42275 – 15:06 Wednesday 28st May

42275

Those dedicated readers and BGC stalkers amongst you will know or have realised that I am not at work this week due to having five luxurious days off as I move between jobs. As much as part of me wanted to do nothing more than sit in the same pair of pants for 5 days and watch unending episodes of Judge Judy the other part suggested that I use this spare time to get a new pair of trainers, an exciting piece of shopping I’ve been meaning to do for quite a while.

My journey to town was accompanied by a plethora of tweets from FGW’s Queen of Twitter Jess, who after I’d pestered her for the photo to celebrate my 40th capture, went into full flirt mode and pestered me for the whole journey with improper suggestions and crude language. This culminated with an invitation of coffee in the presence of Mr Brunel, which one of us sadly had to turn down. Still her final tweet on the matter, whilst sounding unnerving ominous, looks like it won’t be the last word on the matter.

So trainers safely bought (you really don’t want details on this part do you?) I returned to Paddington and was just wondering whether to catch a straight through train or an earlier one that would see me change at Reading when who did I spot marching up the concourse, reading for signing on for his shift on the twitter lines, none other than the world renown Ollie, FGW’s original tweet lord.

I’m not sure what the correct protocol in this sort of situation is but I decided on one that saw me jumped out at him from behind a pillar and introduce myself. Luckily Ollie did at least realise who I was and obviously I haven’t cheesed off the twitter crowd too much as he didn’t floor me with a right hook. He was also good enough to advise me on my train dilemma and suggested that I go on the Penzance service in order to get another carriage successfully captured. So that’s why a couple of minutes later I was securely sat in Carriage C on the 15:06 and 42275 can now be ticked off the list.

Of course it was only when I got to Reading that I realised that a cheeky selfie of me and the Ol-Meister would have see Jess’s photo dilemma solved, at least until number 60 anyway.

44024, 42291 & 42212 – 06:57, 17:49 & 18:37

44024

42212

Nothing to report in terms of the carriages – It was a new Carriage A (44024) on the way to work and a combination of a Carriage C (42291 – alas a duplicate) and a Carriage D (42212) on the way home. 

The most exciting thing was sharing a seat with a female cyclist who was wearing a yellow cardigan, a day-glo orange vest and carrying a bright green bag. She was coughing so hard she dropped her helmet (a red one).

But the interesting thing was getting a reply from Leo (remember him – bushy beard, doesn’t clear up after himself) about what Carriage X might mean. He was helped by @Paul_MK5 who sounds like he’s forgotten more about trains than I will know in two lifetimes. Anyway Carriage X might mean any of the following:

A spare carriage used for outsize baggage.

A carriage on the way to a depot.

Used on a 6 standard class carriage train to stop 2 carriages having the same letter.

An extra car on “special” 9 car sets.

A replacement for a 1st class carriage.

So basically anything you want it to be. Mystery solved. 

Excelsior!

44008 & 42166 – 06:57 & 20:45 Wednesday 21st May

44008

Another double entry but a much more exciting one than yesterday.

This morning’s journey was pretty run of the mill. Carriage A on the 06:57 saw me manage to ticked 44008 off my ever bulging list of Carriage A’s now captured.

42166

However the return journey was full of excitement and this report will no doubt have you hanging onto your hats and sitting on the edge of your seats.

I clambered aboard the 20:45 Bristol Temple Meads service after a evening drink and office pub quiz only to find that what should have been Carriage E (well it was in that position anyway) was actually labelled as Carriage X. 42166 was fitted out with the VOLO screens so perhaps it had also previously been a Carriage D but whatever the history of the carriage both I and FGW didn’t have a clue why it was bearing this letter.

X marks the spot.

So there’s a mystery to be solved here and you can rest assured that I will leave no stone unturned to discover the story behind the mystery Carriage X!

Jess…! Jess…..!

42089 & 42259 – 17:49 & 18:37 Tuesday 20th May

Something new tonight……..new but ultimately extremely boring.

Nothing happened on the journey home tonight so I won’t put any faithful readers (looking at just you Jess) through the torture of two posts which basically just say:

Carriage B 42089 for the 17:49 Worcester Shrub Hill Service and Carriage C 42259 for the 18:37 Frome Service.

Just to mix it up a bit, I stood in the vestibule of 42259 but hey……that’s the way I roll!

42087 – 07:15 Tuesday 20th May

42087

Dedicated followers of the blog, and I have it confirmed that Lovely Jess is definitely my No1 Fan, will notice from today’s title that I did not catch my usual morning train. You can imagine how potentially damaging this is to someone with a personality bordering on OCD and any deviation from the norm can bring me out in a hot flush…………..

………..well actually no, there’s a train about 20 minutes later and it was onto this iron horse that I leapt with hardly a hair out of place. I chose Carriage B as this was an unusual journey and settled down in 42087 with only the dulcet tones of some woman gabbing away all her personal details on the phone.

Well there you go Jess, another entry in the diary and something to read between tweeting apologies and whipping Leo up a latte. Cheers!

42516 – 18:37 Monday 19th May

42516

……until disembarkation at Reading revealed that my connecting service, the 18:37 Frome Service was delayed due to a fault with the train.

Now, again, let no one ever accuse me of moaning about anything but the truth and the first thing I have to state here is that it’s been a long long long while since I’ve suffered any sort of delay at all. So perhaps all things told, I was due a disruption and have no real grounds for a moan.

This particular delay turned out to be about 40 minutes which is a bit of a kick in the goolies in anyone’s book, especially @emily1780 ‘s who tweeted in to ask whether any compensation was due. Moody Max eventually deemed this worthy of a reply and confirmed that yes, indeed compensation was due for delays over 30 minutes that were due to mechanical failure.

Full well knowing what the answer would be to the question, I then asked Max if this level of compensation would be applicable to everyone. The answer to those unfamiliar to FGW compensation rules is that season ticket holders don’t get the same compensation as other passengers and this is the one thing that drives me further round the bend than anything else FGW throws at me. And what drives me that one bit further up the road that is round the bend is that no matter how much I carp, complain and cry into my pillow about this, FGW doesn’t seem to understand why it makes my blood.

I gave Moody Max an opportunity to tell us what he really thought about this but he rather (and perhaps understandably) bottled the question. Still perhaps this was all slightly too trivial as FGW were busy getting people stranded at remote train stations.

Ho hum…..roll on tomorrow.

42325 – 17:49 Monday 19th May

42325

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, let no-one ever say I don’t give credit where credit is due. Today when boarding the Worcester Shrub Hill service and bounding into Carriage D (42325 to his friends) I was stuck squarely between the eyes by the cooling draught of a well working air conditioning system, which after the muggy heat of the sweltering London, was quite a relief, let me let you.

I told FGW as much with the following tweet but maybe because Moody Max was on duty I ended up sitting next to some middle-aged suit who spent the whole journey playing the Rachmaninoff concerto on the keyboard of his laptop.

The one bright light in the journey was my first photo taking the number of the carriage from the side of, what I initially thought was the air conditioning unit, but seeing as these boxes only appear in Carriage D’s I’m guessing in fact it’s the inner workings of the VOLO TV system, that top notch entertainment system which brings us such delights as the Moving Map, the Rugby World Cup highlights from 1980-something and endless loops of the hilarious Miranda.

Anyway, a good start to the journey……………