Great Western Coffee Shop

I'm travelling from Portsmouth to Cardiff next week.  Realised this will be my first journey on that route in about four and a half years.

Are the 158s still operating the route?  If so, have they been refurbished recently?  I seem to remember them starting to look a bit knackered.

Also, are there any plug sockets or wi-fi installed these days?  I know the HSTs and sleeper gained this, but doubt the "local lines" were every provisioned.

When I travelled on the route three weeks ago it was a green 158 with wifi, but I didn't spot any power sockets.

They have WiFi - most in not all 158s, as do many of the 150/2s.    The other 150s and 153 haven't been see with WiFi.

No power points - I suspect the logic is that you'll have enough life in your battery for the shorter journeys on these units as opposed to the long distance HST stuff.

Brucey's journey from Portsmouth to Cardiff is longer timewise than most GWR HST journeys, bar those to/from Cornwall and some to/from Plymouth.

GWR 158s are one of the few rolling stock used on 2+ hours journeys that still don't have power sockets.

Thanks for all the replies.  Good to hear that wi-fi has been fitted.  Phone signal on parts of that route were always patchy (using my "state of the art" 3G dongle back in 2008 was almost a waste of time between Bath and Romsey), so the wi-fi will be interesting.

Shame about the plug sockets.  I'll ensure my USB power banks are fully charged for the journey, since I'd like to arrive with a fully charged phone to last the rest of the afternoon and evening.

Indeed.  Though I suspect that through Portsmouth to Cardiff journeys account for a relatively small proportion of the traffic, passing as the service does through intermediate cites at Southampton, Salisbury, Bath, Bristol and Newport, and serving the not inconsiderable railway town and interchange at Westbury - all of which account for a lot of ons and offs.   Contrast that with the Plymouth to London run, where end to end traffic is so important that intermediate stops are regarded by many as a nuisance to be eliminated in some quarters.

Question. On a 'normal' day, do you generally put your phone on charge whiplle away from home? Genuine question. It's great to have, but going 5 hours without charging is no problem frankly

Yes, I do.  The battery usage in my phone is high when the screen is in use.

Normally, I would charge in the car to/from work, or at work if I'm taking the bus (unless we get one of the new coaches with USB sockets at the seat).  Then again in the evening at home.

When I travel, I want my phone to be "alive" not just for the journey, but also well into the evening since I often don't have any opportunity to charge it during that time.

I could manage without, but a lot of my life is managed from there now.  My diary, notes to myself, security to access work network remotely, authentication for personal emails, banking, etc etc is all done through this one device.

....take a spare fully charged battery with you.... ::)

Could be a device without a swappable battery. Becoming the norm for mobiles now.

A charged battery pack may be an idea though.

Does a Galaxy s7 does have an interchangeable battery?

No, the battery is fixed.

My phone does have a removable battery, but the slow startup process seems to consume about 10% of the battery.  I carry round a couple of USB power banks which generally provide around 90 minutes power on each.

Still 158s with 3 cars are still operating the route.   However, quite often of late, 3 Car and sometimes 150s have had to deputise due shortages. 3 of the 158s have recently been refurbished

The refurbished sets look smarter inside but seem to have significantly reduced legroom. They don't appear to have put in more seats so I wonder if the seat cushions are larger? Whilst legroom has never been overly generous I've found I need to sit right back to have any legroom at all.

This is however based purely on personal observation and refers to airline style seats only. If anyone has any facts and figures to hand feel free to correct me.

Interesting.  Have the seats themselves been changed, or just the cushions?

I notice Ryanair managed to gain an additional 1" on legroom by installing thinner seats.  It wouldn't have surprised me if TOCs do something similar in order to fit more seats into a carriage.

I think that they have already started going down that route.  Certainly modern seats (like the current GWR HST seating) is more "upright" than the seating it replaced.  This allows pretty generous leg room without sacrificing numbers of seats. 

The one difference of course between planes and trains is that you can travel on a train without having a seat.  This means that the trend towards squeezing more seats in has o compete with the trend towards ripping seats out to give more standing room.