From another thread - good question - I would be guessing at a general answer


Personally, leaving from home, I usually check.  I need to allow 25 minutes from home before the train's departure and I would rather plan an alternative if my train is cancelled or seriously delayed.  I do not really want to be waiting / sorting stuff out when I get to the station, as there is usually a very long wait for the next train, even assuming that's running. With a shuttle up and down, staff, infrastructure or train problems tend to mean that if one train's cancelled, there's a higher chance that the next one(s) are as well.   Sometimes, 1 train cancellation will result in my aborting a whole day's travel

If a train is shown as delayed, with a new estimated time before I leave home, I will tend to leave home anyway as the train may leave before the estimate.  For example, the 05:11 from Gloucester calls at Melksham at 06:29, but if it is advertised at being 10 minutes late from Gloucester, that will show up as 10 minutes late at Melksham too on Journeycheck, but that's only an estimate and it may well make up most of that delay by a quicker reversal at Swindon.

Travelling home from elsewhere, I inevitably keep an eye in on what's happening ahead.  At this point, journeys cannot realistically be aborted (except in extremis) and I look to amend plans if something is going wrong. Unlike the outward journey, poor performance of more frequent services inbound to connecting stations make a difference - outbound, I can often realistically wait for the next train, but inbound a longer distance train cancellation of delay makes a big difference - between catching and failing to catch a connection. Also inbound / afternoon train services are more prone to cancellation.

That's just personal - based on experience and the metrics of my local station.  What about others?

 
If I have planned in advance to travel, I will always check Realtimetrains before travelling, but if a spur of the moment thing I would just turn up, but that would mainly be because I would be on route that I know there are regular services available

 
In my retirement, I generally don't 'book in advance' for rail travel: it's no longer time critical, as it used to be when I had an important team meeting to attend in London, for example.

Nailsea & Backwell, on the main line, benefits from a rather reliable service, these days: half hourly services into Bristol Temple Meads, for example, from which there will probably be alternative options if there is any disruption.

I will be taking the three trains from Nailsea to Kemble tomorrow (two changes, at Bristol and Swindon).  I will only be looking at 'train running' so I can inform my family that I may be a few minutes late for our lunch.

CfN. 

 
I/we have a 10-15 minute walk to Digby & Sowton so the status of the service to Exeter Central / St.Davids (or very occasionally further on) is always checked. Where onward connections are involved I always use RTT to see whether the subsequent train is on time or not.

 
We have a little LED live departure board in the dining room that makes it easy to check.

I do often keep an eye on RTT a few hours before to see if an outbound (i.e. to Worcester/Hereford) journey has been cancelled, in case the train was due to form the inbound service I was planning to catch to Oxford.

 
Outside of peak hours I normally get an hourly service so before I leave my house I check https://tiger.worldline.global/BOOKHAM/ciss

If I am out and about I often check https://my.live-departures.info/ which uses my GPS to find the nearest station to me. You can also key in the station name if you want. It will then show the departures screen for the next couple of services.

 

Did they run?

 
I am increasingly checking formations before travelling.

Especially when travelling via Salisbury! When I'm travelling that way aim for the CDF-PMH that's usually a 4-car 158, which happens to give me an earlier than required arrival at my destination, with plenty of delay buffer. Except on the days I go that way when it always seems to be short-formed, so I decide to give it a miss and accept the 3-car 166 that follows, which ends up picking up a delay, meaning I have to change plans at the other end.