I noticed that the 18.16 on P10 yesterday was rammed, as was the Turbo in P11 next to it.
Gave up in the end and waited for a local stopper. That got rammed too. Some altercations developed at Ealing Broadway as nobody could get on.
Brave Staff had to intervene to let the train go on her way.

RMT^▸ (National Union of Rail, Maritime & Transport Workers) quoted as saying:
"There's a massive backlog of maintenance on the overhead cabling, massive shortage of staff because of 20% cuts in the maintenance capacity. We've got ageing overhead cable stock at a time when there's not enough staff to do the routine maintenance."

Any truth in this?
Perhaps short cuts and cost cutting somewhere along the line.

Indeed, I stayed at Pontrilas station and the lady owner there said it was the Assembly Members express, and that was for the benefit or certain persons only.

Reminds me of the Cotswold line in the old Peter Parker days - they were never late.....

Good, thats very good,
GW^▸ (Great Western) tradition kept alive there.
Keep it up.

Another 'Well Done' Nick,
I read your bit on the letters page of the Maidenhead Advertiser and thought - crikey he's done well to spot that!
I guess another dent in First's profits.....

This reminds me of the time when many industrial plants around the place had fire-less locomotives, they would charge up with steam from the boiler house and then shunt around the site with just a boiler full of pressurised steam.
This was usually in places where sparks may have been a fire problem.
Of course, if the steam ran out, you were just left with a no-good lump of metal. It would be just the same with batteries, if for what ever reason they died out, you would be left with a service going nowhere in short order.

 
Kerching!
Lets hope the Steam Museum gets a good slug of that ^160 from Dapol.

Thanks for the post Bobm.

No those Thames Turbos are certainly not the same as a refurbished 'Hoover' !

I have to say I enjoyed it but there did seem to be quite a bit of jumping around history wise. I don^t recall seeing anything about the first railroads in South Wales nor of the ones in Cornwall, but I could be mistaken. What annoyed me most were the repetitive mini-sequences of steaming pistons and miniature rockets running round in sepia. This was just pure ^filler^ to bulk the programme out.

This does seem to be particularly damning. If the station duty manager was chatting to somebody who appeared to be a friend, then that that is not what they are there for. Whilst anybody coming ' on shift' would not really know the state of play to begin with, even with handover, part of the training in such a situation is surely to get out there and tell the customers what is going on.
Although sadly, upon reflection, it does't happen at Maidenhead either. They usually get the trainee or the managers boy to go and face the music from the customers. These situations will always be fast moving 'live' situations but honestly, hiding behind closed doors helps nobody......
On a positive note, at least the share price has gone up recently....

Hydraulic transmission has always been cursed on the Western, ever since they overengineered the original Warships, back in 57/58.
Other Hydraulic's were designed like Lotus cars of the day, lightweight with good power to weight ratio, but usually turned out to be Lots Of Trouble, Usually Serious!

Seriously though, there does seem to be appalling availability on the 180's recently. They seem to have disappeared from the 8.34 from Maidenhead to Pad. Is this a result of cutbacks in servicing/maintenance with First's potential future difficulties, I don't know? Luckily I'm only an commuter.....

That is spot on II, its all about dwell times at stations. Stations on the WR are not that far apart, so acceleration savings won't be too great. Stations will have to be rebuilt to allow more access to more doors on more longer trains. Try getting 40/50 people onto a Mk3 carriage and it takes several minutes.

Given Brunels legacy, the WR is pretty level and straight (east of devon anyway) compared to say the WCML^▸ (West Coast Main Line), with its ups and downs and curves, so replacing the old hand fired Duchess^s with 5,000hp electics in the early 60^s had far more affect than would be replacing 4,400hp HST^▸ (High Speed Train)^s.





Edit note: Quote marks fixed. CfN.

Theresa campaigned for M'head commuters when First first f***ed up the timetable, when she was deep in opposition, so there is nothing new here....

Spot on, just witness the crush on the fast trains vs the slowers.
In crossrail mode they will be probably be jammed full across the city ; little chance of a seat.
At least with a start at PAD^» (Paddington (London) - next trains) means more chance or a seat on the way home. I wouldn't want to stand for 30/40 mins on a swaying train to the outer suburbs.

I heard that "speeded up" argument from First when they took over in 2004/5.
Absolute rubbish as it turned out.
I'm not sure electrics will be the panacea that may be placed upon them.