SDO on the 8 car sets has worked fine for ever, so SDO on a 9 or 10 car set would be an obvious solution, if only there was some indication that that was the intent going forward?
Strictly, SDO has only been in use since 2007, at the latest HST refurbishment. Before then all doors were released at stations regardless of platform length. But that’s not compatible with today’s safety conscious railway.
IETs are using SDO - and unlike many other stocks it works on an individual door level rather than front/rear X coaches. The issue is the majority of stations between Bristol and Taunton can’t accommodate much more than a 5 car; and without walk-through between units you can end up with passengers “trapped” in the rear 5 coaches for several consecutive stations. That is not an ideal scenario; and so for the time being, only 5 cars are in use West of Bristol TM. The reason the 2nd set is still dragged to Weston/Taunton is simply one of staff availability. GWR struggle to provide drivers for the passenger services as it is - it is better to prioritise that; and take the efficiency hit from dragging a dead 5 car around; than use such a scarce resource on extra ECS services to Stoke Gifford. Besides which these aren’t the final diagrams. I don’t know how train planning have arrived at what we have at the moment, but I suspect capacity in/out of London on high peak trains has been the priority - it’s just unfortunate coincidence that sees those same trains being the ones through to/from destinations west of Bristol. I expect we will see 9 cars put onto some of these services once they start running - Clarence Yard is somewhat closer to that particular coal-face, perhaps he would like to wade in and confirm.
The driver issues are frustrating; but the first unit wasn’t handed over to GWR until September 2017 - training was due to start in May 2017. 5 months on GWR finally have roughly the number of drivers trained they originally wanted trained up before introduction. But with the HST and 180 cascade dates cast in stone, they’ve had no option in the meantime but to push as many units into service as possible. This is despite an “incident” that has rendered the Bristol training academy out of action for the time being.
The 5 and 5 locked out of use due to no TE is even more infuriating. It’s a highly political subject that I really don’t want to get into, but - The problems are generally that TEs don’t fall under the same rostering arrangements as other traincrew, which makes it more difficult for them to work evening and weekend trains compared to say, Train Managers and Customer Hosts. (Through no fault of their own I should add - and they have been remarkably flexible in helping out thus far) They’re also working under the direction of the revenue management team, not control, which makes them difficult to contact when things go wrong, or diagrams change, or they don’t show up due to whatever, etc... A solution to this problem has been put to the unions - who by all accounts seem quite interested - and should hopefully be implemented in the coming months. It should pretty much put an end to 5 and 5 locked out of use, and give new-found job security to a grade previously perceived to be under threat with the new trains.
There is light at the end of the tunnel. But honestly there’s probably a good couple more months of the current pain still to get through first.
Every week more drivers are being passed out. The 9 car units are coming soon. The TE “problem” will go away. There’s even a rumour they’re going to make efforts to improve the seats! It’s not been the easiest new train introduction - but none of them ever are!