Maybe not, but you do feel an almost compulsive need to defend them from criticism at every opportunity.
I feel an almost compulsive need to point out the nonsense that people keep posting about these trains.
No wonder when people keep on treating us to stuff like this one yesterday
So much for the 802`s ability to cope with Dawlish. All services cancelled passing there this afternoon.
Never mind that, er, the 802s were still running at the time, while Voyagers had been stopped, and that anyone taking a cursory glance at the weather forecast yesterday could see there was every chance that no trains at all would be passing through Dawlish at some stage - like they aren't now.
Perhaps this is a comment on the storm-proofing of the Night Riviera's Class 57s, or maybe it's just a commonsense safety precaution in case there's another washout.
The other day we were told, apparently in all seriousness, that some short-forming of IET services was deliberate.
And so on, going back years.
I only partially agree.
Many people dislike the seats, the colour scheme, the number and volume of the on board announcements, and other internal features.
These are relatively easy to change and hopefully will be changed. They are also subjective, some people like the seats, others like the colour scheme.
My objections are more fundamental.
Too many services are short formed. Advocates of the IETs will claim that such short formations are not "regular" nor "frequent" however whatever the terminology used, anyone who has had to stand to Cardiff or Bristol on a 5 car DMU will consider this to be a backward step over sitting on a proper intercity train.
This is not subjective, virtually no one considers a shorter train to be an improvement.
Secondly these new units have no buffet. Very few people consider "no buffet" to an improvement. A limited trolley service that might or might not reach ones seat is not a proper alternative.
Whilst the ability to lengthen 5 car units to full length 9 car is an "essential requirement" I doubt that anyone really expects this.
The ability to add a buffet is also an "essential requirement" but it seems unlikely that we will see a proper hot buffet. A microbuffet perhaps, otherwise known as a static trolley.
To return to the house buying analogy above, the IET is comparable to purchasing a house that is too small, and then wondering if it can be extended.
Too short and without buffet, are more fundamental objections than colour schemes.
Yesterday morning my train to Reading was short-formed, a five-car instead of a nine-car on the 06.42 from Hereford. But being a Friday, when far fewer people from places west of Oxford go into London, everyone using this service got a seat and no one was standing all the way to Reading - and even then there looked to be enough seats available for those boarding at that stop.
Such a set swap could cause problems most other mornings of the week, but if a five-car stand-in arrived at Oxford on this service overloaded, passengers trying to join there would have to wait all of seven minutes for the following 09.01 IET, which is nice and empty, as it starts from Oxford.
I assume what had happened was that one set for a 2x5 due to work a service out of Bristol was not available, so the nine-car meant to go to Hereford was swapped for the other five-car.
Net result, the Bristol passengers got the nice big train they apparently simply cannot live without at any time of the day or night - even when there are only a couple of hundred of them actually travelling - and the Cotswold Line passengers still got a train.
Wind the clock back 12 months and a failed HST at the depot in Bristol of a morning would most likely have resulted in no train at all leaving Hereford at 06.42.
Whereas yesterday a five-car train ran, which is a distinct improvement on no train, and on me arriving at work the best part of an hour late.
Or have a mixture of shorter trains and longer ones, but enough of these that virtually every service is full length.
What does this mean? There there should be about a dozen five-cars to replace the five 180s and some Turbos and GWR should have got 80 nine-car sets? Oh sorry, I mean 10-cars with a hot buffet... and never mind the portion of the HST fleet that was deployed on services that could perfectly well be worked by a five-car IET - services that were often worked by a 180 during the period when FGW had all 14 of them on the books.
What exactly is a 'hot' buffet anyway?
If you mean something able to offer a Travelling Chef style service, dream on.
Or do you mean something like a Voyager shop, with a microwave oven to heat up bacon baguettes? Somehow, I can't see the East Coast sets having anything more than that in the buffet/shop.
Enough spare units to cover for training and breakdowns. A larger proportion of spare 10 car intercity sets and a lesser proportion of interurban 5 car sets. A 10 car intercity set could "at a pinch" be used in place of a dead 5 car unit, but not the other way around unless there was no alternative.
And what do you think will be the situation when it comes to spares once the entire fleet of GW 800s and 802s is actually available for passenger traffic? A point which has yet to be reached.
As for training, how many more times do you need to be told that GWR lost several months of the time that this was supposed to be happening last year due to the issues with signalling kit between Reading and Didcot? If that time had not been lost, then 800001 and 002 would not still be needed for training runs at this stage. Maybe the DfT should have ordered a couple of extra sets just on the off-chance that they might be needed for training, or perhaps not...
Why do you think GWR is sometimes operating five-cars in place of 2x5 and nine-car trains at the moment? Maybe because there is no alternative to doing that - unless you regard just cancelling a service as an alternative.
