Great Western Coffee Shop

http://www.thisisdevon.co.uk/business/Switch-rail-services-increase-tourist-trips-Bay/article-2783214-detail/article.html

More profit to be had in Torbay it seems

Part of this may follow on from next years already agreed changes. The Reading - Southampton alternate hour extension, and the Edinburgh to Glasgow alternate hour all day service means more HSTs will have to be in operation all week. So it makes sense to look at where best to use them to best advantage.

As we know, to make sure the HSTs end up in the north overnight for servicing and then provide the necessary capacity boost in the West Midlands during the am and pm peaks, they just happen to end up in Plymouth over the middle of the day when the extra capacity isn't really needed.

It's perfectly possible that diversion to Paignton will have no effect on the capacity needed to Plymouth at that time of day, but helps out somewhere up north in the early morning or evening - that, after all is what the HSTs are for, not really to provide the main service to Plymouth...

Paul

Sounds like a reasonable suggestion. XC just have to make it affordable, nobody is going to want to holiday in England if it is expensive! (Even if it supposedly warmer in Torbay - not that I noticed in the 18 years that I lived there!)

where do the other 2 trains disappear to if they arrive but done depart again? magic black hole at plymouth station?

Night stoppers!  ;)

but still have to depart at some point or there will be a massive build up of stock at plymouth, i.e. 16 arrive, 14 depart, 2 left over, next day 2 left over + the 16 new arrivals= 18 units with still only 14 departing, meaning 4 left over units and so on ;)

ECS working? 

I must say I did wonder myself

Likely answer to the disappearing trains?

The late night arrivals at Plymouth all run to Laira for overnight stabling, but a couple run ECS at stupid o'clock in the morning to start their next day's diagrams at Exeter. Based on diagrams from Dec 07, but I doubt much has changed.

There's a similar arrival and departure misbalance at Bournemouth, because two early up departures start at Southampton, but only one down train terminates at Southampton.

Paul

Reason for the numbers not adding up is because the numbers have not included the following trains :
1150 departure from Plymouth (0940 ex pnz) (there is 3 down trains from the north to pnz but only 2 in the morning)

0701 pgn to man which is formed from laira (laira only forms a working from pgn in the morning and does not get one back in the evening, but ply gets extra train to enable it to form this)

Also the working you referred to from Exeter Now is the 0520 from Plymouth.