Great Western Coffee Shop

I travelled on the 1310 service from Salisbury - Westbury , which was about 75% loaded (admittedly in part due to the cancellation of the preceding Portsmouth - Cardiff service.) 5 people got off at Dilton Marsh , including me. One asked what was happening from December , to which the guard replied "you are losing a couple of trains per day."

I spent some time looking around Dilton Marsh , and the combination of existing and new - build housing is spread over a surprisingly wide area. In fact , DM is increasingly looking like a suburb of Westbury , and the continuing growth probably justifies the claims of local campaigners that a better service would be appropriate.

However , my return on the 1415 towards Southampton provided a taste of what's to come. Because it follows a Cardiff - Portsmouth train out of Westbury , it is virtually empty. At the moment though , trains at least tend to run through to Southampton. Unfortunately , journey opportunities will be reduced from December , with some trains terminating at Warminster.

I travelled from Swindon to Melksham last Friday evening, the last leg of a journey back from London, and was "entertained" by an angry exchange between a Dilton Marsh passenger and the FGW guard (who, I have to say up front, handled the situation extremely well, I thought - far more professional and diplomatic than I would have been faced with a similar situation!)

The issue in a nutshell was that the passenger had a Westbury-Swindon return ticket, issued at Westbury, but wanted to travel on to Dilton Marsh. The passenger's argument, rather forcibly put, was that the ticket price is exactly the same from Westbury - Swindon as it is from Dilton Marsh - Swindon, so what's the problem?

(I hardly need state the guard's position on this since it's patently obvious, plus I rather suspect the person concerned had already evaded paying from Dilton - Westbury when they bought their ticket at Westbury that morning!)

Nevertheless it does raise the question whether anything's going to be done about pricing anomalies such as this (there's a similar situation up on the Kemble - Stroud route I believe), not only to make it easier for passengers to understand but also to protect train staff - and other passengers - as well. The situation I saw could very easily have got out of hand.

Surprisingly, the passenger is correct in saying that the fares are the same:
11.20 cheap day return
14.20 standard day return
17.00 saver return (WHAT does it save on?)
21.00 business saver

What he should do (or was it a she?) is to ask in the morning for a DILTON MARSH to Swindon return ticket if there's any chance of he / she happening to be on a train that calls at Dilton Marsh in the evening.   

Customer Happy. Conductor Happy. Fare system even more in disrepute!

The Saver Return saves on the Standard Open Return fare by having more restrictions but despite being valid for a month return. ;)

Of course, the SOR isn't available on that journey...

The guard could technically have just zero excessed their fare to Dilton Marsh...

I know i'm playing devils advocate BUT a penalty fare could be charged in that situation IF the customer had travelled beyond the validity of the ticket regardless of whether there is a difference, probably hard for FGW to defend if it went to court but...

I got the impression he was on the return portion of his ticket, and as it was between Swindon and Westbury he was perfectly entitled to ask for a zero excess...

Thanks Graham - this was my understanding of it as well, and to be fair was exactly what the guard was trying to explain to the person concerned (I'd rather not mention if it was a he or a she so as to protect anonymity).

In the end she (whoops!) got so agitated that the guard calmly pointed out, as Vacman says, that he was perfectly entitled to charge a penalty fare in that situation if the customer had travelled beyond the validity of the ticket (ie beyond Westbury)

Yes, but if you read my post properly, if the person HAD travelled beyond the validity of their ticket!