West and Thames fleets' refurbishment

[whole diary]

[Btline]

I understand that the HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train (Inter City class 43 125 units)) have been fully refurbished, excluding the EMT^» (East Midlands Trains - about) unit.

When will the West fleet be finished?

Have they started on the Thames fleet yet?

[Conner]

HST^▸ (High Speed Train (Inter City class 43 125 units))'s have been fully refurbished bar the buffet coaches with undecided futures.

We know longer have a EMT^» (East Midlands Trains - about) set, left a while back.

West fleet:
142-Bar the units meant to be leaving in October all our being refurbished, several units with FGW^▸ (First Great Western) interior and pink doors in service.
143-Not started.
150-A few don, work very slow. ATW^▸ (Arriva Trains Wales (former Train Operating Company)) units will not receive a rfeurbishment.
153-Only refurbished units in service. Rest being refurbished.
158-Work progressing quickly, all three car units our refurbished, not many un refurbished units left.

Thames fleet hasn't started yet AFAIK^▸ ('as far as I know').
West fleet is meant to be finished by October but I doubt the 150's will be done by then. 143's will follow 150's after there refurbishment has finished.

[willc]

We know longer have a EMT^» (East Midlands Trains - about) set, left a while back.

I believe Btline means the EMT set now being used by National Express East Coast as cover for its HST^▸ (High Speed Train (Inter City class 43 125 units)) refub programme which comes to FGW^▸ (First Great Western) at the end of the year, before replacing the remaining Adelantes next spring.

[Conner]

Which will be refurbished before entering service I presume.

[Btline]

What services/diagrams are the 180s doing at the moment? The new Cotswold timetable has pretty much all services HST^▸ (High Speed Train (Inter City class 43 125 units)).

[willc]

Which will be refurbished before entering service I presume.

Yep, so if you see anyone saying the Adelantes are here until December, this is twaddle. They will stay until the HST^▸ (High Speed Train (Inter City class 43 125 units)) is back from refurb, which may be a couple of months, since it's a one-off job.

Unless things change much next week - can't see they are likely to - Adelante regular trips are still the 07.10 Oxford-London, with two sets coupled, which then run empty back to Oxford, arriving just before, or just after, the 08.51 to Hereford, which is due off Oxford at 09.56. They then work the 10.30am Oxford to London, before one set does the 11.51 to Hereford and 15.19 return.

If there is only one Adelante available, then it goes on the 05.42 to Worcester and 08.37 return. The set then works a couple of London-Oxford trips before doing the 17.51 back to Worcester and 20.58 return to London. Once an Adelante is on this duty, it tends to stay all day, though a couple of times recently, an HST failure has seen an Adelante substituted on the 17.51 after a 125 began the day on the duty.

[Btline]

So perhaps FGW^▸ (First Great Western) should not be advertising these to be HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train (Inter City class 43 125 units)) (in the case of the 1519) if they are unsure?

It is also bad that they removed to "To/From" row at the top - more notes are annoying.

And it seems that they have given up trying to dissuade halts passengers, as they are now guaranteed a stop (no more "x"s) - even though, as noted before, trains always stopped anyway.