Cancelled GWR trains 'least bad choice'
GWRCampaigners say the cancellation of five weekday services between Penzance in Cornwall and Plymouth or Exeter in Devon has been "the least bad choice" for operator GWR to get on top of reliability problems with its newer Class 175 fleet locally.
Roger Blake, national director at campaigning group Railfuture, said temporary cancellations from Monday were "an unfortunate step back in order to then, we hope, take a couple of steps forward".
The trains, previously been used by Transport for Wales, were in storage for two years before GWR started using them in May.
Timetable changes were scheduled to run until 11 December, but GWR said it hoped to bring the trains back before that if possible.
GWR said the Class 175s had suffered technical problems after spending a long time out of service before joining its fleet.
It said the trains had been responsible for about 15% of delays and 14% of cancellations since May.
It said extra testing and maintenance checks were being introduced to improve reliability, and they would be run for at least 1,000 miles (1,600km) without any faults before they were used for passengers.
It added that it had also organised rail replacement services "as a back up" and it was working with schools and colleges as the timetable changes started when students returned after the summer break.
'Really lovely trains'
Andy Bowes-Roden, deputy editor at Modern Railways Magazine, was affected by a cancellation when he was on his way from Hayle in Cornwall to visit the maintenance depot in Plymouth.
He said: "It's just like if you store a car on a drive. You expect it's going to require a bit of work to get moving, and there's probably going to be some unforeseen problems too.
"They are really lovely trains, they're airy, they're comfortable, they're spacious."
The trains are being repaired at a depot in Laira, Plymouth, which he described as one of "the stand-out engineering facilities in the railway".
He said when the team at Laira "gets properly to grips with them" the trains would be "reliable".
Bowes-Roden said the company's oldest regional train fleet, the Class 150, was also starting a "major overhaul programme, so it is short of trains on two levels".
Roger Blake said passengers wanted a "dependable service" and "these trains have rather let GWR and, most importantly, their customers down".
He said, if the trains had been taken out of storage "sooner", the scale of problems could have been avoided.
He said the problems exposed GWR's longer-term need to have more and newer rolling stock in the South West to meet the "suppressed demand for rail travel" if "a better quality and more dependable service could be offered".
