Found this in an old uk.railway thread posted by someone who works for FGW^▸ (First Great Western):

There was a piece recently in the Newsquest papers: http://www.cotswoldjournal.co.uk/news/10020540.Rock_star_solution_to_railway_parking_/

Originally Great Western Holdings, which was majority-owned by a bunch of railway managers (and only 25% or so by First), won the Regional Railways North West franchise and promised new services to London - from Manchester Airport, Rochdale and Blackpool, I think. They did actually start these services (as North Western Trains), running with 158s and 322s, but if I remember rightly the pathing via Northampton was pretty terrible and they never really took off.

Great Western Holdings' original bid for Great Western had envisaged splitting HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train) into 1+4 trains to provide shorter but more frequent services. (Virgin obviously did something similar with CrossCountry, replacing hourly 8-coach services with half-hourly Voyagers, and the Sprinterisation of Regional Railways had been along the same lines.) But the idea was eventually dropped - several reasons have been cited, partly wasting train paths, partly practical considerations, and partly that passenger growth was above what a four-coach train could accommodate. So the 180s were ordered instead, as you say, as part of the NWT order.

The 175s never actually got to Euston: the service had been dropped by then. I don't recall the details of how the GWT/NWT order chopped and changed into what we have now, but there's some interesting recollections - including some artists' impressions! - in this WNXX^▸ (Stored Unserviceable, Mainline Locos HQ All Classes) thread.

Andrew - have dropped you a line by e-mail!

Interesting. There's an 00.27 stopper from Oxford to Paddington. A 23.58 from Oxford to Charlbury, returning ECS^▸ (Empty Coaching Stock) to Oxford, could get back in time for that (maybe give or take retiming it a couple of minutes later) and take the guard back to Reading...

The thread about late-night services from Paddington to Henley reminded me of this thread.

Now that the redoubling has settled down, it seems to me that II's suggestion would be a good speculative extension for FGW^▸ (First Great Western) (or the new franchisee) to consider - i.e. extending the 22.48 Paddington-Oxford to Hanborough and Charlbury - like the 07.15 in reverse. It currently arrives at Oxford at 23.56, just as the last up train off the Cotswold Line is passing Wolvercote.

I'm pretty sure it would be a popular service. But the good people of this board will know much more than me about the practicalities of it. Would extending Ascott signal-box's hours be a blocker? Or would the need to find a guard for a service that may have worked DOO^▸ (Driver-Only Operation (that is, trains which operate without carrying a guard)) from Paddington kill it? Any enlightenment welcome.

That's exactly my recollection (as a regular commuter on that part of the line back then): HEx was what made the biggest difference to journey times out of Paddington.


And even as late as 1998 it was very common for HSTs to do Paddington to Reading in 22 minutes. I was commuting from London to Wokingham at the time, catching the 0800 to Swansea every morning, and it would often arrive in enough time for me to sprint down Platform 4 from Carriage A and catch the 0824 SWT^▸ (South West Trains) service from 4a.

I reluctantly unfollowed the FGW^▸ (First Great Western) Twitter feed the other day as the amount of information on marginal disruptions was getting overwhelming.

If Paddington-Reading is fouled up then the tweets are really welcome and appreciated. But "Ticket Veding Machine at Par is currently out of use. Ticket office will be open until 14.15, after that customers advised to buy on board" is, really, not of much import to 99% of followers. Perhaps having separate @FGW_West, @FGW_ThamesValley, @FGW_S_Wales etc. for such information might be better? (Shouldn't be any additional burden with software such as TweetDeck.)

Oh, absolutely, and David Cameron is certainly a good constituency MP - as when he hauled FGW^▸ (First Great Western) into the Corner House in Charlbury to say "the trains are always late and my constituents are angry; what are you going to do about it?". He's a regular fixture at events in the constituency, more so, I believe, than Tony Blair ever was.

But traditionally, Charlbury has always been the little patch of yellow in the sea of blue that is West Oxfordshire, both at District Council level and in the responses received to door-to-door canvassing at General Election time. The 2001 and 2005 LibDem candidates were both from Charlbury (one is now our District Councillor).

There's a lovely quote attributed to Cameron at a Charlbury event a couple of years ago. I forget the exact words, but it was something like: "I love coming to Charlbury, because I can be flavour of the month at Westminster and everyone tells me I'm doing everything right, then I come back to Charlbury and everyone tells me I know nothing and am doing everything wrong."

...in one of the few towns in the constituency that consistently doesn't vote for him.

That didn't last long. "FGW^▸ (First Great Western) Becky"'s account appears to have been suspended...

I note FGW^▸ (First Great Western) have acquired their very own impersonator. Slightly surprised she doesn't address people as "my love"...

Which does seem sensible, especially as there are more bikes around on the Cotswold Line at weekends, and bike storage is not the 180s' strong point. Would be good to let one out for the Hereford service on Sunday that's currently operated by a Turbo, though!

Ah, Bromsgrove.

I remember, back in Railtrack days, the late unlamented infrastructure company had a self-congratulatory poster that it put up, proclaiming "We are working on your station".

At Oxford, this was graffitied to say "...at the cost of our heritage".

At Bromsgrove, it was graffitied to read "We are w*nking on your station".

Sums up the difference really.

From reading up on other forums (for what that's worth) there seems to be two reasons: 180-style reliability and IE's bizarre procurement policy. They're certainly not the units you'd choose if there were a rolling stock surplus. But there isn't, and I can think of several places these would be very handy - ATW^▸ (Arriva Trains Wales (former TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company))), for one...