Great Western Coffee Shop

Yes, there'll be a couple of up trains sat at Charlbury waiting time until the revised timetable kicks in.  Better than being sat at Ascott!





Edit note:  At the request of a couple of members, these particular posts have been split off from the 'Cotswold Line Redoubling' topic, to form a new topic here.  Chris.  ;)

One of the two trains which I assume to be the ones referred to by "IndustryInsider" will still have to wait at Charlbury after the new timetable starts on 12th September - the 1514 HDF-PAD.  This is booked to arrive at 1701 but not to depart until 1711.  The other, the 1728 WOF-PAD, has its wait transferred elsewhere.  Although it will depart Charlbury 10 minutes earlier than now at 1837 and will call additionally at Hanborough (1844), it then takes a massive 20 minutes to get to Oxford instead of the usual 10.  This is because it will have to wait outside Oxford station for the departure of the 1901 local service.  The CLPG did suggest switching the two departures, so that the Cotswold Line train could form a fast 1901 departure from Oxford and that the local could follow it at 1907.  This would result in both trains departing at regular pattern times.  It would also remove about half of the 16 minute wait that the current 1901 has at Didcot Parkway. Unfortunately, FGW decided that this alteration would cause problems later in the journey beyond Didcot.

Yes, shame that.  Perhaps it can be tweaked for the December timetable?  At least the other occurrence of the day when the stopper precedes the fast at 17:31/38 is being swapped round.

They have a 21:51 Hereford to London Paddington, Do you think they would ever consider like a 22:30 London Paddington to Hereford?

Never say never but I would have thought unlikely as a direct service over the Cotswold line.  There's a 21:48 from Paddington as far as Worcester. Meanwhile you can reach Hereford by leaving Paddington at 22:45 and changing at Newport.

Is the Worcester Hereford line open 24x7? If not it would surely be closed by the time such a train got to it.

THere#'s more of a call for a later train as far as WOS from PAD - 2148 is stupidly early.

Even in the summer 1998 timetable, the last train was the 2148. I wonder how many 'last trains' have remained unchanged for such a long period? I would have thought that with changes in travel patterns, a slightly later 'last' departure might prove popular. But with the proposed new HST starting in the morning from Charlbury in December, maybe there could be a late evening Oxford service extended through to Charlbury?

As for the 2151 from Hereford to Paddington, this is a 'fresh air' train. Apart from providing a useful late evening service from Worcester to Pershore and Evesham, I don't believe there is any demand for a service so late.

Times of last trains are often spwecified in franchises.


It doesn't stable at Charlbury! THe new Charlbury starter must come through ecs from Oxford, I guess, as it currently starts in Oxford - or might be the first down from PAD in the morning?


Oi! I'm a regular user of that train. Huntindon Hall in Worcester is a great night out!

Though it would be better if it ran on Saturdays, engineering permitting - a weekday evening out in Worcester is less useful.

Agreed that a late evening train on the eastern part of the line would be very useful. Maybe extend one of the Oxfords (22.49 or 23.20 from Paddington) to Charlbury or beyond? "How do I get back from London after the last train has gone?" is a fairly common question in Charlbury so there's clearly some demand for it.

Definitely a demand for a 2320 departure from Paddington to go to Worcester. The amount I spend on taxis after getting back to Oxford from London by train or Heathrow by bus, to have to take an expensive taxi for the last 15miles. Often see a string of taxis returning to Oxford from Charlbury.

It currently runs ECS (practically) as the 05:17 Paddington to Oxford, so I would expect that to still be the case with it just carrying on to Charlbury.

As for late trains back to Worcester, I wouldn't say 21:48 was stupidly early - by comparison if you're heading off to Cheltenham/Gloucester then the latest service there is only slightly later at 22:15 (with a change onto a Sprinter at Swindon).  I also don't see a demand for a service at 23:20 all the way to Worcester - but to Charlbury and as far as Moreton there may be a few takers.  What might be might be desirable from a customer service standpoint to either shift the evening departures from Paddington slightly from 19:22/20:20/21:48 to 19:22/20:20/21:20/22:20 so as to give an extra train, a clockface hourly service and a 30-minute later departure time of the last train from London, or to perhaps have the current 22:49 Turbo from Paddington to Oxford extend through to Moreton-In-Marsh then return ECS to Oxford?  Neither of these options are going to be money spinners though!

Whioch is exactly why we need to get these specified into the next draft of the ITT for the new franchise!

Yes, indeed.  A good opportunity to try to get something written into the specification from 2013.

Anywhere about as far as Moreton would see London as the nearest city with decent amount of theatre / shows going on. By the time you make it back to PAD, 2248 would be al;most too early, so a 2318 or thereabouts would be about right. There must be an Oxford service around then, so just extend that to Moreton. It could either run to WOS for stabling (in which case it might as well run in service) or run ECS to Oxford - whichever suited the TOC.

The South Cotswolds beyond Swindon are almost too far from the smoke to attract regular theatre goers?.....and Swindon does have a late train anyhow.

There's no shortage of theatre at Stratford-Upon-Avon just a stones throw up the road from Moreton of course, but I take your point.  Though one issue is the staffing of the signalboxes overnight.  The situation has varied several times over recent years from the boxes staying open all night to closing from around midnight to 5am, so it would need an undertaking from Network Rail to ensure they were always open.

Hmmm - the RSC is pretty specialised theatre. ONly a small percentage enjoy Shakespeare!

I'd like to see a return from Paddington around the 11pm mark.  9.48 is too early for a night out in London. I normally travel from Honeybourne, but if returning late from London I drive to Banbury. Last train from Marylebone is around 11.50, but I would drive to Moreton and go from there if there were a later train.

Meanwhile ...


Thanks for your first post, dzug - and may I offer you a rather belated warm welcome to the Coffee Shop forum!

Chris.  :D

23:20 would make sense if doing it, means people could go to theatre or something. Most shows tend to finish around half 10 or so.

23:20 to Hereford all the way would be wonderful, They could stable at Hereford from like 02:40am, lets say it took 3 hours 20 minutes. And use the set on the 05:34am London Paddington. They wouldnt have to move ECS about.

Not just stabling though. What about routine maintenance, cleaning etc? Then there's the need to get the crew from Bristol to Hereford.

I'm at a loss when it comes to trying to work out what would be wonderful about arriving in Hereford at something like 2.30am. Not very wonderful for the train crew who would have been working an empty train since Charlbury or Moreton-in-Marsh. Not very wonderful for the bottom line and utterly unrealistic given the number of signalboxes that would have to stay open deep into the night.

Loadings on the existing 21.48 are minimal west of Oxford - they used to fit into a two-car Turbo with dozens of seats to spare, with the current use of an HST being a positioning move for the morning - and the numbers travelling west of Moreton-in-Marsh are tiny. It may be worth experimenting with extending a later train past Oxford to turn back at either Charlbury or Moreton on Friday and Saturday nights but I'm afraid the demand for journeys further west at that time of night just is not there, however nice an idea it may appear in theory.

My aunt lives in Worcester and wonders why there isn't a later train from London so you can get back from a show. Worcester itself isn't particularly well served by theaters and the like and they would be some demand for a train. I agree that the easiest way of doing this would be extending an London Oxford train however this may effect the unit diagrams. I think standardization of the times and making the last service leave later is a good idea too. 

Why? Because the numbers of people wanting a service all the way from London to Worcester at that time of night are not sufficient to justify the costs involved. Just the taxi back to Oxford for the train driver would probably eat up any fares income all by itself.

Go see a matinee - or to Birmingham - would be my advice. And I can think of many places that would like to have Malvern's theatres on their doorstep.

And if you think Worcester is hard done by, consider the following:

Chiltern's last train to stations north of Banbury from Monday to Thursday is 22.20, so not that different from the Cotswold Line's 21.48. On Fridays only Chiltern run a 23.10 to Warwick Parkway and a 23.54 as far as Leamington. On Saturdays and Sundays the 22.00 to Birmingham is the last service north of Banbury.

After the 21.43 from Euston, Virgin run all of two Birmingham services, at 22.30 and 23.30 - to a place 10 times the size of Worcester, calling at Milton Keynes and Coventry along the way.

I'm not saying that isn't poor. Im just saying there may be more demand than you would expect. Many places the size of Worcester and Malvern combined?

The last departure from Oxford to Banbury (and intermediate stations) on a Saturday night is at 23.47. Granted, it's a bus, but nonetheless if it's worth providing a service to little Tackley at that time I can't see why not Charlbury or Kingham.

In my experience the 21.48 is very well loaded from Oxford to Charlbury most nights - certainly better than most trains outside the obvious peak. On Fridays and Saturdays it's very busy. I've had a few chats with people here over the past few days (I know, I know, the plural of anecdote is not data :) ) and they strongly suggest that there's a lot of latent demand for an extra service.

To Worcester or Hereford? I doubt it very much. But if an Oxford terminator could be extended to Moreton, in much the same way as the mid-afternoon train has been, and an early morning train will be to Charlbury (in December)... I think it would be both popular and affordable.

That bus is very well loaded too, I'm on it quite often.

It used to be a train in Thames Trains days - unfortunately, engineering works /Rules of the Route caused bustitution too rdgularly, and the bus was included in the Rules.

I've tried to get it back as a train, with no luck as it'll need the Rules changing.

There may be more - perhaps on a Friday or Saturday night - but never anything like enough to justify the expense and you can't plan a regular train service on the basis that people might, occasionally, like to travel back very late from London. And if you were going to Malvern as well, that's another two signalboxes you need to keep open.

Maybe if the signalling eventually transfers to Didcot, with just one person needed to run the route, plus one at Worcester, then it might be more feasible, but until then the odd extension at the eastern end of the line is the only thing likely to happen.



They provide the service because the franchise says they must, not because of overwhelming demand from Tackley. And what exactly does "well-loaded" mean? A 50-seater coach with two or three dozen people on board may indeed look well-loaded - I would hardly apply the same description to two or three dozen people on a 180-seat Turbo, never mind a 500-seat HST.

And more to the point, does anyone actually check tickets on this bus (I've never been asked to show a ticket once while boarding scheduled or unscheduled road replacement coaches to or from Oxford in 10 years) or is it just that the locals have worked out it's a good way to get a free ride home at FGW's expense?

I'm sure Charlbury is worth a try with a later train, though again Richard and I may have to differ on what constitutes "well-loaded". The bulk of the demand on the 21.48 past Oxford has always been to Hanborough and Charlbury and if there were an even later train that would be no different.

However, there is the passage of the 21.51 from Hereford to factor in, which needs both platform 2 at Charlbury (where the turnback is) and the single line to Oxford, so you are looking at either a 23.2x or a 23.5x departure from Oxford. Is the first enough of a gap after the 21.48 leaves Oxford at 22.52 to bother with? And if a 23.2x ended at Charlbury you would need a lightning-fast turnround to get back to Oxford out of the way of that train from Hereford.

Going all the way to Moreton-in-Marsh with either a 23.2x or a 23.5x means keeping two signalboxes open well after midnight to return the empty train to Oxford. And most of the 3,500 souls in Moreton are tucked up in bed long before the 21.48 gets here at present - a later train will not turn us all into 24-hour party people.

That bus regularly has 40+ passengers on it - indeed I have alerted FGW to this after 3 successive loadings of 45 recently. They have chosen to forward any overflow by taxi, rather than lay on a standy bus, which I think is sensible.

The later Cotswold train would have to be a turbo, and demand shown by the time the DfT gets around to drawing up the new franchise - i.e. Very soon. Anyone know what the current Rules of the Route has for opening times?

Because you won't get that changed in time for the new franchise spec...

I can only speak for what I know about Hanborough. However the further you get away from London, the lower the demand will be for late night trains from London. I do however as the CLPG rep for Hanborough get regular complaints from Hanborough area residents that they either cannot go to an evening show in London and get home by train or that they do actually go to London for evening shows but complain about the high cost of getting a taxi home from Oxford. (of course for Charlbury residents alternative taxi costs would be even higher and to Morton astronomical.) Personally on the rare occasions that I go to London for a show I book for a matinee. However the matinee option is often not available for many shows/events.
Would a late night "rail/bus" be worth bidding for even if only as a time limted experiment to find out what the real demand might be. Local buses to Witney and Carterton from Oxford run well into the small hours and are well used but they do have a supplementary fare to go to the extra nightime costs. Would a supplementary fare make it more viable?

I'm not sure that's possible on the railways?

Chris, I'll ask again, does anyone ask those people for a ticket or a fare? Because i think that's a fairly important consideration when trying to assess whether the demand is really there and people are willing to put money in FGW's pocket for the service. If people can just wander up and board unchallenged (not that it would be any different from many late-night trains), then why bother paying? And if they aren't asked for a ticket, I'd like to see how many of your 45 would make a beeline for the ticket machines were an RPI to be stood at the entrance to the coach for a few Saturday nights.

The signalboxes are being staffed round the clock at the moment, in connection with redoubling work, but the normal hours of operation on the line are roughly 5am to just after midnight Monday-Saturday and 9am to just after midnight on Sundays.

One could argue we have just had a six-month-long bus trial and experience suggests that most people using the Cotswold Line avoid them like the plague, given the loadings i saw when I rode on the buses and the numbers of people using the 19.22 from Paddington to make sure they got all the way home on a train during that period. Unless they run direct to Moreton-in-Marsh, bus journeys to Moreton and anywhere in Worcestershire take forever, given the routes that buses need to take to serve the west Oxfordshire stations off the A44.

Stagecoach operates the S3 route to Woodstock, Charlbury and Chipping Norton without any council subsidy, just as with the S1 and S2 to Witney and Carterton, and they don't bother running a night bus on the S3, finishing with the 23.45 from Oxford. Like all the other evening services on the route, it starts at Oxford's bus station, not at the railway station, which you might have thought it would, given the lack of a train beyond Oxford at that hour. Perhaps a comment on their view of the commercial prospects for late-night custom to what is, let's be honest, a pretty thinly-populated area? And even the NS1 only runs in the early hours of Saturdays and Sundays, not the rest of the week.

If you're going to have a trial of anything, then it should be a trial of a train service and that is going to be up to FGW and whether they are willing to foot the bill - as I say, with some sharp running by a 23.2x departure from Oxford to Charlbury and then back empty, you might just manage that without getting in the way of the train from Hereford and stay within existing signalbox hours but is a train only 30 minutes later than the present last train what people mean by a later train? If not, and I suspect that's not what they mean, then you are going to need extra hours for one or more signalboxes, with all the implications that has for costs, rostering, etc.

In that particular case I should imagine most of them do have tickets.  After all, it's mostly people returning home after having a night out in Oxford - hardly anyone would be making a one-way trip that time of night on a Saturday, and if coming in from Tackley, Heyford, Kings Sutton or Banbury it's very unlikely you'd have travelled in by any other method than a train earlier in the evening.  So, they'd have needed to buy tickets for the inward journey, and with the difference in price between a single and return being a mighty 10p, you'd have to be a bit silly to buy a single and risk having to fork out for another single for the return journey, however small the chances of an inspection.

Exactly.

And the same would apply to the extra service along the Cotswold Line - very very few, if any, would be makinga single journey....so its a bit if a false argument really.

But you still haven't actually answered as to whether anyone does bother to check if people do have tickets. Yes or no? It's not a trick question. I assume the lack of an answer means they don't. Maybe they should try it and find out - especially given what laying on a taxi to Banbury will cost at that time of the night. Then you might find out if it's a false argument - and a false economy.

I'm not disputing that many people may have travelled in by rail but people may very well have got lifts into Oxford from friends or parents off to do something else there who are travelling back at a different time.

And given the number of times I see people who are quite happy to chance travelling without a ticket at all times of the day and paying a conductor if checked on the train or at the barriers at Oxford should the gates be in operation, even when ticket offices are open or machines are in working order at the likes of Charlbury and Hanborough, I can't imagine habits are any different in north Oxfordshire, especially of a Saturday evening when all four stations north of Oxford are ungated and three are unstaffed and it's not a penalty fares route. The Oxford Evening Out ticket may only be ^3, or ^2 with a railcard, but if you don't have to pay so much the better will be many people's attitude.

Yes, they do - or, the driver usually does rather amazingly.

FGW usually contract the same bus each week, so the regulars ( and theres a lot of those) are known by the driver and vice versa. Most priduce without being asked when I've observed.

But, as has been said, this is likely because they have return tickets so its nit difficult to fish for your ticket.

This would be the same on any extra cotswold train - no one is likely to want to go out to the cotswolds in a one way trip at that time of night!

The cost if putting it on is the reason I said it needed to be specified in the franchise. There's no way it would ever be profitable - social trains need to be specified so that the TOCs know that it'll cost from the start.

The barriers at Oxford operate till after 9, so most people will get caught on the way in if they don't buy before travelling on bith routes

I'll take your word for it that he does check, but it certainly was not the case on Cotswold buses - and due to a broken car one night, I did do a one-way journey.

And the opportunities for ticketless travel are there and there are people who will take them - you can always tell when a Cotswold Line train has gone off platform 1 at Paddington if a ticket check is carried out past Oxford. There are an astonishing number of people who just didn't have time to get a ticket... yet they always seem to have managed to buy them when you see them on other occasions and the train has gone from a barriered platform.

And there is a rather big flaw with Oxford's gates - maybe not on a Saturday but most certainly on weekday evenings up to 8pm. I'm sure you know what I mean. And leaving Oxford after 9pm, of course.

I don't think anybody doubts that ticketless travel is a problem, but both ChrisB and myself have tried to explain why"...if they aren't asked for a ticket, I'd like to see how many of your 45 would make a beeline for the ticket machines were an RPI to be stood at the entrance to the coach for a few Saturday nights". the majority of those 45 people probably wouldn't need to make a beeline for the ticket machines.  I'm not sure whether you grudgingly acknowledge the logic in that when you go on with lots of spurious 'ifs and buts', such as ticketless travel from Platform 1 at Paddington, but it is the case. 

Whilst I appreciate the discussion about ticket checks on bus services, and fully support the desirability of this, I do have sympathy with the staff that are given this task, particularly on late evening services.

A few years ago I was DM at Reading and was supervising the boarding of one of the regular late evening bus services to Newbury. A "customer" was refused entry to the coach because he did not have ticket. Yes, we were checking tickets!

He kicked up a fuss - the usual stuff about replacement bus services being free - and then walked off. Ten minutes later, after the bus had gone, he returned and stabbed one of our security guards in the stomach. The guard was taken to hospital and survived (he is now a driver with FGW).

The point is that it made us all keenly aware of the dangers of late night ticket checks on buses - even with well qualified security staff to support you. I certainly would not like to undertake such a task as the only member of staff on duty, as is common at many stations in the late evening.

The assailant was caught and prosecuted, but got off on a technicality.

I'll grudgingly acknowledge the logic if you insist and it may be the case that the people of the Cherwell Valley are all astonishingly honest - and here comes the but - in my experience the late-night replacement buses on the Cotswold Line were wide open to ticketless travel and anyone making the trip a couple of times would have cottoned on to that - and not everyone was/is necessarily making a return journey, however much you might wish to convince yourselves that is the case.

And i don't believe a more general point about people's willingness to take a chance on getting a free ride, be it on a train or a replacement bus, is spurious in this context. We all know fare-dodging costs the rail industry a  fortune every year. We've all seen people trying it. First Group alone has come up with estimates of ^15m to ^40m a year across its rail franchises. The lower end of that is almost enough to pay for the Turbo refresh programme twice over.

It must be cheaper nit to staff late nigjt properly, than to collect the very few one-way trips being made, or they'd do the former, surely?

A cheap way of trialling what kind of demand might be out there for a later evening service might be to extend one of the late services from Paddington through to Charlbury just on a Friday evening - in the same way a couple of Chiltern's late evening services on a Friday extend, such as the 23:54 going to Leamington Spa (as pointed out earlier by Willc).

You could choose either the 22:49 from Paddington going on from Oxford at 23:55, Hanborough at 00:04 and Charlbury 00:12 (return ECS at 00:15 to clear the branch and allow Ascott signalbox to close at 00:30ish).

Or the 23:20 going on from Oxford at 00:30 calling at Hanborough 00:38 and Charlbury 00:46 (return ECS at 00:50 to clear the branch and allow Ascott signalbox to close around 01:15).

Both options would mean a modest extension of the box hours at Ascott, but for only one night of the week.  The new(ish) 00:38 Oxford to Banbury train really is starting to pick up some business on a Friday evening, so having a Hanborough and Charlbury service (advertised in the local area as an 'evening out' service for both Oxford and London) would be of real social benefit to the residents of Hanborough and Charlbury and the surrounding villages.  Not to mention looking good in the eyes of the locals another positive benefit of the re-doubling.

If successful you could look at either extending it to Moreton, or running it throughout the rest of the week (at slightly revised timings due to the two-track timetable variations on the Paddington to Oxford leg).

Yup - that would be my suggestion too.....

That 0038 is quite busy on Thursdays now too....

That's a terrific idea and worth the CLPG and the Customer Panel putting to FGW, I'd have thought. (Saturday, too, would be good, engineering possessions permitting.)

I'd pick the latter - as getting to PAD for the former at 2249 would be very tight, whether you are at the theatre or a concert. They rarely finish before 2230....

I really can't see a 23.20 departure from London being feasible. The occasional theatre-going habits of people living 70-odd miles from London are not going to cut much ice with the DfT and for doing almost anything else in London a 22.49 departure is plenty late enough - and round about the time I think most people have in mind when they say a later Cotswold Line train should run.

Any later train would not just be about getting back from London, it would be just as much, if not more so, about getting back from Oxford - indeed the numbers joining there would arguably make or break the notion.

While it is possible at present to make the 22.52 Cotswold Line departure after a show or play in Oxford ending at 10.30pm-ish by making a swift exit and heading straight to the station, a 23.52 from Oxford (22.49 from Paddington) would offer the chance for a post-show drink before heading home and an hour seems like a reasonable allowance for that, but ask people to wait 90 minutes, past midnight, and I suspect the last S3 bus or a taxi would win the argument most times, especially when you get dropped rather nearer your front door than Charlbury station.

The thread (http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=11517.0;topicseen) about late-night services from Paddington to Henley reminded me of this thread.

Now that the redoubling has settled down, it seems to me that II's suggestion would be a good speculative extension for FGW (or the new franchisee) to consider - i.e. extending the 22.48 Paddington-Oxford to Hanborough and Charlbury - like the 07.15 in reverse. It currently arrives at Oxford at 23.56, just as the last up train off the Cotswold Line is passing Wolvercote.

I'm pretty sure it would be a popular service. But the good people of this board will know much more than me about the practicalities of it. Would extending Ascott signal-box's hours be a blocker? Or would the need to find a guard for a service that may have worked DOO from Paddington kill it? Any enlightenment welcome.

It might extend their hours slightly, and sourcing a guard would be a little awkward as whether it was a Reading or Worcester based guard they would miss the last train home, unless the Turbo then went ECS from Charlbury to Reading in which case they could travel on it?

Interesting. There's an 00.27 stopper from Oxford to Paddington. A 23.58 from Oxford to Charlbury, returning ECS to Oxford, could get back in time for that (maybe give or take retiming it a couple of minutes later) and take the guard back to Reading...

As the CLPG rep for Hanborough this is a common theme I receive comments on. Any number of Hanborough rail users complain that when visiting London for a show they can only get back to Oxford by train and have to get a taxi back from Oxford to Hanborough. Alternatively, people drive from Hanborough into Oxford to start their outward journey to London so that when returning to Oxford they can drive straight home. Other drive to Thornhill Park & Ride so that the TOC gets no fare revenue but instead Oxford Bus or Stagecoach get the fare income thus making their late night coach services more financially viable. The coach journey takes twice as long as the train but at weekends people are prepared to accept a longer journey time by coach.
What I do wonder is how many people actually make this journey to make running a train back to Charlbury viable financially. The people I have spoken to on this matter only make this journey occasionally.

Realistically, it would only be warranted on Fridays / Saturdays, I reckon.

Andrew - have dropped you a line by e-mail!

Is the Cotswold Line now open 24/7? (Subject to weekend engineering, of course.)

RealTimeTrains is showing a "runs as required" overnight freight. I'm hopeful that there might be other calls on the signalmen at late hours too. ;)

There's been a few extra services recently, usually ballast trains and the like with their forgiving loading gauge.  I'm guessing they're services that would normally be routed via the Harbury Tunnel line and so will soon cease.

I wonder who pays for the costs of keeping the Cotswold Line open over night for a few freight trains. Presumably NR does but does not charge the extra costs to the freight operators as the only need has arisen because of the unavailability of the usual line at Harbury. Looking back over this thread Richard F ssuggests CLPG ask for some form of late evening service. This has been raised on several occasions with FGW but the usual response is that the line closes at midnight and it would not be economic to extend the line opening time for a service with likely limited use.

60 years ago I lived in Somerset (Bridgwater) and we often had trips to London on a Saturday, sightseeing by day and a theatre visit at night. We used to catch the 23.50 newspaper train back home, arriving around 04.15. This train was a single train weekdays but on Saturdays there was so much demand that a relief train operated at midnight missing out a number of stops made by the regular and overtaking the regular at Reading. This special terminated at Bristol. Both trains were well used with standing on both to as far as Reading or Didcot and lots getting off at Didcot for a 01.00 connection (or thereabouts) to Oxford.With Paddington so far out from the west end theatrical area, you could not rely on getting back to Paddington until about 23.30 after a 22.30 or 22.45 show finish. On at least one occasion I recall getting back just in time to see the 23.50 departing. However the platform staff told us to get on the midnight relief, get off at Bristol and board the 23.50 that was then running about 10 minutes behind the special having been overtaken at Reading. Of course traffic modes have changed enormously in the last 50-60 years with cars and coaches speeding up and down the M5 and M4 taking most of the original rail traffic and I wonder whether how many people would actually now use a late evening Cotswold Line train from Paddington.

If they ran one as a trial we would find out!

"If they ran one as a trial we would find out!"
That is the difference between FGW and Chiltern. Chiltern is prepared to try out services but FGW usually wants a guaranteed subsidy to avoid it possibly making a loss on such experimental services so niothing happens.

I wouldn't be quite so sure. Perhaps the imminent arrival of Oxford Parkway, and services like this one (http://www.opentraintimes.com/schedule/P75618/2015-09-07), will focus minds a little on the prospects for the Cotswold Line... ;)

A new topic I know , but any news on when the work to install the lifts at Worcester Shrub Hill Station will be starting ?? The poor old place always seems to get left behind when it comes to improvements !!