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Today, 3-car Class 158, 158953 payed a visit to Cornwall on the 06:48 Bristol Temple Meads-Penzance along with 153377 forming a four car unit.
Wonder how long it will be until the next 158 comes to Cornwall?
Hopefully tommorow, probably a long time, only a once a week 159 now.

Went for a nice walk in the woods to get a shot of this http://southwestrailphots.fotopic.net/p50325976.html (http://southwestrailphots.fotopic.net/p50325976.html)...

Left Penzance on the 19:08 to Exeter behind a 153 and a ATW 150!! Think this is the first time a 158/9 has been to Cornwall since FGW reformed them???

Isn't it great to see three car 158s running on the FGW network again and not just on the Cardiff-Portsmouth either.

AFAIK it is only the second or third time a 3-car 158 has been to Cornwall.
Remeber seing a Wessex one going over Hayle viaduct once and thinging what the?

There were a few visits of 158/9s to Cornwall under Wessex, the actual 3 car 158798 has been to Cornwall in its TPE livery also..

That's what I saw, a 158/9. Didn't know 798 came to Cornwall, was that either when we first got the TPE units or on a Sunday.

158798 visited Cornwall on Monday 13th November 2006 working: 15:50 Plymouth to Liskeard, 16:35 Liskeard to Plymouth, 17:10
Plymouth to Liskeard, 18:07 Liskeard to Exeter St.Davids. This is because of an engineering block at Largin, It *may* of never worked beyond Liskeard.

TPE 158 took us from Saltash to Lostiwthiel yesterday, on the 0815 from Bristol. Is that the last one we'll see for a while?

I hope not.
Still 5 days of booked 158 service, probably won't get a single 158 though.

There are some newly recruited drivers at Exeter that have not even been trained on 158's. I myself have been on one only once in the last six months.

Exeter (Devon Metro), Par and Penzance don't need to sign 158's as they won't have to work them for the forseeable future.

158s often appear at Exeter depot for maintenance and other trips. No reason why one cannot work around Devon on a short diagram!

Exeter keep their 158 knowledge up on link 1....

I was passing through Plymouth on my way to St Davids and saw it in Plymouth. Looks really sharp, IMO.

Agreed, those drivers who are restricted to the local branches have more chance of becomimg the next British Astronaut than work a 158, (no great loss from the point of view of working them- Give me a 150 any day of the week).

 BTW the term "Devon Metro" applied to the regular interval timetable for Exeter local services which was tried by Wessex trains around 2004, the term has not been used (even internally) since that was abandoned as un-workable.

Does anyone have a copy of this timetable that they could scan and post? Alternatively, send it to me via e-mail - canber[at]hotmail[dot]co[dot]uk - and I will put it online for you.

Really, you would need a copy of the WTT for the period as most of it was about unit workings.

In principle the idea was to eliminate ECS workings i.e. terminating trains at St. Davids having to shunt empty over Red Cow or Exeter Central terminators gonng empty to Exmouth Jcn.

So all trains form Paignton or Barnstaple would continue to Exmouth.

In practice it created a situation where there was no slack, 3 min turnaround at Barnstaple and Paignton and 5 min at Exmouth meant delays just built up until an Exmouth had to be cut out to bring things back on time.

An example of this was the first Barnstaple 05.50 ish from EXD would make the 06.50 ish Barnstaple- Exmouth, which in turn would make the 08.24 Exmouth- Paignton.

The 06.50 from Barny would stop at most request stops and loose a few minutes, miss it's path at Cowley Bridge and be 10 late  on arrival at Exmouth say 08.29.

This being the principle travel to work train on the Exmouth line leaving at 08.32 maybe 6 late and getting to Exeter Central at 08.55 instead of 08.49 meant a lot of grumbling from our customers because it was happening 3 days per week.

The solution was to split the workings the 06.50 from Barney ran later and had some additional time and formed the 08.54 from Exmouth.

The 08.24 became the back working of a new 07.50 EXD-EXM and hey presto performance was improved.

Thanks for that, qwerty.

<Btline> But slack only causes delays </Btline>

Come December, when Barnstaple - hopefully - gets an hourly daytime service, FGW will do it by running Exmouth-Barnstaple-Exmouth in 3^ hours: Wessex tried to do it in 3...

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