Great Western Coffee Shop

120 short formations listed on Journey check......never seen that many before....seems to be a lot of "faulty trains" about?

I was wondering that. A lot of them are 2 for 3 car, mostly Turbos but maybe some others. What does that imply? Did loads of 166s keel over yesterday? Are Turbos being marshalled to replace IETs?  I don't see that in the listing, not obviously at least.

I'm inclined not to totally believe what I read.  Looking at many of the Cardiff / Portsmouth diagrams reduced from 5 to 3 cars, I wonder if the "fault" is that the trains aren't in the area yet and the spec has officially gone up.  Last year at this time, 3 cars was correct for spec, though seriously overcrowded.  Having offered an explanation, though, they really should be 5 cars with growing traffic.  As should summer Saturday trains to and from Weymouth - which seemed to have mostly dropped to 2 carriages last weekend.  I remember 6 cars (2 x 150 + 2 x 153) off Weymouth ... and indeed 2 + 8 HSTs, and not bad loadings either.

I would imagine with the recent hot weather there are a few 'poorly' units and train sets in need of some TLC not just at GWR but across the network.

Yes, absolutely.  And trains in the wrong places too - I know at least one 3 car Turbo is on a 2 car diagram.  Extra seats for those trains, but a short form on another diagram to equal things up!

Always looks worse on Journeycheck when turbos or DMUs are shortformed.  As they do more journeys per diagram and every one is listed, it soon becomes a long read.

I suspect priority is also being given to maintaining lengthened units on the Weymouths and Cornish branchlines as we are in the peak part of the Summer season.

Don't know about Cornwall, but Weymouth is pretty short.   Last Saturday, return trains (second hand data) were:
16:08 - 2 carriages
17:30 - 2 carriages
18:30 - 4 carriages
20:23 - 2 carriages
Large Community Rail party expecting to travel on the 17:30 were asked (on the morning / way down) to return on the 16:08 which they did, and "even that" was pretty darned busy. The 20:23 which used to be an "interesting train" out of Weymouth is now heavily policed and dry and I understand that the 18:30 has become interesting instead.

For comparative purposes, the 18:30 is a summer only train which until 2017 was 8 carriages.  The 17:30 has typically been 5 carriages.  So capacity is down from 13 to 6 carriages on GWR trains over than peak return period.  However, an additional SWR train at 16:54 from Weymouth to Yeovil Pen Mill (part of the Corfe Castle to Waterloo) working does add capacity from Weymouth to Yeovil which traditionally has been the busiest part of the route on a summer Saturday.  I don't know how long the SWR train has been, nor how the loadings have been on this "congestion-busting" route section.

Yes I was on that diagram, assuming there wasn't more than one! 0739 Reading to Oxford, had loads of room although given the number of passengers travelling this morning would have been loads of seats free on a 2 car train.

Looks like the window cleaners were busy the rest of the week so all the IETs are being done at once  :D

In all seriousness, we still have many all over the place due to the cancellations yesterday, 800001/800002 aren’t due out in service for a few weeks just yet, sticker and seat cover installations.