Great Western Coffee Shop

The new depot for train maintainace for the "West Fleet" is not now expected to be full operational until September.  Source - Glenda Lamont, FGW, at TWSW, Taunton.  Glenda was unable to go into detail because of legal constraints.   The bad news is somewhat abated by her commitment, on behalf of FGW, to ensure that the extra trains currently with them at present over and above the minium they're committed to will stay with them until the reliability / availability improves - in other word, they will not send units back then shorten trains.   

I understand there's also to be a further trailer car temporarily hired (strengthen a 158?), and 2 x 158 units extra permanently.

Two class 158 units (in Central Green livery with Transpennine Branding), 158784/158790 have gone back this week. More 158s also HAVE to go in the May timetable change. So look out, unless they can get some units from another source the summer is going to be chaos. Never mind, 'we are refreshing our HST sets', as we keep getting told, sod everything else.

I understand that there are currently 71 sets based in Bristol and 51 of those are required for the daily service.   However, 10 of the sets are long term non-operational. Does that sound about right?

To a layman, it does appear that sorting out the long-term out of service units would bring an answer to sending units away now (2?) and December (10 more?) without being left with a stock shortage.   How "long term" is long term?   Can they be fixed by another First depot / franchise?  Is the remaining 10 units enough to provide one for the  TransWilts service from December  ;) and also enough breakdown / maintainaince cover once the Bristol Depot is working properly?

I understand that Weymouth services this summer ARE NOT going to be longer AT ALL, aparently it was in a written note to traincrew, perhaps Mr. Whistleblower may be able to confirm or not?

BTW, grahame were you on train that arrvies in Frome around 7 last night (from Bristol)?

I've heard that about the Weymouth line too, and I would think that it is (or was) indeed the plan not to strengthen. Having said that, I would not be suprised to find any extra units that happened to be available tacked on to the services.

And, No, I swan't at Trowbridge last night.   If you said "Melksham, 06:44", then it would have been a "yes".

I think comments about Weymouth should be in the Heart of Wessex Line section rather than tagged on to SPM, so I'll hop over there and answer your question, Jim ;)

Ok ;D

Extremely reliable source comment :

"Do the 158's really go to Northern in May? As I understand it Northern aren't expecting any more 158's from FGW until December when 11 of the Angel units head north. That would leave FGW with 2 remaining Angel units (158864 and 158865) which ties in with Grahame's comment about "2 x 158 units extra permanently". As John stated 158784 and 158790 went to Northern a week ago. These were temporary units sub-leased from TransPennine back in January. The long awaited 158771 finally arrived from TransPennine at the beginning of April so the net loss at the moment is just one 158.

Grahame's figure of 10 long term non-operational units is wide of the mark. All 70 units have been in traffic at some time this month apart from a 153 (last worked 31/3) and a 143 (15/2).

Northern now has 14 142's in store. Any further withdrawals will probably depend on more 158's arriving later in the year."