Southampton is 1 of those "Crunch" points where either everyone or no body gets off, you just got to stand there and hope in my experiance

 
I travel the (relatively) short stretch from Salisbury to Southampton and back.  From a generally ok service which was almost two-an-hour, always well-used, we now have an hourly service for most of the day.  The frustration is that it is precisely the peak times that we want trains (also serving the well-used run from Southampton to Romsey and v-v) they have cut them.  So while there were three trains between 1700 and 1800 from Southampton back towards Salisbury and up to Westbury (with one running through to Cardiff) there is now only one, always crowded, sometimes hard to get my folding bike on.  This used to be three carriages, now only two.  Particularly bad on Fridays when people want to go away for the weekend.  Last thursday the 17.10 from Southampton to Cardiff actually became the 18.10.

The fare has gone up by almost double the 'average' quoted and I am convinced this has had an impact on driving people away from this journey and into their cars.  The A36 is so terrible a road that were it not for this fact, I too may have succumbed and bought a car again (I sold it some years back to commit to public transport).

 

The 16:22 was supposed to be 4 carriages from December 11th (this was confirmed to me in an e-mail by FGW) but I have never seen 4 carriages on this service yet.  Admittedly I have stopped using this service due to the risk of not being able to get on a 2 carriage train at Southampton Central.  However colleagues of mine who do still catch this sevice at Southampton have confirmed that they have not seen 4 carriages yet.

The 15:22 and the 17:22 have been 4 carriages on a few occassions though and they are only meant to be 2 carriages (also confirmed by FGW).

 
Regretably, there seems to be a lot of "hype" in what the train oprating company is telling us they're doing - statements seem to be emphasise / stretch the positive and ignore the negative, even when specifically asking a question about the negative.   So I'm afraid that I'm not surprised about trains being shorter than you feel we've been lead to believe.

But I have a further question - do the trains 2 coach trains get overcrowded?  And if they don't, is that because passengers have been driven away?   If the answer is "no" and "no", then First would have my support in running reduced length trains at quieter times of day.   If the answer to either part of thr question is "yes", then, naughty.

 
So, what is all the fuss about, 1 of the best served lines in the area, with an hourly service starting and finishing at respectable times?

Well, it isn't that simple, when First Great Western took over the franchise, they started undoing all of Wessex Trains' work. Back in January 2005, Wessex Trains realised the need to upgrade the service, from 2 Coaches to 3 Coaches, very good actually, thus providing 50% more seats. This went very well & Passenger numbers surged BUT it was a victim of it's own succses, the 3 car 158's started to become full and standing! So, when First took over on the 1st April at 02.00 (I was at Westbury station overnight, getting some pictures etc, I was horrified to learn that they planned to get rid of ALL the 3 car units BUT was pleased to learn they were going to then couple 2 togethor on ALL MAIN SERVICES. Excelent, most services were thus getting 100% more seats than 4 years ago, but, this did change majorly, so much so that all services are worked as 2 car, the only services to my knowledge that ARE BOOKED & have RUN 4 car are:

0600 Portsmouth - Cardiff (Front TWO dumped at Bristol TM)
1230 Cardiff - Portsmouth (Attaches at Bristol TM
1622 Portsmouth - Cardiff (All the way to my knowldge)
1630 Cardiff - Portsmouth (Front 2 off at Portsmouth, ECS to Fratton, back 2 form 2024 to Cardiff)

They are the only Portsmouth - Caridffs I have seen 4 car!