Having held the rest of us up every morning, the little stopping service continues from Bristol on to Cardiff. Quite useful for anyone joining the service from London at Swindon or Chippenham who wants to go to Wales. Or at least it would be if the idiots at Third Rate Western didn't regularly send it on its way from Bristol before the train from London has arrived.
Let's just think this through. The train from London is delayed by the stopping service so that it regularly arrives after the stopping train is scheduled to leave Bristol. People on the train from London want to get onto the stopping train to get to Cardiff. Is it really beyond the wit of man to make the stopping train wait for the London train to arrive? Well not beyond the wit of man, but certainly beyond the wit of the managing idiots from Third Rate Western.
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All trains have a path (arranged months in advance) that is set for them - if they delayed this [stopper] train it might loose it's path further down the line and therefore go from being on-time to being delayed and this might then cause further services to be delayed and of course delays cost money (FGW could be fined for the delay or they could end up paying out compensation claims for delays, along with the cost of the effect on their reliability rate) so perhaps there is a bloody good reason why the train left ON TIME as it was timetabled to do so.
If passengers wanted to go onto Wales then they might have to change anyway and it's tough that there isn't a connecting service as you may wish for them. Big deal, this happens to many passengers on a daily basis all over the country but I haven't heard or even seen them complaining as much as long as they get to their destination.
The timetable is worked out based on the expected speed of trains so if the train is expected to go at 125mph and it is held up behind a slower train then obviously it cannot go at 125mph as expected so it will be delayed. Also if the express is behind a stopper it is possible that the signals ahead of the express are on a restrictive aspect (Double Yellow or Yellow) therefore actually has to go slower so that it doesn't SPAD (pass a red signal) which would delay it even more!
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