"To stand in a First Class Carriage you need a First Class Ticket"

[whole diary]

[didcotdean]

First time I've heard that in a long time, on 1P20 (originating Worcester SH) on departure from Oxford at 0932. There was also an apology for a 'lack of seats today' but it wasn't through being short-formed as it always runs as a 5-car as far as I can see. Not crush-loaded but very cosy.

[IndustryInsider]

Yeah loadings continue to grow and often exceed pre-Covid levels on many North Cotswold line services.  First Class seems especially busy, though I’m not sure how many of those are very cheap advance tickets?

At least the stop at Slough has been removed from most of them, but standing from Oxford to Paddington is common on all the off peak morning services, and some of the afternoon ones, that come through from the Worcester direction, including the fairly recent addition didcotdean mentions above.  The poor offering from Chiltern nowadays (many currently operated by 75mph 165s with no charging points) won’t take much of the heavy lifting.

[Phantom]

Was told this many many years ago when travelling back from Paddington to Weston
I was even told to move from the vestibule area - in the HST^▸ (High Speed Train (Inter City class 43 125 units)) days

Just to add I have also been told that a ticket doesn't actually include a seat, just the ability to travel

[didcotdean]

What adds to the loadings on that particular service is that it is the first off-peak one from Oxford.

Also one unfortunate soul who got on at Oxford was expecting it to stop at Didcot, as the Oxford originators now generally do. She was travelling westwards so maybe only delayed a little.

[Mark A]

5 carriage IEP^▸ (Intercity Express Program / Project. This will offer more capacity on routes, save money, give a consistent and safe service and meet customer requirements. Intended to replace HSTs.)'s do not have the seating capacity one might expect. Also, it's not straightforward to retrieve a map of their internal layout as the GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) web site seems to be a bit embarrassed by this and when the resource is requested habitually returns a curious load shedding page, link below:

https://www.gwr.com/~/media/gwr/pdfs/seating-plans/intercity-express-train-5-carriage-seating-plan.pdf?la=en

A third party site has this:

https://sites.create-cdn.net/sitefiles/19/3/4/193478/GWR_IET_5_Car.pdf

Mark

[didcotdean]

The GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) Facilities Guide starts with seat plans for all GWR trains including the never in service 769 and not yet seen 230.