Great Western Coffee Shop

40 years ago, the railways had a generous inventory of rolling stock, with much of it brought out of sidings on high days and holidays to provide excursion trains, holiday specials and transport to and from soccer matches.  But times have changed and the excess inventory no longer exists; after all, it makes little economic sense to keep an increasingly expensive resource idle most of the time. In recent years, the "rub" point when all stock has been in use has been the Monday to Friday peak commuter time.

Even today, the economics of maintaining a train which is only busy from (say) Keynsham to Bristol in the morning and then back in the evening "on the fleet" is pretty poor.  And so there's a logic in trying to "persuade" travellers to move their journeys to less busy times to even out demand - in otehr words so that the same number of passengers can be carried with fewer resources.

One of the features of the timetable introduced last December was a reduction of peak hour services to a level that's much more similar to the level that runs during the day.  "We miscalculated" admit some of the more open managers at First.  Yes - you did.  But I find myself wondering if the miscalculation wasn't so much in the level of services that the traveller wanted, but rather in the level of annoyance the attempt to change the traveller's commuting habits would generate.

In other words, did First know exactly what they were doing in December, but they expected that the public would accept it once the initial shock had worn off.

First did indeed know EXACTLY what it was doing, indeed stock allocated to Bristol peak services was planned to operate at 160% capacity from December. That figure was around nearly 12 months ago, it wasnt a suprise when December TT change created chaos, the suprise was passenger reaction! Is it going to get better? Well 12 class 158s to go in May, and the class 180 Adelante fleet to go in December, the battle is far from over...

Here is a take on this from a knowledgeable contact (written in February , so make allowances for subsequent events) :

"I'm looking at the RAIL article mentioned in your link. I think I've just about made sense of it....

For the HST's it says 348 vehicles at the start of the franchise in April 2006 and (104+104+189) = 397 in January 2008. i.e. a gain of 49 vehicles. By Jan 2008 the Adelantes will have gone (a loss of 70 vehicles) so that makes the running total of vehicle changes that are still to happen 49-70 = -21.

The article claims that the 166 fleet was meant to be 57 vehicles (19 3-car units) from June 2006. This hasn't happened (yet?) and the fleet size is still 63 vehicles (21 3-car units). Assuming this is going to happen at some point gives a running total of -27.

165's and 143's stay the same.

The reduction in the 150 fleet from 50 to 34 has already happened in Dec 2006 when 8 units (16 vehicles) transferred to Arriva. Running total still -27.

In Dec 2006 the 153 fleet reduced from 15 to 11 when 4 units were stored at Eastleigh. The article claims a fleet size of 8 in Jan 2008 so if it happens the running total would be -30.

Making sense of the 158's is tricky as a lot of unit swaps have happened since April 2006. e.g. the arrival of the ex-Transpennine units and transfer away of some former Central Trains units. At the moment the 158 fleet comprises:
 
Porterbrook owned: 19 2-car units, 1 3-car unit = 41 vehicles.

Angel owned: 15 2-car units = 30 vehicles.

Total fleet size is currently 41+30 = 71 vehicles. This is higher than either set of figures quoted in RAIL because the Transpennine units have arrived but haven't yet displaced a similar number of Angel owned units due to the recent availability problems.

I think there is still one more Porterbrook unit to come from Transpennine (158771). It was due last year but got damaged in a shunting accident at Neville Hill depot in Leeds so hasn't made the move yet.

Assuming it arrives and all of the Angel 158's go off lease the fleet size would be 20 2-car units and 1 3-car unit = 43 vehicles. Which is what the RAIL article says for Jan 2008. The loss of the 30 Angel vehicles plus the addition of 158771 would make the running total -58.

So in a worst case scenario there could still be a loss of 58 vehicles from the fleet."

I went on 771 last night & thought to myself I have not seen it before, there is no number by the cab on the 52 end, so they must have replaced the windscreen

FGW's problem of having insufficient capacity for the 07:30-9:00 and 16:30-18:00 peak time slots can be partially addressed by a better fair structure, and running extra services outside of this time slot.

If First offered discounted off-peak season tickets, this could help over crowding by encouraging some passengers to start work early of late.

Not all passengers can work flexible hours, but enough can to operate a better off peak service.

Finally, if you cut back services, as FGW/Dft have done, you lose some traffic and make your existing services busier. This is what has happened.