Great Western Coffee Shop

I've said before that I thought Maidenhead was very poorly served late evening from Paddington with no fast services to speak of at all meaning the 23:29 2-Car Turbo was the only real offering with any speed at a reasonable, but hardly blistering, 32 minutes.  Fairly recently there's also been a 23:42 added on a Friday only taking 26 minutes.

Well, I'm delighted to note that several services late evening now have a Maidenhead stop inserted.  Just in time for the rush of normal commuters who stay late after work for a few Christmas drinks with work colleagues.

Extra services now run at 22:18, 22:48 and 23:18 all taking just 26 minutes.  They're simply extra stops on existing Oxford services, and I'll keep an eye out as to how they cope capacity wise, but finally Maidenhead has a very good late evening service!

Wow.. when did these start and do we know how long it'll be before they are taken away again??? Incidentally by the way Maidenhead used to have a very good late night service before... erm... FGW took over.. but anyway lets gloss over that fact for now...

Does Taplow get a fill in service as well?

Have the Oxford services been slowed much? DO they still call at Slough. Do any of them continue to the Cotswold?

No, none of them call at the Cotswold Line stations - the last train there is the 21:48.  In terms of journey times, they're actually quicker now on every night other than a Friday.  The two-track timetable which has to be in force for overnight engineering work sees some extended journey times anyway, and the opportunity seems to have been taken to tighten up those timings a little.  For example, apart from Friday nights the 22:49 used to be allowed 1h 22m to get to Oxford (though it often arrived early).  In its current form it departs at 22:48 and takes 1h 08m even with its extra stop at Maidenhead.

Which just goes to show that if more trains stopped at Maidenhead the whole time table would speed up  ;D  :o ;D :o :D

If the Bedwyn service was run by 125mph units, I'm sure a Maidenhead stop could be put in with little effect. After electrification maybe...

But do Maidenhead folk know anything about these extra train services? Too often there is no publicity apart from a bill board at the station so that the people who might use such a service know nothing about it. Then because so few people use it, it is withdrawn later for lack of use.

I only know about them because I read about them on here.. And I travel to London every day.. I'll make an extra effort to see if it's advertised anywhere tomorrow.. I imagine it isn't though...

I imagine people will use them as a connection for the Marlow branch, since this is what the online journey planners give you.  I noticed that the 22:51 MAI-MLW, which is a connecting service, is advertised as the 22:49 on printed timetables at the station as well as online journey planner.  Not sure if that's been mentioned elsewhere already.

I checked and they don't seem to be advertising them.. Not sure why tho.. ::)