Both Cl.180's have been planned to work all day since going into the high summer period of the timetable. That leaves one Cl.180 under maintenance at Old Oak Common. The problems towards the end of last week were due to traincrew not being able to drive an HST^▸ (High Speed Train).

Not impressed on Saturday when told one of the HST^▸ (High Speed Train) diagrams on the Cotswolds Monday would have to be formed with a Turbo, because of traincrew issues. 95% of the Turbo vice HST substitution recently has been down to crewing issues. Occasionally the stock alteration has been due to HST or 180 failure, but this has been infrequent and usually only for part of the day.

Mass removal of buffet cars is dead in the water, problem is that FGW^▸ (First Great Western) don't have enough buffet cars for all it's HST^▸ (High Speed Train)'s at present. So there should be a maximum of 3 HST's out each day without them. Further problem is the buffet cars numbered 409xx are worse than useless and aren't suitable for restaurant / chef services.
You spend ^ on refurbishing your HST fleet, stripping the coaches to a shell and rebuilding them, but you still kit the buffet car out to 3 different specs, 407xx, 402xx & 408xx

If the strike goes ahead, I would expect disruption on the evening before the strike, as Maintenance staff control access to the depots. So sets would either have to be got onto depot prior to stike action, with the likelyhood they won't get back off depot or left in stations / sidings.
Certainly with HST^▸ (High Speed Train)'s, unless management are going to go on depot and fuel them overnight and work the signalling to get them back off depot. The majority of sets may be good for one journey the following day, unless they are in the West of England. Due to the fuel range of an HST we work to being 1120 miles and most HSTs cover between 900 and 1080 miles a day.

Delay's go to the root cause, so FGW^▸ (First Great Western) took some for the HST^▸ (High Speed Train) faults & the freight company for the divided train.  As for the Cl.180's, at present both 180's are supposed to start the day as a 10 car formation on 2 round trips to Oxford from Paddington. At present we only have 2 180's available to us, if one of them is not going to make it for service (faults etc.) we are told not to run a single 180 on the 0710 Oxford to Paddington, but put it on the 0837 Worcester and use the HST on the 0710 Oxford.

A freight train became divided near Tram Inn this morning, so the empty HST^▸ (High Speed Train) from Bristol for the Abergavenny had to run via Cheltenham to Worcester (no time to get it beyond there. The Cl.180 for the 0837 Worcester was stuck behind an HST at Iver that had a burst brake pipe (0710 Oxford to Paddington set), once on the move Network Rail barred it from running beyond Oxford.

HST^▸ (High Speed Train) developed a fault (dragging brake) between Maindee and Abergavenny on the empty working, by the time the traincrew had rectified the fault the train would have been very late onto the Cotswold line. So Network Rail barred it from running beyond Hereford towards Worcester, so it ran via Severn Tunnel. Hence 1st stop Reading after Hereford. The sooner the single line sections between Oxford and Hereford get replaced with double track the better.

No buffet car on the 0743 Penzance was as a direct result of the chaos caused by the latest fatality at Southall on Monday. It was inevitable this would happen, I'm just suprised it has taken this long for it to. Still, Senior management know best, and think of all those valuable minutes saved in the journey to and from Penzance with the superior acceleration of the HST^▸ (High Speed Train) in this formation 

Directive from on high issued in December is that the 0640 Bristol only calls additionally at Reading now, when the 0630 Bristol is cancelled. Although as 2 consecutive services from Swindon to Didcot were cancelled (0556 Cheltenham & 0630 Bristol), the 0458 Swansea was called additionally at Didcot.

There are 2 Adelante diagrams this week, 4 Adelante's left in the fleet. When I left work this morning a 3rd Adelante was going to come into service late morning to cover up for HST^▸ (High Speed Train) shortage.

HST^▸ (High Speed Train)'s have to run with a TGS, whether the vehicle is in or out of passenger use. I had an HST running for 2 day's without a TGS, having arranged for all the equipment carried in it to be transferred to the staff closet in the buffet car. No thanks for running 2 days worth of services with it, just a curt reminder from 'senior' management not to do it again.

We are using the same 2 HST^▸ (High Speed Train)'s that had the buffet cars removed for a trial period in January for the above mentioned trains for the next couple of weeks for 'further trials'. If this is the begining of the slippery slope of non buffet HST's, then the ivory tower merchants better think again. As both nominated HST's are supposed to be high density 2+8 sets with buffet cars.

Alot of the HST^▸ (High Speed Train) formations are all over the place at present due to the ongoing refurbishment, as coaches come back from works they are being pressed into service as soon as all the acceptance checks are carried out. I can think of a few HST's in recent weeks that have multiple coaches in of the same character, worst of all was a set with 3 coach E's, which is frustating as these have the disabled toilet and we've had numerous sets running around without disabled toilet facilities. Problem is, it's going to take an awful lot of work and time to get the HST's back to the normal A to H formation.

A door can still be put onto the catch if the CDL^▸ (Central Door Locking) is engaged, but it cannot be opened. The cause of the majority of door on the catch incidents is when late arriving customers attempt to open doors after the CDL is engaged and the train is being dispatched. As for the CDL not working on the car park side, I would think that is when the HST^▸ (High Speed Train) has been at Penzance a while with the power cars shut down, the air in the brake system would leak off and the CDL will disengage as it's fed off the same system. When the power cars are started up, the air builds up again and the CDL can then be engaged again.

Correction, 3 Adelantes booked to work Monday, only 2 Adelantes out daily from Tuesday... But there will be 5 Adelantes working Monday, 2 of them covering for HST^▸ (High Speed Train)'s that aren't available.