Great Western Coffee Shop

With the story concerning another fare strike making the front page in "The Times" today, I have been fielding a series of phone calls from the rest of the press looking for contact details for the person / people named in the article. 

With 173 trains cancelled or failing to make all their scheduled calls over the last 48 hours (as against a specification level of 12 to 24 such service reductions), on top of the antagonism that FGW are suffering because of the fare rises, perhaps the only quiet place is Avonmouth where I see that arrivals as 09:40, 12:15, 13:15, 14:15, 15:15 and 16:15 were all cancelled. (source - http://www.savethetrain.org.uk/running.php )

I think I'm glad to see the raised profile of some of the issues with our train services, although I'm not sure that I personally would put the January fare rises at the top of my list.  I think I would list higher the provision of an appropriate, reliable service and that means more than two round trips a day on the Swindon to Westbury line which serves 4 out of the five largest population centres in Wiltshire. Or if we can't have more than 2 then - PLEASE Mr FGW:

* Schedule them at time that people want to use them - not at 06:18 and 18:45!
* Reduce cancellations of the service down to 1% or 2% please

then you'll find that people will, happily, pay the fares!

But being a helpful soul, I have been putting the press in touch with MTLS!

Thanks Grahame