Portion working is a very efficient way of tailoring stock provision to the typical passenger flows, particularly at the extremities of journeys.  In doing so it enables those extremities to enjoy through services (or more frequent through services) to London which might otherwise not be cost-justifiable. To suggest that it isn't employed because a few late arrivals may find themselves in the wrong portion of the train and suffer the inconvenience of having to move later on is, frankly, ludicrous.

Take one example, and I will keep the numbers simple, to illustrate the point.  London to Plymouth is 3 hours, and 5 hours to Penzance.  Ignoring lay-over times and everything else, you could provide an hourly full length service with 2x10 5 car sets = 20 sets.   Or you could one run one unit only beyond Plymouth and that reduces to 16 sets (1x 10 + 1x6).  Put another way your rolling stock cost increases by 25% for the customer benefit of not inconveniencing those few late arrivals that you talk about.   (By the way, I am well aware there may be times when one set will be inadequate, but the example illustrates the general point, and is equally applicable on other routes, both on GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) and elsewhere.)   

A bit of a storm in a teacup if you ask me.

Notices up at Nailsea today announcing the arrival of turbos from Monday 23rd. Some longer distance services are being split in two at Bristol and Taunton presumably as the turbos and not cleared south of Taunton or towards Cardiff.

Maybe this will provide a modicum of relief in terms of the chronic shortage of rolling stock in the area...

Whilst the whole sorry saga is totally unacceptable, that point stands out as deliberately going out of their way to make life difficult for passengers.

You can add to that the branch to Whifflet in Strathclyde.  However, I don't believe Kirknewton was on a line reopening, nor even a reopened station (although it was renamed in 1982).

And worth expanding Bathgate as the current line is a result of three separate openings, namely Bathgate to Edinburgh, Airdrie to Drumgelloch, and then finally joining the missing link.

Being slightly pedantic, the Paisley Canal branch was still open 40 years ago.  It closed along with the Kilmacolm branch in c 1983 only to be revived a few years later (though sadly the Kilmacolm branch itself didn't reopen).


 

Indeed, but the other main lines (ECML^▸ (East Coast Main Line), GWML^▸ (Great Western Main Line), MML^» (Midland Main Line. - about)) have seen the maintenance or introduction of a sensible distribution of fast and semi-fast services, that have enabled point to point journey time improvements over those periods in the longer distance flows.

And yes, there were fewer services but the early HST^▸ (High Speed Train) timetables saw 3 trains every two hours to Cardiff, whereas the service for the last 20 years has only increased to 4, (and still only 1 per hour to Swansea). Hardly a step change, particularly in the context of longer journey times.

And point to point journey times have risen too.  eg. The typical departure off Reading was 22 mins after leaving Paddington.

Yes I know there are good reasons why, many of which haven't been listed (e.g. original sets were 2+7, impact of HEx, slower line speeds out of Paddington post Ladbroke Grove to name but three) but it is hardly progress.

If journey times were to stay the same then services would still be slower than 40 years ago. The improvement in journey times expected just about takes us back to the times of the late 1970s.  (e.g. 1 hr 5 mins to Bristol Parkway).

What is the investment proposed around Bristol that isn't already happening? I can only think of Bristol East but that is hardly "around" Bristol.

[i]Chris Grayling: In due course. On the trans-Pennine route, we will have to wait and see what the Network Rail proposal is. We are doing the work on Ely junction at the moment. The other area that will get investment is around Bristol. Those are probably the three decisions that we have taken. They are not the only decisions that we have, but they are the three things I have set out very clearly that we will do.[/i]

I'm sure the press would still have made considerable comment as to the near half hour delay in departure at outset and the further delay around Maidenhead resulting in a 41 minute late arrival.  The in built shower facility was purely the icing on the cake in terms of a visual aspect to the problems, and one which therefore got all the publicity.

Remember that on its very first outing the first train arrived at Temple Meads nearly an hour late, and presumably left a lot of dignitaries and press cooling their heels on the platform at 5.30 in the morning instead of getting on board early and being schmoozed by GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) and Hitachi. Do you blame the press for focussing on the negatives?

The day in question was Black Monday, a day that went down in history as one of the most turbulent in the financial market's history. Arguably the coverage given to the tragedy was rather less than would otherwise have been.

The 1530 from PAD^» (Paddington (London) - next trains) to Weston will be the first test of whether dividing at BRI^» (Bristol Temple Meads - next trains) will provide sufficient capacity onwards. The 1715 from BRI hoovers up a large volume of commuters currently.

It's not unusual for this to happen to a late running service from the west, with the spare HST^▸ (High Speed Train) at Temple Meads stepping up if available (and crew) to maintain a right time departure from there eastwards. What is unusual is it doesn't appear that the TM^‡(resolve) was advised, as on previous occasions they have made passengers aware of this.

It appears to have been slick work, with the inbound service only arriving from PAD^» (Paddington (London) - next trains) at 0952, yet returning east on time at 1000.  Because of the long delay to the train from Paignton it also meant the 1030 departure had to be stepped up, and again that seemed to work without a hitch. 

So good operating practice, but shame the communication wasn't a bit better.

Yes, it was over an hour late leaving. I'm sure there will be a penalty for not presenting a train for service at the right time, else what's the point of having a contract where Hitachi are on the hook to provide a set for each journey which doesn't catch such a failure. 

I suspect Ms Boswell will be getting some very frank feedback from her bosses. This was Hitachi's most important day in terms of media profile and they have right royally screwed it up. And in doing so made their customers (DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) and GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway)) appear a laughing stock.

I don't think it's on Twitter she needs to be making her apologies.

Because Hopwood is the MD of the railway and travelling on company business, and Grayling is his invited guest for the launch event. 

More importantly, ITV is reporting that they had problems coupling the two units together at the depot, hence the reason why it set off 25 minutes late from Bristol. Really?  You couldn't make it up could you? Hitachi should have had the units ready hours before for such an important launch event.  At least they didn't run the service short formed though...