Great Western Coffee Shop

Service: 09:35 London Paddington to Hereford on 29/06/2008 operated by fgw.
Details: This train has run short formed with 3 carriages.

Service: 10:42 London Paddington to Hereford on 29/06/2008 operated by fgw.
Details: This train will be started from Reading. It will no longer call at: London Paddington and Slough. This is due to a member of train crew being unavailable.

And now the Worcesters...

Service: 13:42 London Paddington to Worcester Shrub Hill on 29/06/2008 operated by fgw.
Details: This train will run short formed with 3 carriages.

Service: 16:25 Worcester Shrub Hill to London Paddington on 29/06/2008 operated by fgw.
Details: This train will run short formed with 3 carriages.

Service: 13:30 Hereford to London Paddington on 29/06/2008 operated by fgw.
Details: This train will run short formed with 3 carriages.

That 1625 ex Worcester will be roughly 1740 ex Oxford. I wonder if FGW will have the sense to tag on another 3 car unit at Oxford, as it will otherwise be an almighty crush from Oxford to Paddington with just 3-cars.

Still showing 3 car set so I doubt there will be another 2 or 3 on at Oxford.

Of course they won't - that would be far too sensible. There's probably three or four surplus turbos kicking around at Oxford all day, but I saw at least three of the up Paddington's off the Cotswold Line arrive today and two of them were chock-full, the third had people standing.

This always happens on a Sunday at it's not helped by the fact that the trains also stop at Didcot Parkway. Indeed, a couple of months ago the local press got involved when a 2-car was used a a substitute on one of the Hereford-Paddingtons in the afternoon. About 30 people had to be turned away at Oxford and nobody at all could board at Didcot. The appalling fact is that there IS plenty of spare Turbo capacity on a Sunday.

Even when the trains are formed by HST's they are full as Oxford only has an hourly fast service on a Sunday, which almost always originates from Hereford/Malvern/Worcester.

Sounds similar to this archive topic.
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=1747.msg12002#msg12002

That was the exact service in question, Lee. And guess who witnessed it first hand!  :-[

Several years ago, when the majority of Cotswold Line services were Turbo's there was a similar timed Sunday service which, upon arrival at Oxford coupled up with an additional unit to form a 6-car units. So they know the demand is there, and they should plan accordingly. The resources certainly are there as respected Industry Insider says (although I would disagree slightly and say there is normally a minimum of 6 Turbo's in the sidings doing nothing!).

Fair point about stock.

On a sunday:

No Greenford service so that frees up I believe 2 sets.
Reading stopper is hourly instead of half hourly
Oxford stopper is hourly instead of half hourly.

But also need to remember sets get taken out for routine maintenance and such :)

It's not impossible to do exams overnight. Not that many TOCs realise that ...

Yes, but...

Where were all the booked HSTs this weekend anyway, or the Adelantes, come to that?

Anyone know?

And why are the controllers allowed to get way with this kind of thing so often on the Cotswold Line (and at Oxford of course)? Just because the Cotswold Line crews sign for Turbos and you can't send a Turbo off to Bristol doesn't make it right.

After the two-car Turbo fiasco - and there was another one sent out on a Saturday morning all the way to Hereford around the same time, which I saw arriving at Oxford from London absolutely packed - there were lots of promises about it not happening again. But a three-car is scarcely much of an improvement, especially on a Sunday afternoon or evening - which as any fool knows is one of the busiest times for rail travel all week.

Surely someone high up in FGW must realise what a lousy advert for rail travel an overcrowded Turbo is. Hardly the perfect end to a weekend away. And if it's a 165 - one toilet all the way to Hereford and back, lovely!

Try appreciate I'm giving possible reasons, I'm trying to say they are the exact reason.

Stab in the dark, but there were extra services running to/from Castle cary because of Glastonbury, it may be something to do with that?


Here here!

How many business travellers are there on the Bristol line compared to the Cotswolds?

Which route makes more money...

Which Route is faster...

Shall I continue?

Further turbo substitutions today (30/06/2008) :

Service: 05:51 Moreton-In-Marsh to London Paddington on 30/06/2008 operated by First Great Western.

Details: This train will run short formed with 3 carriages. This is due to a member of train crew being unavailable.

Service: 11:06 Great Malvern to London Paddington on 30/06/2008 operated by First Great Western.

Details: This train has been revised. This train will run short formed with 3 carriages. This is due to an earlier train fault.

Service: 07:51 London Paddington to Great Malvern on 30/06/2008 operated by First Great Western.

Details: This train has been revised. This train will run short formed with 3 carriages. This is due to an earlier train fault.

O - U - C - H. OUCH OUCH OUCH.

This will become much more common after the 180 have left:

3 180s out, 1 HST in.

At this rate they will try a 153 on the line!

Well FGW did intend to use a 2 car 158 on a Bristol - Padd one day last year ... got swapped at Swindon with a HST though.

158 in Paddington, my lordz!

Not impressed on Saturday when told one of the HST diagrams on the Cotswolds Monday would have to be formed with a Turbo, because of traincrew issues. 95% of the Turbo vice HST substitution recently has been down to crewing issues. Occasionally the stock alteration has been due to HST or 180 failure, but this has been infrequent and usually only for part of the day.

At the weekend? That's what we were talking about and that's when most of the recent Turbo stand-ins have been. Those Sunday afternoon trains from Hereford can get extremely busy, and fill up at Oxford, that's why they are booked for HSTs and have been for years.

A Turbo may be be an operationally convenient solution, but I return to my point about bad PR for the railway and FGW in particular. That set swap on the 05.51 from Moreton this morning will be remembered by the commuters for longer than all the on-time journeys they have had on that service recently. And the two-car working to Hereford I saw arrive at Oxford, and the other widely-reported one were nothing short of a disgrace - and a safety risk.

When we have been bombarded with FGW announcements about inter-city standard stock coming on to the route for the past couple of years, why shouldn't people get hacked off when a suburban DMU turns up?

Yes, a train is better than no train, but if the past couple of days' alterations are really down to the old chestnut of crewing issues, then it's about time someone got them sorted out - before the service collapses again in the run-up to Christmas.


But they turn a very pretty penny on the Cotswold Line too - from inflated London and South East area peak day returns (because we're all loaded up here), plenty of first class annual seasons sold, not having First Minute fares available, etc.

I agree with you, Will. Though I wonder if Thames Trains (which under the stewardship of Go-Ahead rarely showed any innovation) had retained the franchise, whether the service in question, and many others, would still be operated by a 165/6 like it was up until the end of 2005?

By the time Thames lost the franchise, the 166s were really struggling to cope with Cotswold loadings at the shoulders of the peaks, so if they had been given a long-term extension, maybe they would have looked around for something else - a four-car Class 168 derivative perhaps, like the 171s Go-Ahead operate on Southern's DMU routes.

And another one...

07:51 London Paddington to Great Malvern due 10:39
This train will run short formed with 3 carriages.This is due to an earlier train fault.

11:06 Great Malvern to London Paddington due 13:59
This train will run short formed with 3 carriages.This is due to an earlier train fault.

So no inter-city standard train out of Worcester to London for four hours today...

In some respects it's good that the SRA chose FGW to take over the short-term extention to Thames Trains (to eventually be called First Great Western Link) until the main FGW franchise terminated. At least FGW offered two proposals - one to operate the existing service on the existing non-subsity basis, the other to introduce 180's on the Oxford's and Cotswolds (where they would still be perfectly adequate on many services), for a subsidy payment of just over ^100m I believe? Thankfully the latter was chosen.

I really doubt that Go-Ahead would have done much at all. Certainly not provided the quality of train the line now enjoys. Such a shame the various other naive decisions from FGW have spoiled all the positive publicity this could have generated.

Don't dismiss Go Ahead, they have done very well south east of London.

Although punctuality plummeted in the first few months of LM, they have now improved, and the new stock will make a difference (CT were not interested at all).

Just be grateful NX aren't running it!

Tell you what lets base a few 143s at Reading.............then you WILL have something to moan about!!!

No, don't get me wrong, Go-Ahead manage to do the basics right most of the time - something which FGW should learn lessons from.

Though, I am of the opinion, that they lacked imagination and the urge to take a few risks with their Thames Trains franchise.

It's a balancing act - perhaps Go-Ahead were too negative and FirstGroup too revolutionary?