I have no reason to doubt the reasons for regular short formations, but no matter how valid the reasons are, the average customer still sees
Old trains (full length HSTs)= Good, likely to get a seat.
New trains, often 5 car IETs=Bad often have to stand.
A lot of money was spent on advertising the improved capacity of the new trains, and on Bristol and Cardiff services in particular this has not yet been reliably delivered, excellent though the reasons no doubt are.
On the GWR forum, and to a lesser extent on this forum, I forecast that regular short formations would result from the introduction of new shorter units.
Such views were widely criticised as being unduly negative, with various respected members pointing out services would be improved.
Well the new trains are here now, and after nearly a year of regular use, short formations ARE a frequent event, though no doubt for excellent and unavoidable reasons.
Advocates of the new DMUs have had to change their tune from "stop forecasting doom, wait and see how wonderful it will be" to instead "short formations are not that bad, much better than no train" and "some units are being used for staff training" or "the full fleet has yet to be delivered" and of course "teething problems are inevitable"
All of the above are no doubt factually correct, but the end result is still a considerable difference from that which was promised.
Perhaps I am a very non-average passenger than, because in the past 10 months, I have yet to travel on a single short-formed IET service, but have somehow managed to be on a couple in recent weeks that were long-formed, with a nine-car instead of a five-car.
If you have no reason to doubt the reasons for short-forms, why do you keep droning on and on about it as though you don't understand/couldn't care less what the reasons are? So you can go 'I told you so' day after day, irrespective of the context?
What do you expect GWR to do - produce replacements for the still-to-be-delivered five-car sets on a 3D printer? Until those three sets turn up there will still be issues.
When you started going on and on about short-forms on the GW Passengers Forum years ago, that was in a context where you were claiming it would be a daily feature of life on GWR forever with the IETs, not a largely short-term one due to late delivery of a few sets.
Short-forming will still happen in years to come due to occasional faults on trains - no one is claiming it won't - but that is no different from what has been happening for years with HSTs being shuffled about and 180s or Turbos standing in for them to Oxford and the Cotswold Line. You really do have an 'out of sight, out of mind' approach when it comes to still repeating your favourite myth that short-forms never used to happen.
If there is still a problem with short-forms when the full fleet of 800s and 802s is in traffic, that might be the time to drone on and on about it - not while the GWR express fleet remains in a state of flux due to the transition from HSTs to IETs, which still has something like six months to run.
I expect if we were transported back in time to 1976-77 you would probably have been going on and on about a Class 47 or 50 and a ragbag selection of Mk2 coaches without a buffet car turning up instead of the broken HST that was supposed to be on your service.
Had BR been under government orders to send a loco and a rake of coaches off to Scotland or the scrapyard the instant a shiny new HST turned up at Old Oak Common, they too might have struggled to find a stand-in train with the same seating capacity at times back then.
And no sign of a short-formed IET so far today on GWR Journeycheck, despite it being a "regular" feature. You really should look up the dictionary definition of the word regular - because that's not what is happening on GWR.
