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Had a lovely week away on the west coast of Wales, no problems with the outbound journey last Saturday towards Aberystwyth.

However travelling back home this morning, despite the journey checker not reporting any issues with the Cambrian line, and the departure boards showing a 'clean' journey through to Birmingham International, the service was seemingly curtailed at short notice at Shrewsbury.

Ordinarily I wouldn't be too fussed about this, what I objected to was that I could barely hear the 'spoken' on-board announcement as we approached Shrewsbury as it was too quiet and muffled, not helped by a loud rowdy group of passengers within our carriage.

The scrolling visual displays were still showing "a service for Birmingham Intl" as the train sat at Shrewsbury. It was only when the displays went blank and then a second announcement was made welcoming passengers onto the service to Aberyswyth/Pwllheli that I realised I needed to get off!

What compounded things was having to be shuffled off onto another waiting 4-car train that was already nearly full - not sure where it had come from but I heard a couple of other passengers grumbling that this train had already been sat for sometime at Shrewsbury.

I get the whole driver/rolling stock shortage that TfW are experiencing, but this was a pretty poor experience in my opinion.

I love travelling to Wales on the Cambrian line, but if TfW are struggling, it would probably be better to just operate it to and from Shrewsbury. It may be convenient for me to get one train direct from New Street, but I wouldn't mind getting another train to Shrewsbury as long as I know in advance and can be prepared

Sounds like a fairly common unit swap at Shrewsbury. The train from Birmingham crosses at Shrewsbury with the one to Birmingham.

The section of route between Shrewsbury and Aberystwyth/Pwllheli has a different type of signalling, and as such can only be operated by certain 158s.

If the train from Birmingham is not compliant, the units are swapped over at Shrewsbury. This shouldn't delay the departures from Shrewsbury though as there's a fair amount of stand time in both directions.