I have indeed been very critical of the IEP programme and the resulting new trains, on another forum and sometimes here.
Many of my negative predictions have been borne out by the facts.
Before the details were finalised, I forecast that the new trains would have no buffet. Such views were regarded as being unduly negative.
They have no buffet.
I also stated that most of the fleet would be short units. Over half the order is 5 car, with a minority of full length ones.
I forecast mainly bus style seating with only a small number of tables. Fewer than half the seats are at tables. I can remember the original HST layout of 16 tables per coach.
More relevant at the present, I also forecast that short formations would be a regular event. A dozen short trains per weekday is now the new normal.
And remember that the long distance services have yet to be downgraded to DMU operation. It will be interesting when a single 5 car unit turns up for say the 19-03 to Penzance.
Luggage space is already insufficient, summer Saturday services to the far west will be interesting when passengers with surfboards and cycles turn up.
You may still be clinging to some 1960s or 1970s version of what an express train should look like, but I am afraid that things generally, plus the sheer number of people using trains, have moved on since the days when a seven-coach HST with two full trailer firsts, a restaurant-kitchen car, a separate buffet-second coach and just three trailer seconds, was considered up to the job on the Great Western.
Those seven-coach HSTs with separate restaurant and buffet cars seated fewer second class passengers (a whole 251 of them) than a five-coach IET does in standard class these days. No wonder the Trailer Restaurant Unclassified Buffet was quickly devised to allow an extra three dozen seats to be provided in second class, by putting all the catering services into one coach, then the TGS coaches were inserted in the 1980s to further increase second class capacity.
You may like playing footsie under a table and silver-service dining, many other people prefer to sit in an airline seat and grab a sandwich at the station before catching their train.
It has been noted often enough here and elsewhere that the full fleet of five-car 800s is still not available to GWR, which means that Hitachi has to cover 32 daily diagrams with 32 sets, instead of 36, and somehow also carry out programmed maintenance and handle unexpected faults. In that situation. some short-forms are almost inevitable, unless you are expecting Hitachi to achieve faultless performance day after day. If short-forming continues to happen frequently when the full 800 and 802 fleets are available, that would be cause for concern, but we are not at that stage yet.
And as I have pointed out previously, short-forming has been happening on GWR services for quite some time - just that people travelling to the likes of Bristol, Cardiff and the South West were insulated from it, because the short-forms were 180s and Turbos on Oxford and Cotswold services that should have been HSTs, with the HST 'donated' to the other routes. The Turbos were usually obtained by taking a set off a service that was supposed to be operated by a pair of Turbos, so Thames Valley passengers also lost out - but out of sight, out of mind...
