Quite a few 5 car short forms again today. 12:29 Swansea to Paddington, rush hour 17:30 Paddington to Taunton followed by the regularly nice and busy 19:15 Paddington to Swansea. With nearly all the fleet GWR IET delivered, how is this still happening on such a regular basis?
I do love the way that the instant anyone sights a short-formed train or two, up they pop here to claim that this is a 'regular' occurrence.
Yet when we go for days without any short-forms, we hear not a peep out of them noting that things are running as planned.
Why is this?
Some of us know short-forms on FGW/GWR are nothing new - just that the robbing of HSTs from Oxford/Cotswold services in the past went unnoticed in all the places those HSTs then got sent off to, replacing a failed set.
But this short-forming was noticed by passengers on the services worked by a Turbo or 180 instead - with the Turbos usually secured by shortening a Thames Valley suburban service as well.
On this topic, the 16.22 from Paddington to Great Malvern appears to have given up its booked nine-car set (seen on the diagram in the morning) for a five-car today - presumably somewhere else got the nine-car instead.
Of the IETs remaining to go into service, almost all are nine-car 802s, which might just have an impact on the odds of short-forming happening once they are in use.