Great Western Coffee Shop

The Down Sleeper developed technical problems en route and passengers were transferred to an HST at Exeter St David's to complete their journey.

The set used was laying over at Exeter and was intended to work the 05:46 to London Paddington which has therefore been cancelled.

Sleeper failures seem to be a relatively frequent problem and must surely be knocking customers' confidence in the service. After all, Flybe's planes do not fall out of the sky every six weeks or so

The unreliability is certainly cause for concern and may well dent confidence in the service.
It is not however a fair comparison to compare with planes falling out of the sky since that is virtualy certain to kill those on board.
Both air and rail are safe modes of transport with fatal accidents very rare.

As to reliability, both trains and air transport suffer from regretably frequent breakdowns and delays, not certain how they compare though, either in general or on this particular route.

Is there a 57 shortage at the moment as a yellow network rail 57 has been on hire in running the sleeper over the last week or so.

Are they that frequent though, or is it that nearly every amendment/cancellation gets reported on here, unlike day services?

IMO the cancellation or alteration of the sleeper service is far more serious in terms of inconvieience caused than a similar cancelation or alteration of a day service, and therefore demands more attention.

If a day service is canceled or terminated short, then most passengers can use a following train, sometimes another train makes extra stops to convey those who otherwise would have had a long wait.
Buses or taxis though far from ideal are another possibility.

If the sleeper is cancelled en-route, then being woken up and probably being unable to sleep for most of the rest of the night is most displeasing, and far worse than a daytime delay for many.

I believe pax are offered full refunds in these instances, rather than the usual Charter compensation.

Still not much, compared to the disruption felt.

I was merely asking whether the fact it is reported on here on every(?) occasion merely gives the impression the service is unreliable, when compared to other rolling stock/modes of transport it may not be at all.  3 years of working the sleeper service on quite a regular basis and not once did I have a set failure (maybe just luck or good karma  ;)).

I am not disputing the level of inconvenience it causes to the passengers vs day trains, or the legitimacy of whether it should be posted on here - just querying the "relatively frequent problem" quote.

The failure number as a percentage I think would skew the results to show the sleeper failing on a larger percentage due to 2 services a day against 100s of services a day. I'm trying to figure how we would show which broke down more frequently in an equal way.
I would say I hear of the sleeper breaking down once a month on average so 1 in 60 journeys. I think if the daytime services were breaking down at this frequency we would be hearing a lot more about it.

Sort of, yes. Some of FGW's Class 57's are away for their exams ;)

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I agree that comparing the sleeper train to air travel is not a reasonable comparison... Trains tend not to be grounded due to Icelandic Volcanic Ash Clouds ::)

The beauty of the sleeper also is that it has so many different routes it can take between Devon/Cornwall and London which during normal day operations on the railway could be difficult to fit in.


Ask bobm... Who has had this very problem before when the Up Sleeper was cancelled from EXD onwards ::)

T'was the night before the night before Christmas last year.  The weather was starting to close in and the sleeper was late leaving Penzance due to delays in the crew reaching Penzance.  However those in the berths were then awoken shortly after 3.30am to be told that due to flooding the line beyond Exeter - via either route - was closed and taxis had been arranged to take us to Reading.

When we reached Exeter the taxis were indeed ready and we left within 10 minutes of getting off the train by road.  My final destination was Swindon - and despite passing it on the way to Reading on the M4 - the taxi driver wouldn't even drop me at the top of the slip road.  Thus I reached Reading shortly after 6am to find there would be no trains west of Didcot until at least 8am.  I therefore took a train to Oxford and a bus to Swindon - and arrived a good 45 mins before the first train reached Swindon.

A fortnight later I received a complete refund for my sleeper berth and travel ticket, plus ^20 ex-gratia for the problems I had at Reading getting home.