Great Western Coffee Shop

An aside question that doesn't fit neatly into a thread.   I can remember trains in the timetable described as "BHX" - Bank Holiday Excepted - but don't recall any reference to them recently.  They were usually extra commuter trains that fitted between the others.    The 05:11 Gloucester to Southampton Central (08:09 arrival) is an exampled of that sort of service. 

Do these services still exist, or have they gone the same way as the mystery excursion by rail, the buffet car, and the 12 hour 40 minute wait at Melksham if you missed that train? Some changes we can celebrate ...

It seems that mainly for ‘administrative’ reasons BHX determined trains, mostly the first early service/s which traditionally on BH days would only carry a few passengers were decided by someone to no longer be worth the savings by not running them.

You can be sure many such suitable BHX excepted services, today will have been carrying a light load at a ? worthwhile potential saving of costs.

It may be to do with rostering of staff, less disruptive to roster patterns to keep to the standard timetable

As one reason, that would make sense.  I also note that bank holidays are now very much more a part of the working week - no longer are they "everyone stops" but much carries on as normal with days taken off in place.  Our dustbins were collected yesterday (or, rather, their content was!) on the normal cycle, Melksham Campus remained ope =n where it used to close on bank holidays, etc.   So there is a much-grown requirement for people to get to work on these 8 days in the year as well as the leisure traffic.   So perhaps whilst a few extra fill in trains could be lost (such as that 05:11 south of Salisbury), those former BHX service are now vital on those days where they formally did not run - even if lightly loaded, they are now vital trains where there is no close alternative such as the 05:11 north of Salisbury.