Given this has been happening for many weeks now
52 weeks since the first post in this thread ………
the passenger is expected to know if the train they were delayed on might have been operated by Thames Trains, Great Western or Wessex Trains had it been operating 10 years previously
That made me laugh too, a while ago, when filling in a claim form for a London -> Oxford trip. I might (well) be wrong, but weren't the fast Oxford terminators (operated by Turbos) Thames Trains, but the effectively equivalent HST (in timetabling, to an Oxford user, not in terms of rolling stock, of course) services which continued down the Cotswold Line to Hereford Great Westerm (or whatever it was called back then) … but what about the turbos that went as far as Worcester? … I have no idea.
Given that even many of the denizens of this discussion in a very specialised area (myself included), even those familiar with a particular area, would have no idea which operator would have been responsible for a service, had that service hypothetically been operating a decade or more ago, it is utterly jaw-dropping that this distinction is still allowed to be made.
In an obliquely related note, I was wondering how to interpret the route decomposition on the per-operator performance pages at trains.im — how is each “route group” defined? — but that's even further off topic so I'll stop!
but I don't think the same is true for long distance services, particularly leisure travel (which a large portion of it will be, at weekends)
Absolutely. A Bristol friend now chooses coach over train for both leisure and in fact also (non-commuting) academic / work trips to London. The damage that's being done at the moment will take a long time to repair, if it ever is. What a pity.
In other news,
— http://www.oxfordtimes.co.uk/news/1...rd_commuters_prefer_Chiltern_Railways_or_GWR/ …“PASSENGERS travelling from Oxford to London are more satisfied with Chiltern Railways' service than rivals Great Western Railway, a survey has revealed”
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