From the North Cotswold board, but for wider comment


As a more general thing, we were at Paddington in the peak hour on Wednesday at the peak hour, and noted several trains being called as short formed down to 5 carriages, and on several we were told that there were no catering facilities.  There was a significantly late departure of the Great Malvern train, and neither my ticket nor Lisa's would operate the automatic barrier and we required staffing assistance to get through.  Things are not as we were lead to expect that they would be when the HSTs were being replaced.   Having said which, the staff were exemplary on the barrier and in offering to help us onto (and later off) the train, which ran on time to Chippenham.

Issues are not unique to the British system, mind you, and we experienced delays in every country we had been through.   Only one of those was significant, as a 45 minute late arrival into Ovideo meant that we had missed the 25 minute onward connection to the second (and last) train of the day to Navia and Ferrol.   Paddington to Chippenham on time, and we left there on time towards Melksham but had to wait for the single line.  Some things happen all too often!

 

Isn't this at least partly due to committing to new routes where the need for additional stock was not factored in (ie Bristol- Oxford), and also having to use IETs on routes where other stock should be being used?

So there's a lot of robbing Peter to pay Paul?