The service via parkway is to preserve route knowledge for diversion if the direct chord or Bristol Temple Meads is unavaiable for any reason.
Is it pointless duplication to run more than one train per hour? After all surely everyone can just pile on that?
Also especially useful in periods of disruption such as this morning where the GWR 0628, 0657 and 0727 departures from Cardiff were all cancelled even though the disruption was expected to be cleared by 0700. I imagine this could have been due to GWR stock (165/158s stabled near Temple Meads and 800/802s stabled at Stoke Gifford) not making it from Bristol to Wales in order to operate those services - unless they had an excess of stock stabled at Swansea but that doesn't make sense for the Cardiff to Bristol/Portsmouth/Exeter services. Having a second option coming from different depots provides some further resilience compared to the route via a tight change at Bristol Parkway.
That completely undoes the point of releasing them from the Cambrian in the first place, which was to get RID of the 90s stock.
One might suggest that TfW are hardly in a position to be getting precious about “90s stock”, given their ongoing exploits with brand new efforts!
I think 35 year old trains is better than no train though, but TfW seems to think differently
That means 51 in service, which is more than the 47-49 planned each day under the current maintenance setup. They were never going to use all 77 in service until the Cambrian changeover and Machynlleth Depot switching to 197s due to capacity constraints at CAF Chester.
GBR may remove some duplication amongst its services when it eventually comes into existence. But TFW won’t be part of GBR so not particularly relevant.
Assuming it won’t be TfW who govern the availability and use of paths across GBR’s network, GBR policy may well be relevant in such situations one would think?!
Think of the parallel of the two hourly Bristol to Oxford service, which everyone seems to welcome. It could also be regarded as pointless duplication, in that the cities are connected with one easy change at Didcot.
