Great Western Coffee Shop

From FGW live updates:

Not sure it's chaos, Chris, just guaranteed gross overcrowding on the way back from Hereford. Was running not far behind time on its way west when I saw it at Charlbury.

And here it is in all its two-car glory... http://www.flickr.com/photos/willc2009/5110583628/

Fair enough: I was just trying to make up my own catchy headline, using 'chaos' and 'Cotswolds' ... ::) :D ;D

Chris  ;)

I never got round to posting them last week, but this was the scene at Oxford this time last week with the same train, the 14:30 Hereford to Paddington.  At a rough guess there were about 250 people waiting on Oxford platform, swelled a little by the Chiltern diversions, but not too much as that train had connected from one of the quieter Stratford-Upon-Avon trains.  Despite the best efforts of the station staff with frantic whistle blowing, the train was platformed for well over five minutes.  It was a 2+7 HST.  This sort of scene is repeated most of Sunday afternoon and early evening, every hour.  Plenty of people were standing as it left Oxford.

(http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4087/5111955500_de8fe0026b.jpg)
(http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1414/5111354695_5d9273ff82.jpg)


Today I had the dubious pleasure of being a passenger on board the 16:42 Paddington to Great Malvern train.  No Chiltern diversions this week, so it was back to a regular 3-car Class 166.  I estimate that around 50 people were forced to stand from Paddington to Slough, 20-30 between Slough and Didcot and 60 or so between Didcot and Oxford.  Everybody else was squashed in with cases and bags everywhere.  The train unloaded to around 2/3rds full at Oxford which by the time the 100's of passengers with luggage had got off, delayed the train by a couple of minutes.

In the first example above, it just goes to show that even a 2+7 HST hourly service isn't always enough on a Sunday afternoon on the Oxford to London route.  I dread to think what the station looked like today when it was cancelled - I expect the 17:05 stopper and 17:16 Cross Country bore the brunt of the excess.

In the other example, I despair really.  I have sympathy for the management of FGW with regard to weekday capacity as there just isn't much they can do.  I also have sympathy on other routes on Sunday's as there is a limit to how many trains an hour can run on the Bristol's, Swansea's and Penzance's due to engineering constraints, so apart from adding an extra standard class carriage they're stuck - there has of course been talk of doing just that.  However, on a Sunday there is plenty of spare Turbo's sat around in sidings.  If you're going to take HST's off of the hourly service on the Cotswolds then for virtually everything else there should be at least a 5-car Turbo provided for the core part of the route between Oxford and London.  There really is no excuse not to do so.