Great Western Coffee Shop

From the UK HST Enthusiast group.


Not corroborated (when it is, I will move this thread public) but it sounds about "right" - i.e. what I would have expected.  As you can imagine, it has spawned some discussion about where the stock will come from to replace them ... interestingly, no talk that I noticed of 769s based at Reading coming into service and allowing cascades.  How different this all is to where I am (out of the UK at present) where there seems to be a health few modern electric and diesel units parked up at strategic points even during normal daytime service, and I have yet to have a train cancelled due to lack of stock or staff.

Are there spare 802s sitting around to pick up the slack or does this mean shortforming existing services?

I would speculate that we are more and more specifying a "fair weather railway". So if everything works on the day, then the service specified works.  But as soon as a train has to be taken out of service for repair (as opposed to routine maintenance) or one member of staff goes off sick, especially at short notice, or a set of points fails ... or a late running freight gets in the way, a line floods, or we get leaves on the line or the wrong sort of snow, or too many passengers wanting to use a service ... it becomes unreliable to put it mildly, and the lack of backup resources means it's very difficult to get back to timetabled running.

The Castles are approaching the point where they are becoming due for heavy overhauls which are expensive and a cost the cash-strapped railway is keen to avoid. 

Any ideas what might happen to them? Scrap? Sold overseas (where)? Heritage diesel line?

Scrapped I’d have thought.  They’re 45 or so years old!

Put that up against the millions spent getting them suitable for services now it seems a costly decision to cover a short term problem

As someone who travels from WsM to Taunton and then the other way to Temple Meads I will certainly miss them as they are a welcome change as one of the few services that is rarely overcrowded

Just noticed this previous thread, it will be interesting to see who this moves on

http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=26072.0

Yes it was a necessary decision at the time in a very different economic and social climate so was just about justified.

I'll take it that means "No" and "Yes" respectively to my original question!

I have read elsewhere that the resultant train moves will leave the Cardiff / Portsmouths as permanent 3 car trains.

That won’t go down well at all. The 165s/166s aren’t popular as it is without them going down to just 3 cars permanently.

After a pretty miserable journey on East Midlands Railway from London last week I'm with Grahame on the fair weather railway.  All their trains are now 5 car Meridians (possibly occasionally in pairs though none were in evidence) rather than full length HSTs.  An early afternoon Sheffield train was cancelled, the next Nottingham train couldn't soak up the extra passengers for common intermediate stations such as Leicester and left people on the platform, and I finally squeezed on the third train which had people standing right along the aisle.  HSTs would have absorbed the excess with ease.

Not happy about the future of rail travel, at least over the next 10 years or so, seems to be a downward sprial, to where, I dont know, dont want to suggest line closures and mass lay off but.. and the unions are not helping themselves or the industry to be honest.

I suspect that most will be scrapped. Hopefully some of those in best condition can be preserved. Not many preserved railways will want a short HST, but that does not prevent saving vehicles to use in full length trains.

The earlier HSTs ran only a few years after the end of main line steam and ARE now heritage.

This has just been posted on Twitter

https://twitter.com/stpeterslayout/status/1596125590733611009

So, stock that argueably should not have been repurposed in the first place now to be withdrawn with no provision for replacement. This from a railway whose services are already often capacity-constrained at a time when passenger flows are in a state of flux and the industry is struggling both to (at times) meet demand and (at all times) return to a financial surplus.

In the medium term, does this mean chaotic provision of 5 carriage IETs on Paddington services, short formed Cardiff - Portsmouth services, a greater chance of underprovision of services on the line into Cornwall, or all three? This doesn't feel healthy at all.

Mark

Another observation via Twitter, this time in relation to Bedminster and a forthcoming development there that will increase footfall.

Mark

https://twitter.com/TheMurkyDepths/status/1596158551650861056

Probably a combination of all three.

I mentioned above that elsewhere there are reports that the Cardiff-Portsmouth service wil be reduced to 3 carriages.

I am sure I read somewhere a while back that the Class 802 IETs were actually more polluting than the IC125 when running in diesel mode ?

My initial post in this thread was made in "The Rumour Mill", with a note that if confirmed it would be moved to our more public boards.  Well - it has been confirmed, and indeed there is much more data now and I will be moving the thread

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/castleendnote.jpg)

The Castle class was a stop gap to allow other stock (150s/158s) to replace 143s that had to go. As more 9 car 800s will be able to go to Penzance and stable with the new sidings, there will be some extra 5 car 800s available. Platform 2 extension at St David's will also allow more 5 car trains to be used.

IF only they could get the 20 769s working a lot of problems would disappear overnight.

We keep hearing, in various threads, that there are extra/surplus/spare IETS. Yet short formed IETS are still a regular feature.

Yes, ironic, isn't it?  Mind you, lots of today's orange flashes on the top of these pages are changes between 9 and 10 car formations, so they are not always significant short-forms

Plans were by now for there to be four trains per hour London to Bristol, with "superfast"s running via Bristol Parkway twice an hour.  With a cycle time of 210 minutes (1 hour 45 minutes per journey to include servicing and turn around time) that is 5 diagrams that were planned but are not happening and I do not really expect to see starting next May either.  Weren't there also superfasts from South Wales?  So there are your units.

There will be differences between the numbers of IETs built for GWR use, currently at GWR depots, in operational condition at those depots, and actually contracted to be operating on any particular day from those depots.  This is natural as units are being maintained or awaiting attention, and in some cases that will be away from the depot. A table of those numbers would be most interesting.

With the advent of Grand Union from Wales, they'll never happen now. Well, not in the 5 hours that GU are.

From what I remember of the proposed timetable during peak times some of the “super fast” services became Cardiff services, but running in the same paths east of Bristol Parkway.  So Bristol didn’t get 4 tph all day, some hours it would only be 3.

I’m sure there’s a summary route map showing it, but no idea where to find it though.  Was it a 2018 or 19 consultation?

Paul

This should surely make Filton Bank the next stretch of line for electrification?

Four electrified tracks, now!  ;)