On a brighter front it's positive that, so far this week at least, the weekday driver availability hasn't led to many (any?) cancellations. Also, despite several hiccups and the odd bit of bad luck, it turns out the doom and gloom merchants might need to eat their words as the timetable hasn't completely collapsed as predicted. A bit of tinkering here and there won't go amiss, but overall it generally works.
Though there seem to be a lot of down services losing time between Paddington and Reading or Didcot and Oxford in particular, but which still are ending up 'on time' for recording purposes thanks to timing allowances further down the line, while being 'late' as far as many passengers who get off along the way are concerned.
And XC punctuality on the Birmingham-South Coast axis has been pretty poor ever since Sunday, causing a lot of problems for GWR services they get in the way of. At Oxford their late running has been as much of a menace to the timekeeping of services heading to the Cotswold Line as the terminating Turbos were for many years until the end of last week.
It is also to be hoped that some lessons are learned quickly from yesterday afternoon's 'dude, where's my guard?' fiasco at Oxford after the Cotswold Line halts train was sent out of Didcot (running DOO) ahead of the late-running 16.20 from Paddington. The problem being that the train manager due to work the halts train on to Moreton-in-Marsh (no DOO on the Cotswold Line) was travelling to Oxford on the 16.20...
Net result was the Turbo sat in the platform until 17.40 before being cancelled and sent to the sidings, with the 16.20 finally arriving 32 minutes late after being stuck just outside the station for the best part of 20 minutes - and the following 16.58 'superfast'* to Great Malvern was 12 late at Oxford, picked up the waiting throng and was full and standing out to Hanborough.
No special stop notice was issued, so the halts passengers were left without a train. It is to be hoped this is not a sign of things to come if there is a problem with the Turbo for whatever reason in future, after passenger numbers at these stations took a hit in the shambles of late 2017 and early 2018 but have since recovered.
*So far this week, just one 'superfast' has actually reached Oxford from London at the booked time out of 12 attempts - today's 17.58 Paddington to Worcester.
And there was plenty of chuntering in seats around me on the full and standing Voyager I caught from Reading to Oxford about the great big hole blown in afternoon peak fast services between the two places as of this week - and being wedged into a late-running 220 as a result. Thames Valley commuters are not impressed.
