When will the Class 150's start doing the Reading to Basingstoke route?

[mralexn]

1 clue - The olympic games.

Never heard of it.. Whats that? :P

 

[TEW]

So they'll operate the line they've been acquired for M-F, do a fairly lengthy ECD transfer Friday night, run around Bristol for the weekend, then run ECS back to Reading on Sunday night?

That was originally the plan, certainly no use of Reading-Basingstoke planned at weekends. They were acquired for general capacity enhancement. At the weekends there are plenty of spare turbos at Reading Depot compared to weekdays so the 150s aren't needed, on the other hand, the west fleet sees about the same usage on weekends as weekdays, and in the summer, it sees pretty high usage as well, the 3-car 150s can be put to better use in the Bristol area at weekends, where capacity is more of an issue.

 

[Captain Chaos]

150001 and 150002 will be out all day from next week according to next weeks diagrams. With the exception of the 08:39, 09:39 and 10:39 by the looks of it (probably due to training issues. There's still one link whom I believe haven't been trained yet.) All the way up to the 20:37 of Reading and return where it will resort to 165's till end of service.

 

[TEW]

165s after the 20:37 off Reading is the long term plan, if you look at the timetable after then the trains have First Class again. Do you know if Redhill guards also work the Reading-Basingstoke route and have to be trained?

 

[Nick O. Teen]

Yes, Redhill crew work B/stokes, and they will be 150-trained at some stage.

 

[JonathanH]

Having seen it tonight, a Redhill guard works the 1916 Gatwick to Reading, does the 2107 Reading to Basingstoke and back and then does the 2234 back to Gatwick.

AIUI the guard for the 2334 to Gatwick does the 2135 from Redhill to Reading.

165130 was the 2037 from Reading, 150002 the incoming train at Reading at 2101 with a 165 taking over with the Redhill guard on the 2107.