There have been a fair number of five car short-forms this week including:

0523 Hereford to Paddington - Tuesday, Thursday and Friday
0818 Worcester Shrub Hill to Paddington - Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday
0953 Paddington to Hereford - Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday
1953 Paddington to Hereford - Monday, Wednesday and Thursday

If GWR had the patience with the 769s, now languishing in a field at Long Marston, that they have with the 175s the turbos at Reading would have gone west by now.

The 150s are not going to be replaced by 175s or a BEMU.

418 I'm a teapot

The HTTP 418 I'm a teapot status response code indicates that the server refuses to brew coffee because it is, permanently, a teapot. A combined coffee/tea pot that is temporarily out of coffee should instead return 503. This error is a reference to Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol defined in April Fools' jokes in 1998 and 2014.

While originally defined in RFC 2324 as an April Fools' joke, this status code was formally reserved in RFC 9110 due to its wide deployment as a joke, so it cannot be assigned any non-joke semantics for the foreseeable future.

Some websites use this response for requests they do not wish to handle, such as automated queries.

.................only if he follows up by saying what he's going to do about it.

Fines in isolation are useless; anybody convicted of these offences should have their eBike confiscated and crushed. And the same should apply to pedal cycle users.

Strong stuff! Wouldn't expect to hear that sort of language from a minister - a good sign?

From Rail News

Wemyss Bay Station Bar named Scotland’s best railway pub

Aberystwyth Wetherspoons is Wales’ best railway station pub

Yr Hen Orsaf, which is based inside Aberystwyth railway station, scored 68.3 out of 100 in research by Locals Insider, placing it 23rd among 46 station pubs included across the UK.

The Wetherspoon pub, whose name means The Old Station, was assessed on customer satisfaction, value for money, opening hours, convenience for rail passengers and its aesthetic.

The Draughtsman Alehouse at Doncaster Station topped the UK ranking with 84.1 points, followed by Codsall Station in Staffordshire on 78.0 and The North Western at Liverpool Lime Street on 76.8.

Martin Danemaq, spokesperson for Locals Insider, said: “A station pub can make or break a journey, whether you're killing time before a delayed train or meeting friends on the way home. Our ranking brings together the best of them, from grand city concourses to remote Highland platforms.

“Yr Hen Orsaf came out on top in Wales thanks to great value, long opening hours and a setting in Aberystwyth's historic station building.

The £2 cap on bus fares in the north of Scotland could halt investment in rail services as passengers desert the more expensive train network, campaigners have said.

Ian Budd, convener of The Friends of the Far North Line, said the Scottish government had "effectively shot themselves in the foot" by capping bus fares, making them far less expensive than rail services covering the same route.

While a single bus journey from Thurso to Inverness now costs just £2, the same journey by train costs between £16.60 and £28.

Transport Scotland told the BBC it would continue to monitor the impact of the £2 bus fare cap on passenger numbers and wider transport behaviour.

Rail minister Lord Hendy has condemned the common practice of leaving redundant rolling stock to deteriorate and then trying to use it again.

He said: ‘There’s nothing more stupid than watching some trains halfway through their lives that have been parked in a field.

‘They’re put back into service, miserably failing on a daily basis because the industry wasn’t coherent enough to send them from the place they aren’t needed any more to the place they were. You can’t believe how stupid that is.’

He also referred to the age of the fleet which is in service, saying: ‘Every train in the north of England is clapped out. You need to replace them all. That’s a really serious investment choice, and GBR and the Government will have to face it head on.”

He was speaking at the annual conference of the Railway Industry Association.

GWR is currently struggling with its plan to introduce Class 175 units from Transport for Wales which were withdrawn a couple of years ago.

The operator wanted to use them on a number of routes in Devon and Cornwall, including the main line between Exeter and Penzance as well as the branches to Okehampton, Barnstaple and Newquay, but repeated failures mean that the older Class 150 units must shoulder the burden.

As a result, a Class 150 failure can mean that services in south west England must be reduced, with frequent cancellations.

Lord Hendy said the problems with rolling stock are something that Great British Railways ‘needs to fix, rather than just putting it on a long wish list’.

*snip*
When fully in use, and with the resultant improvements in frequency and journey times, the Valley Lines will have come full circle and have a network many will envy, and a huge improvement on the Pacers and Sprinters of the previous generation.
*snip*

I recommend reading/watching the following:

https://www.railengineer.co.uk/discontinuous-electrification-in-the-cardiff-valleys/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfhoSvkayzk

5 years? Understandable? What is the nature of the untried technology?

Given the amount of untried technology on them I think a delay into service is much more understandable than, say the 701s on SWR.