The letter sounds clear that an IET will be allowed to go without a Train Manager, I am not seeing that limited to any particular line. That clearly makes Train Managers optional, when it happens is irrelevant, except for the meaningless 'exceptional circumstances', but when it does, I have explained how it will pan out and why.
That letter was a proposal - there has not been any agreement with the unions to change current DOO arrangements and if Aslef does not reach an agreement with GWR on an extension of DOO operation outside the Thames Valley area, then the drivers will simply refuse to take a train out.
So it does not make train mangers optional. And in terms of customer care, I can't see any long-distance TOC wanting to get into the game of running DOO anyway.
But clearly your crystal ball is in full working order, so we'll just have to accept that it shall be DOO, all the time, everywhere.
I don't know how many people travel Reading to London on the Staines line, but if not very many at all, then irrelevant really?
Why is it irrelevant? Your proposition is that passengers at Reading (and I assume Maidenhead and Twyford as well) will all continue to leap on board any and every GWR fast service as a matter of routine (actual routine, as opposed to something that happens occasionally, such as a five-car IET instead of 2x5 - there are currently 78 train formation updates showing on GWR Journeycheck, and the number of five-cars instead of 2x5 is, er, zero...).
As a matter of routine, some passengers from Reading have been getting on a slower service to London, making a number of stops en route, for years. I'm sure your crystal ball will disagree but I think it is entirely reasonable to suppose that some passengers at GWML stations may decide staying put on the same train all the way to the West End or the City beats a transfer at Paddington.
Are you aware that Maidenhead-Liverpool Street, even with the stops on Crossrail, will take 46 minutes, for example?
A GWR fast to Paddington takes 20 or 21 minutes at the moment, which isn't going to change much, and Crossrail's website shows 10 minutes for the transit from Paddington to Liverpool Street. Chuck in some transfer time at Paddington and even if you step straight on to a train at Paddington heading through the tunnel, you might save 10 minutes compared with a direct Crossrail train.
Having realised I didn't accuse you of some great deliberate conspiracy to short form trains you now seem to be angling for another semantic debate on the different between regular and occasional? You don't need the flexibility to deliver half a train as West Coast prove every day, despite your fixation on the 221 exception to the 390 rule.
Since I do not accept your proposition that short-formed GWR IETs are the norm, routine, or any other word you care to try out, I see nothing at all wrong with pointing out that when Virgin have an occasional, non-routine fault on a 221/a set was failed on the depot, etc, then they will cut them out of a formation - just what GWR does with IETs if they have a fault/did not leave the depot, etc.
Rather than making the same assertion over and over, how about you produce a detailed log, actually demonstrating in black and white that short-formed IETs on GWR are a matter of routine?
But still you seem obsessed with having too much off peak capacity. Earlier you pointed out this is exactly what other TOCs do with idle stock between the peaks. Which is exactly my point - GWR is the outlier giving up precious peak capacity in exchange for trying to squeeze even more trains into an already unmanageable bit of congested railway.
I see, so the needs of a couple of hours in the morning and a couple of hours in the evening on a short section of railway trump all other considerations, such as what the trains involved are doing the rest of the day or in places a very long way from the Thames Valley with different needs? And all this to add perhaps four dozen seats per service, which would be a drop in the ocean compared to what is being delivered by way of extra capacity in the Thames Valley one way and another over the next couple of years.
Having suffered years of serious crowding there still doesn't seem to be a plan to deal with it and Crossrail is only going to make it worse opening up more of London to Paddington. I don't see what an extra train for Maidenhead will do there, looks like no plan plus a lot of wishful thinking? Perhaps the crowds won't come, perhaps people will choose to go on slower routes or the lack of housing will stop things getting out of hand. All the probability is for exactly the opposite to happen.
No, obviously getting new IETs with more seats than on the HSTs they replace isn't part of a plan to 'deal with it', nor is having formations up to 12 coaches on GWR suburban services, or Crossrail...
As I have explained 1x6/7 is an off peak formation as 1x10 isn't needed outside London nor outside the peak. Reading-London isn't going back to the early 1970s any time soon. Perhaps I invited a semantic debate there by using the word forever?
I wonder why no one else has thought about having off-peak sets? They would certainly come in handy on many West Coast Pendolino services for large parts of the day, especially the further they get away from London.
Or maybe someone has already thought about having off-peak sets on GWR - and they look something like a five-coach Class 800? Which can also be coupled together to form a 640-seat peak train.
Perhaps you shouldn't make sweeping and inaccurate assertions in the first place.
