Oh joy. The 1104 1204 and 1304 all 5 vice 10 today. Remind we why all these 5 car sets was such a good idea??? Of course In the bad old days of HSTs we would probably of seen a turbo vice HST on say the Cotswold in order to allow a proper length train to run on the wofe service. Progress really doesn't feel so great right now. How much longer are people going to put up with this before they desert the railway?
Which HSTs would that be? You might be lucky to have got one off the Cotswold Line at that time of the day in the good old days, as most of the trains would been 180s or Turbos anyway - and doing so would have stuffed up busy services that needed a "proper-length train" into and out of Paddington later in the day - but then I keep forgetting that it's just commuter-land, where the people aren't special and can just stand anyway...
And the HST would have been a high-density set, with a mini-buffet, so not a lot of use on a service with a Pullman restaurant.
In case you hadn't noticed, things got a bit disrupted by the weather yesterday, with trains not all where they were supposed to be this morning.
So please spare us the unique suffering of the West Country stuff. In the good old days, the formation would probably have been washed out at Cowley Bridge as a result of the weather seen over the past couple of weekends and there would just be a sketchy service running via Yeovil or no trains at all between London and Exeter, never mind Plymouth or Cornwall - whatever the size of the trains available.
The washout at Pontrilas on the Marches Line meant there was no 06.43 from Hereford to Paddington today and the preceding 05.23 left 10 late after the ecs arrived late at Hereford after being sent there via Worcester. The 06.43 from Worcester was also a five-car set this morning.
So just under 1,000 seats missing from the Cotswold Line morning peak service today and no direct service from Worcester to London between 06.43 and 08.13, with the only other option being a two-car Turbo leaving Worcester Foregate Street at 06.53.