Great Western Coffee Shop

I am surprised no one noticed the big anti abuse exercise at Paddington last week to prevent standard passengers boarding first class!

it was noticed on twitter lol

This week was the first week in about a year I had been in an out of Pad and the extra on-board PA announcments about the plebs keeping out of first class was noticable - and yes, I travel in standard so include myself as a pleb!

I travelled a weekend in the summer in First, the number people who held standard class tickets sitting in First was quite a few.

not sure if that's a joke relating to weekend first upgrades or not  :D

FGW just don't bother checking the inner TV services, they should have ripped out the first class seats in the 165/6's and fitted extra standard seats when they did the refresh

I don't necessarily agree with removal of First. But I 110% agree that it is seldom checked. I'm not though 100% Convinced this is an entirely exclusive problem for FGW. I have noticed it myself countless times on GA, SN and SE Services. It's particularly common IMO on DOO Services, of which alot of the services run by those operators are. I have to say though that GA's Revenue Team seem to be much more common sight than perhaps SN or FGW.

My partner and I were once threatened with Penalty Fares on a SN Brighton - London Victoria because we were sat in First Class. The guy didn't know what to do when I placed 2 First Class Tickets on the table with a valid railcard and said: "Not always wise to make assumptions..." :-\ 8)

I'm going to board a service at PAD shortly (Sat in the First Class Lounge ;D) so I'll see if such things are still happening ;)

Well I boarded the train at PAD and have an interesting journey.

Standard Class was full to bursting and the last minute stragglers boarded in First and walked through the buffet car. Shortly after the train left they came back and piled into the seats in Coach F (Where I was)

... and what action did the train staff take (if any)?  :P

While we await the answer with barely containable patience, I am totally defeated by TheTrout's acronyms.  What was that link please to that table of those ?  (GA DOO etc)

At the top of the forum pages, in the blue-ish coloured bar, is a link to Acronyms/Abbreviations :P

GA = Greater Anglia
DOO = Driver Only Operation

GA needs adding to the page, though ... and I had to think that one through ... thanks for the solution, Brucey!

It's not always blue-ish, depends what style you choose.  On mine it's chocolate while the rest is cream!   ;D

While we are discussing this... The correct abbreviations for each Train Operating Company (TOC), in brackets are some common AKAs (which are technically wrong):

AW - Arriva Trains Wales (AKA: ATW)
CC - C2C
CH - Chiltern Railways (AKA: CR)
XC - Cross Country
GR - East Coast (AKA: EC)
EM - East Midlands Trains (AKA: EMT)
ES - Eurostar
FC - First Capital Connect (AKA: FCC & a huge flaming pile of ****)
GW - First Great Western (AKA: FGW, FG)
HT - First Hull Trains
TP - First TransPennine Express (AKA: TPE)
GX - Gatwick Express
GC - Grand Central
LE- Greater Anglia (AKA: GA)
HC - Heathrow Connect
HX - Heathrow Express
IL - Island Line (Commonly referred to South West Trains (SW))
LM - London Midland
LO - London Overground (AKA: LOROL)
LT - London Underground (AKA: LU, TfL)
ME - Mersey Rail
NT - Northern Rail (AKA: NT)
SR - ScotRail
SW - South West Trains (AKA: SWT)
SE - South Eastern (AKA: SET, SER)
SX - Stansted Express
VT - Virgin Trains

So if LT is London underground what are London Buses?

LT used to be everything so I suppose that's now TfL

What about Docklands and Tramlink? The river buses?

What fun abbreviations are!

Don't think of them as abbreviations.

A code such as LT should just be seen as an anachronistic two letter code that used to stand for London Transport, but it is left as LT because it is not generally intended as 'public facing information'.  There is no cost benefit in updating codes in computerised systems everytime they change.  They might not be able change it to TfL because the base system that use it (perhaps RJIS?) only allows for a two letter code such as TL - which might be confused with Thameslink.  If correct, that will explain precisely why for instance FC is not shown as FCC - the data field isn't big enough, that's all.

Likewise with the regular fares discussions.  'SVR' is one of the codes used for Offpeak Return - it used to be the main code for Saver, but that latter term should no longer be used, and isn't used in publicly displayed info such as on fares websites.  You cannot buy a Saver, no matter how often the term is used in discussion by 'fares gurus' - what you buy is an Offpeak Return...

Paul

I wouldn't say 'technically wrong'. The list you have given are the abbreviations used by the industry and its systems. The others, such as FGW, SWT, EMT, are in fairly common usage both within and without the industry. It's the usage for words, terminology, abbreviations, acronyms etc. that tends to define general acceptance as opposed to what may be official according to, in this case, ATOC and NR (that's the Association of Train Operating Companies and Network Rail  ;) :P)

That said, a post full of acronyms/abbreviations which hasn't included the full name for each term at least once should be avoided. I used to post a lot of abbrvs. thinking I was only conversing with folk who would know what I meant, forgetting the wider audience who may have stumbled on the forum via Google. I'm still guilty of posting  acronyms/abbreviations without explanation occasionally, but I'm much better than I used to be. IYKWIM.  ;D

Even First Great Western use FGW - www.fgw.co.uk (http://www.fgw.co.uk)

Thanks very much (my heading is definitely 'greeny') and regarding London Underground, do try not to use the acronym for that with Limited on the end.  In Dutch it is an obscene profanity and I do hope the London Underground Ltd do not put it on station posters.  (By the way it is the male member).

   

Urm... I'm not sure what happened there... ???

My post was ALOT longer than that... Hmmm maybe when I copied it out of Word i didn't copy it all! (was on the train when I wrote the post in a 3G notspot* ) It explained what the staff did(n't) do... (Delete as applicable) I also posted a YouTube link of some prat who tried it on, on that very train! I'm on my iPhone in a Bar at the moment and about to go and see Skyfall so once I've seen an LT ( :-X ) train crash and got home again. If I'm allowed I will reapply the post as it'll be in my laptop cache ;D ;)

* = A location where Cell Data doesn't exist/work reliably/hideously slow!

This should upset you, then:
http://www.steveprentice.net/tube/TfLSillyMaps/rude_map.jpg