I was having a moan at the FGW staff at Reading yesterday, and one member said that overnight at Swansea, 2 HST's had been vandalised at Swansea. Therefore, Adelante's were substituting for HST's and Turbo's for Adelante's. More services than not operating on the Cotswold Line yesterday (including the 0952 Paddington to Hereford), were being operated by Turbos.

I had been chatting to them about the mis-information that gets displayed on the monitors. The 2 examples yesterday, during a 30 minute connection were concerning the 0922 Paddington/Oxford which had the comment "Regret - 3 carriages only today", yet when it turned up, it was just a 2 car unit, and then secondly,an announcement that a Swansea bound train was reported as "full and standing" from Paddington (due to the rugby). To their credit, the Reading staff had acted on this, and in good faith had told potential passengers to travel via Bristol Temple Meads (There were plenty of seats available on a preceding service to Temple Meads). Yet when the Swansea train came in, there was little evidence of anyone standing (maybe there were a few in the areas between corridors) and in fact not every seat was full. Even the platform staff seemed a bit frustrated about the exaggeration of passengers on this service.

In addition to my short connection, I noted that the 1034 from Reading to Gatwick Airport had been cancelled. I've noticed a few cancellations to Gatwick Airport have crept in, in recent weeks. In the days of Thames Trains, this used to be a very reliable service. In fairness to FGW, the December timetable did increase the frequency of service from Reading to Redhill.

That's all!