 6 car 159 in Platform 3. The guard was already walking down the platform before the platform staff got to him to tell him we were being terminated, so the platform staff had to board the train to let the passengers know that for no reason at all they were now having to transfer trains, on top of enjoying a further 20 minutes in Salisbury. Clearly me just ranting and awesome customer service and planning by SWR!
The Holden Report noted one factor very pertinent to the WoE:
"Reduction in ability to recover service delays because of loss of ability to control train crew resource, through physical separation of control service managers and resource managers"