Great Western Coffee Shop

The new FGW timetable is due to start next weekend and already FGW staff at Bristol Temple Meads are handing out leaflets stateing that local services between Bristol, Keynsham, Oldfield Park and Bath are "expected to be extremely busy"(i.e grossly overcrowded) and advising Bath passengers to "consider catching alternative services", i,e the Paddington services which "will have additional capacity". Why, if they know the local services will be "extremely busy", do they not add the "additional capacity" to the local services that need it rather than the Paddington services which do not call at the local stations?

Sounds ominous.

Welcome to the forum loial.

If anyone is able to get hold of one of these leaflets and scan it for me that would be most appreciated.

I have scanned to PDF...the link is www.loial.co.uk/fgw.pdf (http://www.loial.co.uk/fgw.pdf)

I'm not familiar with the relative loadings on these services, but the idea to steer Bath Spa travellers to the London services is quite sensible. Think of it this way - it's not very efficient to put 4 coaches on a train travelling to Portsmouth or Weymouth (2+ hours) simply to cater for passengers to Bath Spa (15 mins) who have an alternative option a few minutes later. The worst scenario is that passengers to Weymouth can't get on, whilst their seats (and standing room) are taken by passengers alighting at Bath. It's not so bad coming into Bristol because the far flung passengers are already on the train by the time it stops at Bath.

How do you make it work though? One option is to make Bath Spa a pick up only point on some of the local services, though I recognise this would probably not endear FGW to any commuters from there. Still given the choice between a packed 143 and an HST a few minutes later, I know which I would choose

Lets hope the plan of encouraging the use of HSTs for Bath Spa passengers works. My only feeling on this is that after a long day in the office all you want to do is get home and may not want to wait for the next London service if you've just missed one and to jump on the next available service heading to Bath.

Great, many thanks for scanning this. Very interesting to see how FGW are handling things in readiness for next week's TT change.

Thanks for the scan and welcome Loial. I think FGW could have made it a little clearer that customers for Bath Spa only are strongly advised not to get the stopping services, but it's good to have a prior warning.

No problem

You may be interested in my blog http://oldfieldparktrains.blogspot.com/  (http://oldfieldparktrains.blogspot.com/)

One of my many daily reads. Good to see it being updated more often.

It was mine up until a few months ago but John wasn't updating it so I stopped. But it looks like normal service is being resumed.

A war of words has erupted between MTLS and FGW over the leaflets (link below.)
http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=144913&command=displayContent&sourceNode=231190&home=yes&more_nodeId1=144922&contentPK=19186882

'A war of words has erupted between MTLS and FGW over the leaflets'
That's a bit strong Lee isn't it!
I think the difficulty I have is that on on the one hand FGW is justifying the 10% increase by saying they have invested in improving services, and on the other they seem to be admitting that services haven't improved as they are warning us off using local trains, because in their own words, they are likely to be very crowded.
Maybe another case of them shooting themselves in the foot.

I will admit to using a bit of "journalistic artistic license" from time to time....

Mind you , given the following article quote from Andrew Griffiths , I dont think I was far off :


Would a "gentleman's disagreement" be a better wording?