Great Western Coffee Shop

So that's a 150 or 158 ... and a driver who's route knowledge ends at Swindon.   Good on FGW for arranging *something* - one of the benefits of the combined franchise? Would it have been packed out?

Or a 142 that got lost......  ;D

2 deep the length of the platform at 09.15, cases, bikes the lot. I was late running to Filton and thought there were an unusual number of PX on the platform. HST full and standing has to be preferable to a 150, now Padd commuters know what we had to suffer last year.

I'm not sure they would allow a West unit to run through to Paddington even if there was a driver with route knowledge.  Yes it is a combined franchise but as I said in another thread it's effectively still run as 3 companies, this is a leftover from the sectorisation/privatisation policies of the 1980s/1990s.

150 possibly not, but back in 3 franchise days we did get a regular late evening 158 into Padd think it came from South Wales. Don't know  which depot worked it.

As I recall, there was an early morning train from London that called at Chippenham on its way to Maesteg ... and I suspect that was NOT an HST, not that I was ever at Chippenham early enough to see it.  ((More recently, I was thankful for the current early Chippenham to South Wales service when I was working in Cardiff.  Very pleasant to be able to cut out a mid-journey change on a draughty Bristol platform!))

An Exeter crew was asked to be on standby to work a unit to PAD via Bristol the other night, when the last up London was in trouble in the Saltash area. They didn't have the required route knowledge, but would have been piloted by the HST crew. As it turned out, they were not needed, as problem was rectified on HST.