Great Western Coffee Shop

  Not sure if it has been posted somewhere already but the infomation has been around a while.

This weekend sees Cornbury Park hosting Wilderness Festival. This ever growing music event last year attracted over 12,000 people to Charlbury many of which travelled by train, this year over 18,000 are expected to descend onto the North Cotswolds.

  So FGW have put additional services into the timetable to meet the demands of the festival. Also temporary station changes have been made with the withdrawal of 11 car park spaces near the booking office to accommodate the festival goers boarding the shuttle bus.With the addition of Portaloos adjacent to the footbridge according to the demand during peak times.

  Details of the changes can be found at Oxford in the main concourse and also at Charlbury station.

  One of the main changes is that 1W23 09:50 Paddington - Moreton In Marsh and the return working 1P43 11:50 Moreton In Marsh - Paddington is planned to be formed of a HST with a dedicated carriage fully reserved for the Festival.

  Also there are a few stoppers extended through to Charlbury from Oxford where paths and train crew availability allow this to happen.

  Hope this is helpful in some way or another  ;D

Further, from a local newspaper reporter...

From what I saw on the occasions when I was at Charlbury station during the period of the Festival, record numbers used the train this year.  I do not think that the station has ever been so busy, with something in the region of 250 to 300 passengers alighting from trains.

First Great Western tried to accommodate the increased demand by laying on four additional trains and I even noted that a HST replaced the Turbo on the 0950 PAD-MIM on Friday 9th August.  Despite this, there were some reports of intending passengers having to be left behind, especially when Class 180s were unable to take them all.

The main Festival entrance was about 2 miles from Charlbury and shuttle buses were provided by the Festival organisers. FGW organised a fenced-off queue area in the station car park and everything seemed to run smoothly.

I did not venture down to the station on the Monday morning when hundreds of Festival goers would have been making their way home.  However, a notice at the station advised that a queuing system would be in operation to avoid overcrowding on trains.  I wonder whether anyone has any information as to how effective this was. 

Not too sure about the queuing system, but the trains were, shall we say, a little busy to say the least!  It's a good job that a HST was put on the 11:56 MIM-PAD as I saw a message saying it was full and standing after Charlbury, so a Turbo wouldn't have stood a chance.  The regular Adelante's were very busy with normal travellers (as they always are), and I saw the arrival of the 09:54ex GMV at Paddington and it's fair to say that I don't think I've ever seen such a packed Class 180 limping in 20 minutes late.  I'm sure the other trains were just as busy, and a couple of the additional trains were unfortunately only 2-Car Turbo's - and the rumoured replacement of the 15:15 PAD-WOS on Friday with a HST didn't happen and it was a 180 as normal on summer Fridays.

That being said, without the redoubling it would have been a lot worse as the additional trains couldn't have run, but it's another example of how the Cotswold Line is running pretty full to capacity even with the 180's and a couple of additional trains over what used to run, so as soon as there's an event such as this it stretches the route to breaking point!