Great Western Coffee Shop

Waiting on Platform 9 at Reading this morning I noticed the dot matrix display announcing the 08.35 service to London Paddington was formed of 9 carriages.  :o

It was indeed!  But unfortunately the extra carriage turned out to be another First Class carriage H which appeared completely empty...  Still I'd not seen an A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,H formed HST before!

Boppy.

Yes, it caused problems at Oxford because it didn't fit in the down carriage sidings!  Probably a carriage positioning move if that set ends up at a different depot tonight than where it started this morning?

It's probably best to keep quiet about FGW running 9 carriage trains to Paddington, in case johoare gets to hear about it ...  :o ::) ;D

Ha Ha!! I'm pretty sure that train doesn't stop at Maidenhead... We're not allowed many HSTs... and certainly not 9 carriage ones  :P ::)

Don't joke - I understand last night's 17:50 HST from Paddington didn't quite stop in the right place at Maidenhead last night, leading to a few delays for following trains....

I noticed it had stopped at green signals just after Taplow, before the A4 roadbridge. It eventually limped into M'head at about 6.50. ouch

Oops.. Fortunately I wasn't early enough to be on that train yesterday. Anyone know exactly what happened? That is some delay for the last mile or so  ;D

I've been on two HSTs form Paddington with first stop Twyford that have overrun.  The time spent backing the train up was probably equal to continuing on to Reading anyway and letting those who need Twyford get the stopper back - may be a better plan in future?

Not so easy for overrunning Maidenhead I guess in terms of time delayed for those wanting to alight at Maidenhead.

Three coaches were still on the platform at Maidenhead, so with the benefit of SDO the TM was able to let passengers out from the back without the train having to reverse back into the platform, though of course that would have taken some time to communicate to the hundreds of punters that were on the train.  Also, there's such a fuss made out of such incidents (which in years gone by would have be waved away) that no doubt that added more minutes of delay than strictly necessary.

Wonder if standard class passengers were allowed to alight from Coaches G and H.  ;D

Ok.. that doesn't tie up with Western Enterprises' post saying it stopped at Taplow though and limped into Maidenhead at 6.50?

No it doesn't!  I'm going on what was in the Network Rail log.  Taplow is before Maidenhead of course - a case of mistaken identity?

well yes.. will be interesting to know what really happened... ;D

According to my son, who currently lives in Maidenhead and was travelling on the affected train, it came to a halt with the power car, 1 full coach and the door end of the next coach in the platform.

That tallies with what I said, if I misunderstood the '3 vehicles' mentioned as three coaches rather than two coaches and a power car.  ;)