What use is the IET service GWR mentioned in its apology?
It doesn't call at Oldfield Park.
I wondered that too. I suspect there may be some "lateral transfer" with Bath to Bristol passengers electing to move off the (over)crowded stoppers onto the now-more-spacious expresses. However, that's probably hard to measure, limited in the numbers who change, and darned hard to sell to the people at Oldfield Park and Keynsham who see the trains with extra seats whizzing past them to be followed by a stopper with standing room only.
I confess to also thinking that the spin in this was interesting.
The company added: “We do everything we can to run our services with the planned number of carriages, however, sometimes it is not always possible.
Totally agree that even with an adequate buffer of trains set aside to stand in when things go wrong, there will always be occasions when trains are short formed or cancelled. I'm not convinced, though, that there is an appropriate buffer and short trains run on too many occasions. Hot spares at Westbury, Gloucester and Plymouth wouldn't solve every issue but would certainly help to make things a lot better, be it the end of 2 cars on summer Saturdays to Weymouth, or half length peak trains along the Avon Valley from Bath. No doubt readers will wonder just where GWR would get these trains from, as 150s and 158s are like gold dust; I suspect there may be a couple of stored HSTs that could be used as "Castles" and release 3 x 2 cars from other diagrams. And, sure, it's a business case / decision; I'm sure that the staff on the ground do everything they can to run the services - but the text "within the business case set" (by GWR or DfT?) should perhaps be added to complete the comment?
