Whilst I am no a major poster on these boards I believe I have been consistent in my impatience for apologism and excuses for our beloved TOC▸ .
They should manage the stock in a way that means no routes takes a hit on a regular basis. Especially if its the same route again and again. If that requires a surplus of stock, so be it. I have no sympathy. Railways have been running for 150 years. They should get it right.
Firstly, just as the obligatory disclaimer, I'm not
FGW▸ staff (or indeed rail staff of any description unless you count a heritage operation which for these purposes I don't).
The logistics of operating a railway are fiercely (and indeed fascinatingly, to my mind) complicated. The vast majority of people who travel on trains have very little idea of the behind-the-scenes operation that takes place to get them from A to B. That's not a criticism, but to use a couple of tired cliches it's frequently like the proverbial swan floating serenely on the surface with its feet paddling furiously, or like an iceberg where a vast amount of it is beneath the surface.
Through my activities in the heritage sector I have been fortunate to meet many railway men and women - not only have I had the privilege of learning from them, but they have become my friends. I am unfailingly impressed by their professionalism and dedication to duty: although it may not seem like it they are genuinely doing their best to get as many people as possible from their origin to their destination. I think it's also fair to say that more than in almost any other industry staff really will often go the extra mile to help their customers.
Where am I going with all this...? My main point is that the railways are run largely by dedicated, knowledgeable, professional people. However good they are though, they can only work with the cards they have been dealt, which in the case of certain areas on FGW are frankly suboptimal and don't leave them much room for manoeuvre as soon as something goes wrong.
Current government policy keeps the railways in some areas run on a "wing and a prayer" in terms of stock availability. It's very easy to jump up and down shrieking that "they should buy more trains because the parent companies make huge profits". However, the current, government-imposed structure on the railways means that this is anything but simple: see Christian Wolmar's piece
here which explains things much more elegantly than I can. Until there's some kind of radical structural overhaul of the entire system, nothing is likely to change fast.
You can bounce around on the sidelines shouting about it, or try and take it out on staff as much as you like, but it won't make a blind bit of difference other than raising your blood pressure.
You can read this as me being an apologist if you like, but I prefer to think of it as trying to give a balanced view of the realities that train operators face and illustrating that solutions that may appear "obvious" to the uninitiated aren't necessarily that straightforward in the real world.