Great Western Coffee Shop

I noticed a HST running a semi fast service padd-reading and back today, seemed like an odd use for it but given the timing of this service, I assume this is using a set that would otherwise be sat at old oak common after an early morning trip?

http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/P01226/2015/12/01/advanced

Yes, a recent change whereby as you say having arrived from Didcot at 07:40 would then go straight off to Old Oak, whereas it now goes back to Reading to form the 09:15 to Paddington which is very useful for Maidenhead passengers at 09:27, as discussed here: http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=16480.0

It's often struck me that if journey requirements levelled out during the day - if we "didn't all work 9 to 5" - we would have a much more efficient public transport system, and a road network that wasn't congested. That, however, would be social engineering / change on a grand scale and it's not really incumbent on the railways to be pressing that tactic unless it were to be a nation wide strategy.  To a limited extent, the railways do a little in this direction with their offering and sales of off-peak tickets - though that system has become to embroiled in history and politics that the load-balancing effect has been bluntened or even (at times) reversed.   Here's a super-off-peak view I snapped the other day:

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/superoffpeak.jpg)

However, I think there may be some social change happening - with more people on flexitime (for example a trainee this week who would have been 9 to 5 in the past is now 9:30 to 4 [core] with the other 90 minutes at his choice being worked at either end of the day and perhaps even spread onto different days.   So perhaps the "shape" of peak loading - time along the bottom, passenger numbers up the side - is moving from the red to the purple curve on this graph:

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/lesspeaky.jpg)

And the new / extra shoulder-peak trains, run using stock that also does a peak run just before / after is an excellent progression - very much to be applauded.   The example quotes in this thread is such a train, the extra train I caught the other week from Paddington to Twyford is another.

Interestingly, levelling off of the peak has also helped us on the TransWilts.  The SRA / Atkins work of about 2004 predicted passenger numbers on a two-hourly service during the day (inter-peak) being no more than a couple of dozen journeys if such a service ran, even if the peak trains were busy - and that prediction became the base of the decision to run a "peak only" service.   But looking at today's service - which is roughly every 2 hours between the peaks - each train carries about the number of passengers predicted for the entire middle of day service just over ten years ago.

My job allows me to be fairly flexible about what hours I work but the trains do mean I tend to end up in the 9-5 routine (well more 7.30-5 but never mind).

Travelling from Twyford to London the last fast train in the morning use to be about 8.55am but was always too crowded and ditto the one 30 mins before it. I tend to travel between 6-7am so I can get a seat or fast travel. I wouldn't mind working something like 11-8 but that adds quite a lot of extra travel time (probably an extra 60-90 mins each day) and doesn't save me money. Even with the additional fast train to Twyford in the evening its still not really practical.

I actually turned a job down because the 8-8 shifts meant I probably wasn't going to get enough sleep especially at weekends.

Going back to the original point I suspect at the moment the problem is capacity full stop but if there was more then a better spread of services I'd hope would even out the curves in Grahame's diagram. The flexible ticketing I keep hearing rumours of would help as well. I'd think about the slower of peak trains occasionally if it delivered a significant saving but they don't. Or I could work at home more but financially that doesn't make any different but I do get a lie in  :)

So for the time being I continue with my annual season travelling with everyone else.