Great Western Coffee Shop

From the FGW website

11:51 London Paddington to Hereford due 15:00
This train will run short formed with 3 carriages between Oxford and Hereford.This is due to a train fault.

As will be the 15.19 return, no doubt providing optimum passenger discomfort when it leaves Oxford for London at 17.38.

17.51 London to Worcester and return was Turboed last night as well, also blamed on train fault.

Should they have been 180s or HSTs?

180 I believe.

Is this the 180 that was running one engine only due to lack of fuel?

Two 180s single units were spotted stopping at Slough on the Up Main (Cotswolds Oxford) fasts yesterday evening.

This was during Slough and Windsor Railway Society's barbeque held outside the Manor. you may have seen us enjoying ourselves on a very pleasant summer's evening.

Yes, have since learned it was terminated at Oxford, and the Turbo took over

FGW today told one of my colleagues that investigations have since found the train was not short of fuel, but that a low fuel warning came on due to a fault.

http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/display.var.2411491.0.cotswold_train_runs_out_of_fuel.php (http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/display.var.2411491.0.cotswold_train_runs_out_of_fuel.php)

That sort of thing happens quite often with the Adelantes. The TMS (Train Management System) gets sent a spurious message of some sort (engine faults, door faults, toilet faults, etc.) which displays to the driver in the cab, who has to obviously treat it as a potential fault. It's another case of 'over-engineering' of these units. There is a gauge with LED lights on the side of the coach by the fuel tank which displays the actual level of fuel for each engine, so I am a little surprised the driver didn't check these to find out his true fuel status. What price a fuel guage in the cab though!

Just a further comment on this particular cock-up; I had cause to chat to the driver today who was relieving this service upon arrival at Oxford on the day in question. He stated quite clearly that the set WAS low on fuel - apparently three warnings of low fuel were sent to the cab diagnostic computer (applying to a different carriage each time) and a fourth was received whilst the train was in the platform at Oxford. Advice from control (who have computer systems that log the train mileage and can therefore work out how much fuel is likely to be in the train) indicated that these were genuine warnings.

Did FGW try to gloss over the real problem, as a faulty on-train computer sounds a lot better than admitting its train had run low of fuel? This is by no means an isolated incident, as I can remember two reasonably recent incidents, one involving a turbo spluttering to a halt at Heyford and the other an empty HST conking out just outside Paddington. That one really screwed things up!

Either that, or the driver was trying to cover up his own mistakes, but he's an old, experience hand and didn't get involved directly as the driver who had worked the train from Paddington dealt with the problem in the main. I wonder...