When will services start calling at all stations between Paddington and Hayes on a Sunday? I was amazed they don't given the growth along the line. Stations with 1.4m annual users not getting a Sunday service or anything after 10pm seems mad. The trains still run - they just skip some stations.
When they are told to by the DFT. GWR will only do the bare minimum if forced to. I agree it is a ridiculous state of affairs that stations on one of the main lines in to London don't have a Sunday service.
Have you heard of engineering work, which often happens overnight from 10pm-ish or all day on Sundays?
If the GWML relief lines are closed for engineering work on a Sunday, how exactly do you propose GWR should stop trains at Hanwell or Acton Main Line, given the lack of a westbound platform on the fast lines* at either station? Or the alignment of the eastbound fast line at Hanwell, which isn't actually alongside the adjacent platform.
And if the fast lines are closed, GWR doesn't want stopping services getting in the way of expresses that are having to share the relief lines with Thames Valley locals.
Once all the current Crossrail and GWML modernisation work is completed, the amount of engineering work required will be reduced and I'm sure Crossrail will - subject to future engineering requirements - offer late-night and Sunday services at the West London stations.
So, in the light of recent discussions about services being taken over gradually, it seems as though all the relief line DMU services that come through Reading, or from Reading, remain unchanged, there is no general replacement of the standard 4 tph along the route, it is just the various peak extras that are converted. A key change is that an existing Slough to Paddington train becomes a Maidenhead to Paddington train.
How could the electrics gradually replace dmu services without there being 25kv wires to and through Reading? You're hardly going to recast the timetable once wires get to Maidenhead, when you have to do it all over again a few months later anyway once you can get 387s to Reading and Didcot - and actually replace a substantial number of Turbos with 387s at one fell swoop.
Nor do I understand why you are making a fuss about what the maps in the 387s may, or may not mean. They are simply a diagrammatic representation of the intention to provide some electric trains to and from Maidenhead at the earliest opportunity, not that such trains would be specifically linked to the initial Hayes shuttles.
*Pedants please note, well aware they are called the main lines in GWR terminology, just trying to make sure people understand which pair of tracks I mean.
