4 carriages reduced to 2 - is this the end of GWR pacers?

[whole diary]

[REVUpminster]

Tara will always be Tara King (The Avengers) to me.

Four 2+3 HST^▸ (High Speed Train)'s to replace Pacers is a backward step wherever they end up. Maybe they will only operate with one engine to save fuel. Might give a shock if they turn up at Exmouth and the locals think we have got a London service!!

[ellendune]

What does Tara mean?  To me it is the Hill of Tara, in Co Meath which was the seat of the High Kings of Ireland. 

[GBM]

....... To me it is the Hill of Tara, in Co Meath which was the seat of the High Kings of Ireland. 

I feel there's a story to be told here 

[grahame]

Lots of short forms on Bristol based services today:

12:48 Fareham to Cardiff Central due 15:54
12:48 Fareham to Cardiff Central due 15:54 will call additionally at Dilton Marsh.
This is due to a shortage of train crew.
Will be formed of 3 coaches instead of 5.

14:30 Cardiff Central to Fareham due 17:27
Facilities on the 14:30 Cardiff Central to Fareham due 17:27.
This is due to more trains than usual needing repairs at the same time.
Will be formed of 2 coaches instead of 4.

16:42 Gloucester to Weymouth due 20:10
Facilities on the 16:42 Gloucester to Weymouth due 20:10.
Will be formed of 2 coaches instead of 3.

14:00 Cardiff Central to Taunton due 15:55
Facilities on the 14:00 Cardiff Central to Taunton due 15:55.
This is due to a shortage of train crew.
Will be formed of 3 coaches instead of 4.

Does this co-incide with an appearance of more turbos (you know, the sort that run regional trains in Wessex) in Devon ? 
Are there enough people travelling for it to actually matter ?? 
Will it be fixed in time for any return to work next week ???

[phile]

Lots of short forms on Bristol based services today:

12:48 Fareham to Cardiff Central due 15:54
12:48 Fareham to Cardiff Central due 15:54 will call additionally at Dilton Marsh.
This is due to a shortage of train crew.
Will be formed of 3 coaches instead of 5.

14:30 Cardiff Central to Fareham due 17:27
Facilities on the 14:30 Cardiff Central to Fareham due 17:27.
This is due to more trains than usual needing repairs at the same time.
Will be formed of 2 coaches instead of 4.

16:42 Gloucester to Weymouth due 20:10
Facilities on the 16:42 Gloucester to Weymouth due 20:10.
Will be formed of 2 coaches instead of 3.

14:00 Cardiff Central to Taunton due 15:55
Facilities on the 14:00 Cardiff Central to Taunton due 15:55.
This is due to a shortage of train crew.
Will be formed of 3 coaches instead of 4.

Does this co-incide with an appearance of more turbos (you know, the sort that run regional trains in Wessex) in Devon ? 
Are there enough people travelling for it to actually matter ?? 
Will it be fixed in time for any return to work next week ???

There could be a build up of repairs due to Maintenance staff availability being affected by COVID absences.   TFW put out a statement before Christmas that they had staff self isolating.       SPM^▸ (St Philip's Marsh (Bristol depot)) could be similarly affected.

[grahame]

There could be a build up of repairs due to Maintenance staff availability being affected by COVID absences.   TFW put out a statement before Christmas that they had staff self isolating.       SPM^▸ (St Philip's Marsh (Bristol depot)) could be similarly affected.

Yes - that's also a possibility and it could be a co-incidence that GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) find themselves short of trains / carriages within days of the final runs of class 143 units. 

[stuving]

IAGY (I agree with you). Significant need to update our acronyms page which is due heavy maintenance. AND a request to posters to fill in what things stand for the first time they use them!

I don't know who TARA^▸ (Train Availability and Reliability Agreement) is.  To me, that's Tara Street Station ...

I wonder why. I defined or explained all that was needed for the sense to be there - often an official name doesn't help, and the original words that were initialised can be worse.

KPI (key performance indicator) is quite common in the rail industry and elsewhere. In any case, simply leaving it out doesn't really alter the meaning of what I wrote.

TSP^▸ (Train Service Provider) (train service provider) might or might not be the train provider to GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) - but we know Hitachi is, and that was used in the post I quoted. Strictly speaking, the TSP is Agility Trains West Limited, with Hitachi as majority owner and the only active one in management terms now that John Laing have sold out to others.

TARA is the label for the contract between the TSP and the "Relevant Operator" - GWR. I though I implied that clearly enough. In full that's the Train Availability and Reliability Agreement, but does that really say more than "GWR's contract with Hitachi"? We have had the TARA and its big brother the MARA^▸ (Master Availability and Reliability Agreement) (Master Availability and Reliability Agreement) between DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) and Agility mentioned here before, though not often. They are published on line, but you may be a bit put off reading them by their size (as IndustryInsider pointed out when he posted that link originally) - 368 pages of TARA and 731 of MARA. Those copies are still the ones signed in 2014; they may have survived the coming of EMAs or they may just not have been kept up to date.

A lot of initials get used as labels even when the original full wording is no longer appropriate, and a definition or explanation of what the thing is would be better. IEP^▸ (Intercity Express Program / Project.) was Intercity Express Programme, so hardly a good label for a train. GWR's switch to IET^▸ (Intercity Express Train) was the minimum they could do - calling a train a train. Other examples include GPS: it may have been the only Global Positioning System originally; it isn't now. So if you find those words in a glossary and expect to drop them into the text as a replacement and get the right meaning, you'd be disappointed. It would have to be "the USA's national GNSS" - that term (Global Navigation Satellite System) is now preferred to avoid the ambiguity of GPS, itself now just a label.

[grahame]

I don't know who TARA^▸ (Train Availability and Reliability Agreement) is.  To me, that's Tara Street Station ...

I wonder why. I defined or explained all that was needed for the sense to be there - often an official name doesn't help, and the original words that were initialised can be worse.

Thanks for filling me / us in.  Perhaps my personality, but a list of letters standing for something, even if I can see the context, leaves me with a question and a feeling incompleteness.  Good to know; the raising by another member initially tells me I am not unique.

I researched and found KPI quickly; TSP^▸ (Train Service Provider) came up with a veritable flood of options in a search - I did NOT spot "Train Service Provider"  and thought that it could be "Technical Support Professional" - a chap / chapess in  particular job function required to oversee the work rather than a team from Hitachi.  Tara illogically stuck in my mind (some three letter station codes do too - I always think of Barnstaple being extreme right wing) - yes you may wonder why!

Anyway - we are a forum of very bright and questioning members, but there is such a wide range of knowledge out there to be had that most of us are pretty thing thin on the ground in many areas - evidenced by certain quiz  questions I have asked that have stuck. We have a lot of casual guest too who are for the most part even more generalists.  So thank you (and everyone) who fills in to help understanding of shortenings - appreciating that at times things have moved on and it becomes counterintuitive,

[Bmblbzzz]

I actually agree with stuving in this case. He explained the abbreviations pretty well when first using them, I thought ? better than giving the full terms would have done. Apart from KPI, which is not specific to rail and is fairly well known. Nevertheless, clearly some people need to know the terms in full before they feel they understand them ? different people's brains work in differing ways (thank goodness, or we'd never achieve anything vaguely complex!).

[REVUpminster]

166203 in old livery working Paignton-Exmouth today

[REVUpminster]

166203 in old livery working Paignton-Exmouth today

166203 at Paignton 09JNR2020 by Robert, on Flickr

The guard was in the back cab but I am sure the driver opened the doors. Only two people got off.

[IndustryInsider]

Drivers open the doors and guards close them in non-DOO^▸ (Driver-Only Operation (that is, trains which operate without carrying a guard)) locations, with a few exceptions when there are very short platforms.

[Surrey 455]

166203 in old livery working Paignton-Exmouth today

It's not that old. If it was in the original Network South East or Thames Trains livery then I would agree.