I would be more inclined to put the increase in use, due to the increased speed and frequency on the West Coast, largely between Manchester / Glasgow / Birmingham and London than anything else. Certainly the effect of 3 trains an hour between Euston and Manchester has had a massive effect on domestic flights between London and the North West, than passengers preferring the new stock itself.

I would imagine that the average non railway enthusiast passenger doesn't really care less either way what they are being hauled by, and in fact some passengers considered the refurbished Great Western HST's to be 'new trains'. From talking to people I know, who travel on trains but have zero interest in them, they aren't impressed with voyagers as a replacement for '125s' - (which is any slam door BR intercity train in their book) - general complaints being lack of tables, hard straighter backed seats and frequent overcrowding.

Again we are back to the problem of fragmented private monopolies with government interference. First Group for the record actually own some of their own HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train) outright. However part of the reason you see these trains on wholly unsuitable routes stopping at every lamp post, is again due to the lack of suitable stock.

As for train lengths getting shorter, this started in BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)) with sprinters being brought in to replace locomotive hauled stock, but at a greater frequency. The worst example of it though being the introduction of Voyagers, which may in themselves may be suitable to supplement a core intercity network, but to outright replace HSTs and six / seven car loco hauled trains, has been a disaster.

And yes there are far too many focus groups and meetings and whatnot, where nothing much happens... But it's all a question of money, and thus becomes political...

The complaint about overcrowding is of course valid, after all commuters pay a hell of a lot of money to often stand for ages forced against each other. It's easy to say 'well it's only ten minutes', but after a full days work, people are often knackered, tired, fed up and so forth, and the last thing they need is that. Not everyone works in an office sat on their arse all day. So I completely sympathise with the commuter, who just often sees everything as inefficient.

However it is not as simple as it all seems.

With regards the loco and coaches kit, it was hired out from a freight company, EWS^▸ (English Welsh & Scottish Railway Ltd, now known as DB Schenker Rail (UK^▸ (United Kingdom))), along with the drivers for it. The guards were Great Western staff, who had to all be trained up on it. Because the guards in question generally work the 1980's power door unit type stock, they would have had to have full training, as it is a completely different way of working, a computer example might be training windows users on linux.

As for getting 'new crew', the training period for guards to become competent is between three and six months, not including the recruitment process, which includes psychometric assessments and stringent medicals. There is no easy way to speed this up, although granted it can take ages from applying for a job, to actually starting it, but the mechanics of recruiting guards or indeed drivers can hardly be cut down, after all do you want to take someone with a criminal record for money offences, or who keeps putting passengers lives at risk due to not having the required concentration, or who has a condition that can cause them to collapse whilst doing safety critical duties? And what possible economic sense would there be to recruit new staff to work on 1970's designed coaches, with a 1990's designed engine for one or two lines?

New stock, the question being who is going to fund it? And even if such stock comes about, it will take a good while to build, then test before the training of staff can begin. If we take the example of the class 172, which is probably the most suitable design of unit for the services in question, then orders were placed for the stock in late 2007 / early 2008. The first units were delivered in July 2010, and the majority will be expected to be complete later this year. Over the pond in Ireland, the Irish railway decided to order units from Korea / Japan. The order was placed in 2005 and it was until 2007 before the first units were in service. Buying from China or whoever is unlikely to be much quicker.

Is the railway too slow and complex with regards leasing agreements and suchlike? Almost certainly yes. You won't find many people, be it commuters, the general taxpayers, railway staff, or railway managers in favour of the current set up. But then the public have systematically voted for governments who are happy to keep the system as it is. With this current administration being very much about cutbacks, the chances of railways benefiting under them are extremely slim.

I personally believe the only two solutions are either very long franchises (i.e. like Chiltern) or full nationalisation. Either way both are highly political, and would meet with opposition from either the multinationals or the unions, either option certainly would take ages to bed in, a load of lawyers would get very rich on public money, not to mention other massive costs, even if it was ultimately successful, but regardless of this, this is far beyond the remit of this thread, and becomes another topic altogether.

Are commuters getting a poor deal? Absolutely. But blame successive governments who have perpetuated this fragmented nonsense. After all the Train Operating Companies, don't exist to run trains, they exist to make a profit by running trains. Whether or not you think that is a good or bad thing is entirely up to you, but it's worth bearing in mind at all times, and of course Wrexham and Shropshire, who certainly had a superb customer focused ethos, couldn't translate that into enough cash...

So the stewards who serve food, who are supposed to adhere to strict hygene regulations, are now to clean the train as well? Does that not just sound a little bit iffy...

Right, because there is obviously a distinct correlation between people who aren't necassarily the most vocal or skilled at presentation, argument or debating, and intelligence. Those geeky technical types who don't like socialising and have stunted conversations are obviously just really really stupid people, who yet somehow manage to grasp complex abstract concepts, despite being "dense"?

Fine, let's abolish solicitors full stop, and force people to represent themselves when going through divorce, lawsuits or criminal cases. If people then get screwed over, well who cares, they're only simpletons who deserve it after all.

The problem is, is that the announcements are mandatory, not discretionary, basically to comply with government regulations and corporate safety standards. If the staff do not make these announcements, and are reported not doing so, it is highly likely they will face disciplinary proceedings. The 'jobsworths' as you put them, probably don't want formal action taken against them, especially in the current climate with redundancies, where even minor blemishes on someone's record can be detrimental,  which I think is understandable.

However from the viewpoint of the travelling public, I can see that such announcements only serve to annoy them, and personally actually agree with you that half the stuff is largely spurious. I don't like to hear half the nonsense when I travel either. The solution, I don't know, but presumably it would involve passenger action groups raising the issue with the companies and perhaps MPs^▸ (Member of Parliament).

You'd need Mark III coaches, as the Mark II's are only certified for 100mph running

Ideally Mark 5 coaches (preferably 9 or even 10 of them) + either Electric locomotive and DVT^‡(resolve) or electric power cars. The pendolinos seem far more rattley and unpleasant than the electric hauled mark III coaches. Diesel power cars will do for where it is unsuitable for the wiring to go up.

And while we're at it, 350 / 360 type things for inner / outer suburban thames stuff, and a nice load of 4 car 172's for wessex regional work.

Good stuff:

Bringing back HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train) - very comfortable standard class seats with a good layout of tables / airline seats, very good refurbishment in my view (other than the removal of the buffet car).

Decent staff.

Bad stuff:

Stupid fare hikes - such as peak time fares in the evening between Cheltenham and Gloucester - why !!

Voyagers (admittadley a Virgin introduction, but utter crap, refurbished or unrefurbished). If they had ordered 180's instead, at least the train would be half comfortable and have more seating, even if they are underfloored engine DMU^▸ (Diesel Multiple Unit)'s.

Silverlink had low fares. Anyway is there any real point in giving suburban birmingham / coventry stations a direct service to London? It just slows the service down. Most people up that way would be more interested in a two hourly all stations local stopper between Coventry and Wolverhampton on the hour and half hour, rather than these random stop skip patterns.

Also a 5 car 180 has 268 seats + 16 tip up seats in vestibules.

Data taken from http://www.therailwaycentre.com/New%20TRC%20Main%20Pages/Recognition%20main%20page.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00gtc6j/Inside_Out_West_Midlands_14_01_2009/

This is worth viewing, as it shows the extent of the overcrowding on voyagers. No doubt they've deliberately picked the worst trains, but even so it shows just how unsuitable voyagers are. HST^▸ (High Speed Train)'s used to get very busy on the routes, and that was when they had 7 carriages (averaging 400 seats - unrefurbished), rather than 4 (averaging 188 seats) or 5 (224 seats). Even the 6 car Mark II coaching stock had around 270 seats.

Silverlink had direct services to London. And they ran express, rather than effectively an extension of the Birmingham - Coventry Centro local stopper.

As for marginal late night services or whatnot, DOO trains run more or less 24 hours between London and Reading. DOO trains could easily also do this to Oxford or Bedwyn, but don't, presumably as the company rightly or wrongly believes there is no business case for it.
Indeed one of the companies than run more or less 24 hours a day is Transpennine Express, which does have guards.

But on these long haul intercity trips, the guards aren't opening / closing doors every few minutes are they. And besides once the companies realise they only need one person on board, they can start getting rid of other onboard staff, and have just the driver and no one else on board.

Take the Kings Lynn line as an example. This used to be intercity loco and coaches. It is now basically an outer surburban service, where maybe a few RPO's jump on now and then. DOO has hardly improved that!

Cross Country services have cut back on catering considerably, so now there is generally no catering beyond 8pm. Now imagine they didn't have to have guards either. Are they really going to bother having a roving ticket collector on these trains? It would not be unrealistic to suggest that you could find yourself travelling on Birmingham to Bournemouth, or Bristol to Leeds, with no other staff, other than a driver onboard...

Your assumption is that companies will still keep staff on doing the commercial side of the guard's duties on all the trains that are DOO. History has shown otherwise. In general what happens when DOO occurs, is that a large number of staff either retire or move to other depots. Those that remain either get a shot at applying for drivers jobs, or become RPO's. They aren't just going to turn every guard into a travelling ticket collector on every train.

Even if the companies did actually do this, the savings would not be that great, as you'd still be paying someone between at least 18 to 20 grand a year to be on every train (assuming their role would include overseeing catering, fares, and basic safety). Of course it could be outsourced and done on the cheap, but then that would hardly improve things for the travelling passenger.