However this morning even on departure from Nottingham the service was shown as running through to Cardiff.
Bit of an odd way to look at it. There are arrivals in Cardiff at 0654, 0722, 0757 and 0910. Now, sure, maybe there could be an extra one at approximately 0840. It would have to squeeze in behind the 0648 London Paddington to Carmarthen, and have the 0642 from Frome to Cardiff Central following right behind. There's a risk of a conflict with a freight train if it used platform 1 at Newport and there's also no platform at Cardiff Central available for it to terminate at. An extra service could run just to Severn Tunnel Junction with the service from Frome as the connection, but that'd risk capacity being well short on that one, and wouldn't be much more convenient than just using the through CrossCountry prior.
Don't worry, he won't be a Minister for much longer. Likely he won't even become an MP again either.
In fact, DfT have gone to a lot of effort to encourage operators to reduce establishments and optimise traincrew diagrams. Furthermore, the structure of the franchises and contracts incentivises this sort of penny pinching over performance.
If you're referring to RTT, this is how the source of the data works, it won't show a train terminating at a location until it reaches that location. The rolling stock assignment will often give an indication though.
They did, it was messaged out at something like 2am this morning. RTT just didn't reflect it due to the above.
No, definitely not the highest paid drivers in the land. London Overground, Eurostar, Elizabeth Line, South Western Railway, C2C, LNER, and Transport for Wales are all on more.
I stand corrected then.
AIUI XC has just started training cohort No 18, with cohort 17 still in progress. and the Derby driver training school is running flat out. I don't think it is fair to state that XC are unwilling to train and employ sufficient drivers, "Sufficient" however, is not really quantifiable, as DfT "own" the timetable and specifiy it to XC to resource and run the service. This means that DfT pay XC to operate the service, and that has increased every few months from the start of the post pandemic arrangements. Given it takes around 18 months to get a driver basically trained then cohort No 19 might not be driving until winter of 2025
Thanks for that, I (and a lot of other people I believe) had got the impression that as this has been going on for so many years, there was no prospect of any improvement and XC had just given up. It's good to hear some actual facts which show there is at least a prospect of improvement over the next year or so.
Money in not everything.
That happened only a year ago when one of New Streets platforms was shut. The hourly XC service that was left still wasn’t free from cancellations.
Sorry if I made my point poorly, I was responding to another poster who stated that the TfW service is hourly, when during critical commuting times it is not.
I can understand how poor it is if that specific service isn't protected, agreed.
So not in time for a usual office work pattern then.
Via Gloucester and Worcester Shrub Hill? Sounds very slow. Also sounds likely to get caught in an awful lot of conflicts at Gloucester Yard Jn / Barnwood Jn, Worcester Shrub Hill platforms, Worcester Tunnel Jn and the Droitwich Spa - Stoke Works Jn section.
www.realtimetrains.co.uk
This is why TOCs need to ‘own’ routes - otherwise they just pass the buck and neither TOC provides much of a service.
Sounds like it'd be even slower to me for any Cardiff - Birmingham passengers. It may be a bit more practical though, but I'd suggest still likely to need doubling at Abbotswood Junction and create a lot of performance risk at Gloucester and Worcester Shrub Hill.
Just outside of regular commuting hours, but there still isn't 100% return to office work post-COVID so doesn't make a difference.
