Of course they won't - that would be far too sensible. There's probably three or four surplus turbos kicking around at Oxford all day, but I saw at least three of the up Paddington's off the Cotswold Line arrive today and two of them were chock-full, the third had people standing.

This always happens on a Sunday at it's not helped by the fact that the trains also stop at Didcot Parkway. Indeed, a couple of months ago the local press got involved when a 2-car was used a a substitute on one of the Hereford-Paddingtons in the afternoon. About 30 people had to be turned away at Oxford and nobody at all could board at Didcot. The appalling fact is that there IS plenty of spare Turbo capacity on a Sunday.

Even when the trains are formed by HST^▸ (High Speed Train)'s they are full as Oxford only has an hourly fast service on a Sunday, which almost always originates from Hereford/Malvern/Worcester.

At the moment the driver (Oxford based) who works the 21:48 Paddington-Worcester from Oxford stays overnight and returns working the 'halts' train the next morning, so taxis to/from Oxford are usually not required except on Saturday night and Sunday morning. However, with about 4 hours at Worcester doing nothing, the drivers time could hardly be considered productive!

There used to be a daily taxi in the early morning from Oxford to Worcester and late evening from Worcester to Oxford up until the first up and down Malvern train changed to a HST^▸ (High Speed Train) last December. I believe up until then the annual taxi contract was worth about ^40k for this contract alone (including the weekend ones).

I wonder what the annual taxi bill for FGW^▸ (First Great Western) is? After all, they have to fork out on plenty of them to get stranded punters home too! Mind you, compared with the Freight companies (whose drivers seen to spend half their shift getting taxied somewhere), It's probably quite small!

There have been rumours of a dedicated driver depot at Worcester for FGW rescently. There's no reason why this couldn't happen, and also there's no reason why drivers from London Midland based there couldn't be 'hired' to drive FGW trains - that is what happened until around the turn of this decade.

As well as potential knowledge of traction issues, don't forget turbos can run DOO^▸ (Driver-Only Operation (that is, trains which operate without carrying a guard)) (Driver Only Operated) between Oxford and Paddington, wheraes HST^▸ (High Speed Train)'s or 180's need a Train Manager on ALL routes they operate over. Subbing a turbo on the Oxf-Pad's therefore releases a train manager who can cover other routes when there are shortages.

I tend to agree, Will. I just can't see us ever having a purpose-built high speed line heading out west from London. I can see scope for a London to the Midlands, Manchester/Liverpool and maybe on to Glasgow/Edinburgh, but heading westwards the population centres it could serve are just not big enough in my opinion. Yes, you have big centres in Bristol, Cardiff, Exeter and Plymouth, but the topography of the land is not great (especially if anyone was thinking of extending it to Penzance), and suitable land would be at a premium.

There is scope for increasing the linespeed of the current track. It gets a bit twisty between Twyford and Goring, but otherwise it really is just the signalling that would stop higher speeds being possible in theory at least as far as Chippenham. Perhaps a 'double-green' LED aspect could be provided to give the appropriate braking distances where 4-aspect signalling is already in place?

With investment in walking routes, vegetation clearance and lighting, there would be room for extra sets to be stabled in the under used 'goods yard' behind Shrub Hill station.

Not that it matters a great deal, but I think the Guard gets taxied from Worcester to Hereford as he/she has to help with the train preperation (brake test, etc.)

Thanks, Lee - thought it was about time I added my two-penneth in here too! 

I catch the Chiltern Railways 23:44 ex Banbury fairly often. It's another case of silly amounts of 'slack' with a usual running time of about 22 minutes it usually arrives Oxford bay platform about 10 minutes early.

Could you be a little more specific?

As with any major timetable alterations, there would need to be minor adjustments here and there to other services, but the vast majority of UP fast HST's along the Berks&Hants are due into Reading at xx:49 and would preceed the xx:38 stopping train from Newbury (which would be in the bay) passing at about xx+34, and don't conflict with the 180's at xx:25 from Wesbury at all as they pass there at about xx:03?

Also, generally, HST's leave Reading for Paddington (non-stop) at xx:32 and xx:44 and my Reading-Maidenhead-Paddington trains leave Reading nicely in between at xx:37, so, again there's no conflict there - they would follow the xx:42 HeathrowExpress from T5 after Airport Junction.

Click on the following link for a post I have put in a different section of the forum which is also very relevant to Maidenhead station.

http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=3059.0

I originally posted this on the 'SaveTheTrain' forum, but also thought viewers of this forum might be interested:

It struck me that there are two areas of the current timetable which could do with improving upon.

1) Westbury (an increasingly busy junction station and terminus of any enhanced TransWilts service that may come to pass) and Pewsey have a very irregular pattern of trains to London.
2) Maidenhead is a very busy station (ranked 74th busiest in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom)) - which has a branch connection to Bourne End and Marlow. and although it has 4 trains an hour off-peak to London they are all painfully slow - taking nearly 40 minutes for the 23 mile journey.

I've spent a bit of spare time looking at these problems and tackled them both with a proposed timetable that replaces the current hourly off-peak Turbo service from Paddington-Bedwyn, with an Adelante operated service between Paddington and Westbury (and occasionally Frome) which also stops at Maidenhead.

I'm not expecting it to ever come to anything as FGW^▸ (First Great Western) are off-loading all their Adelantes by the end of the year, but I though I'd share it with forum readers to show the huge benefits over the current service to these destinations. It is a full weekday timetable which includes pathing around other services (virtually nothing would have to change) and also indicative diagramming of Turbo and Adelante units to show what resources would be required.

The link to download it is: http://www.savefile.com/projects/808644282

My apologies for any pop-ups, but that is a necessary evil when using free file hosters!