Great Western Coffee Shop

Where do I start?  Well for me, platform 2 at Maidenhead....which I arrived at 07:00 keen to catch the (then showing on time) 07:09.  Bit cold and breezy this morning and surprised that the waiting room, normally a haven offering a dry (and sometimes warm) sanctuary was closed.  Platform was already busy as it seemed there hadn't been any other trains to London so far this morning (note to FGW, some of us do work during this 'festive' period).  Made worse by noticing that it was going to be just a 3-car carriage.  Ho hum.  Then the delays began...now due at 07:11, 07:12, 07:14, 07:15 ....and so the delay kept creeping up until the board gave up and said 'DELAYED'.  Wonderful.

Eventually we were told to go to platform 4 and a train chugged in at 07:43.  Hurrah!  We set off over 30 minutes late and full...and off to Slough.

Arrived at Slough and waited, and waited, and waited.  Driver got off.  WE waited.  Driver got back on.  We waited some more.  Driver put his coat on.  Got off train   We were still none the wiser.  A few minutes later announcement was made to say that train was terminating at Slough and everyone should disembark (presume drive had gone to the other end of the train to make announcement instead of telling passengers straight away).  No matter, there's a HST across the footbridge, so off we go...

Now sitting on a HST (yes, there were a few seats!).  And waited. And waited.  And waited.  Still no announcements or information updates.  Gave up, back across footbridge this time to platform 2 where there was another turbo waiting.  Sat on that and noticed that driver had switched cabs and was now at the Oxford bound end.  Good enough he announced that the train was heading off to Maidenhead.....

So back to Maidenhead.  Two hours wasted and zero progress made.

A few points about this experience that FGW management should note:

(1) I realise that sometimes there are delays.  It happens.  There's no excuse for a lack of concrete information though.
(2) If the 07:09 was always going to be delayed then tell passengers at the earliest opportunity.  If I'd had a text (I subscribe to alerts) about over running engineering works then I'd have taken an alternate route (e.g. Chiltern Line to Marylebone).  Please don't claim at 07:00 that everything is rosy when it's obvious that it isn't.
(3) No doubt you will receive compensation from Network Rail for this fiasco (as overrunning engineering works, followed by signalling problems were cited as cause of delays).  You really should figure out how to pass this compensation to the passengers affected.

<Rant off>

You are able to claim compensation from First Great Western for delays within the control of the rail industry: http://www.firstgreatwestern.co.uk/About-Us/Customer-services/Compensation

Its rarely (ever??) that simple.

FGW will decline to pay compensation if any train moves between starting station and destination within 2 hrs.

So, if you turn up at Maidenhead at 7am, as long as they get a train to Paddington by 9.30 they really couldn't care less.  Whether or not you could board that train due to overcrowding is irrelevant to them it seems, and the fact that you spent 2hrs going back and forth between Maidenhead and Slough matters not a insy winsy amount.

Fully concur with gpn01 - I wish that FGW would stop hiring mute drivers, it is very frustrating.

Looks like a right mess to be honest.  Just like when over-running engineering work last year ruined the morning service on the 27th.  Even if they have no idea of the likely delay, there's no excuse for a driver on DOO services (or TM on other trains) not to make regular announcements with an apology, an explanation of the reason, and the promise of more information when they know it. 

The training programme for DOO drivers who do the LTV services doesn't do a good enough job of teaching drivers how important keeping customers informed by announcements is, and the automatic announcement system (APIS) installed recently means that they are far less used to making announcements, so in some ways that has had a negative impact.  Some drivers are very good, some are terrible.

To be fair, from my experience, engineering possessions don't overrun anywhere near as much as they used to back in the last century, but with more trains and more passengers travelling now, the impact can be very severe.

Interestingly FGW are accepting tickets dated 23/24th December for travel today, but SWT are not.

For time this morning SWT were allowing FGW Paddington tickets via Waterloo to Reading, wonder if they allowed pre-Christmas tickets?

As an annual Season Ticket holder the compensation is completely inadequate for the inconvenience caused. I think passenger time 'lost' should be more properly compensated. ^1 per minute would be quite fair.

As an annual season ticket holder too I completely agree, but I'm not sure I'd want to bankrupt FGW within a one week period.

Some more moderate proposals in my view would be:
- drop the trigger for a 'delay' from 2hrs to 15mins.  Certainly for Thames Valley services.
- make the annual discount variable rather than fixed at 5% which doesn't incentivise FGW to improve anything.  If only 87% of services turn up on time then make the compensation 13% etc etc.

....couldn't agree more, totally shambolic today, almost exactly the same as Dec 27th last year.

That is completely true.  Something I have grumbled about myself in the past: http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/info/12263_Passenger_Charter_vs_Delay_Repay.html

As I posted in another thread today was not totally FGW fault they did get up and running, its just that overrunning engineering works scuppered their efforts and that of the NR Ops teams

Concrete information may not be available, may be complex, and it may delay fixing things to spend time keeping people informed. This forum has an issue, for example, and I find myself exploring the problem and not knowing how long it will take ... and at the same time answering anxious users thus delaying identifying the problem and coming up with a "time to fix" estimate. But having said that, a holding message passed to one person not on the critical path for him / her to spread - even if that message is "we're trying to work out how long this will take - we'll give you an update / estimate in 15 minutes" should be possible.


The electronic systems all around seem over-optiistic and rudimentary at times; have you noticed how in the general run of things a train shows as "on time" but then slips 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 minutes just as it's due?  It's also interesting to see a 75mph train scheduled to arrive 3 minutes being a 125mph train at Chippenham, simply because it left Swindon 3 minutes behind.  I would really expect that next generation software can improve this, but as yet it's significantly inferior to a human brain at times.


But the whole thing is a money-go-round. Passenger pays TOC who pays NR who compensates TOC who compensates passenger. In extreme cases, maybe go all around the loop, but the admin cost must be huge (did I read about 600 blame attribution staff in the rail industry) and in the end is borne by the passenger. I feel the same disquiet here as when Network Rail are fined for something.  How do they pay? ... cut back the work they do and provide an inferior product to what they could, or charge the TOC more who will charge the passenger more.  Or have I missed something?

I think that many service providers miss the point that the information about their service is as  important as the service itself. We live in a digital age and there's no reason why the quality of information should be inferior to the product.  Simple example being today's problems. Was everything really running to time, with no engineering delays or signalling problems until just after 07:00?

Bit of a difficult one. I'm not sure what time the engineering work was due to finish, but the first arrival at Paddington wasn't due until 07:09 - an empty HST from Old Oak - and the first departure a Heathrow Express service at 07:25.

Therefore the extent of the problem may not have become apparent until units started to need to be moved at the eastern end of the line.

"I think that many service providers miss the point that the information about their service is as  important as the service itself. We live in a digital age and there's no reason why the quality of information should be inferior to the product.  Simple example being today's problems. Was everything really running to time, with no engineering delays or signalling problems until just after 07:00?"



That is exactly the point - to a degree people will accept that things "occasionally" go wrong, what makes the problem 100 times worse is when no-one tells them anything - I got to Taplow for the 0750 to Reading yesterday - checked NR website at 0730, all on time.....get to station.....all on time....then all of a sudden it just falls off the screen, no announcement, nothing....after about 10 mins another chap tried the Help point (the ticket office was unstaffed and the waiting room locked, which had not been announced in advance either).....no-one answered the Help point.......after 20 minutes (now about 0810), people started drifting off to get cabs.....then about 0815 the 0750 reappeared on the info screen, showing 25 mins late..........at no point on the journey did the driver attempt to apologise or explain the delay....................so basically there you have it, a lot of very upset people, just because no-one had the courtesy to tell them what was going on.............and its a virtual carbon copy of the first day back after Christmas last year.

At best it's discourtesy, at worst incompetence.

Dealing specifically with that train, it was booked to start at Slough I believe, so the normal automatic updates would have only worked when it departed Slough (which would explain why it reappeared on the screens at a point when it was on its way).  The system isn't intelligent enough to work out that a late incoming train will mean a late outgoing train - it never will be able to accurately predict that sort of thing as there are so many variables, unless it's the end of a branch line and it has to be that train that forms the next working, and there is definitely not going to be any delay due to a crew break.  So, it relies on some kind of manual input from staff that are already totally overloaded and simply can't keep up.

That doesn't explain why it disappeared from the screens in the first place of course, but I think we can all agree that the recently installed systems are far, far, far, better than the old system despite the odd hiccup.  I'd encourage everyone, who doesn't already, to use the detailed view on the 'realtime trains' website or app which, whilst it wouldn't have told you how late the train was, would have told you it was on it's way when it left Slough at 08:04, so those who drifted off to get cabs would perhaps have changed their minds based on that information.

Interesting background information but surely the onus is on FGW to keep their customers informed once they are at the station, rather than making it the customer's responsibility? Surely making an announcement over the tannoy and/or ensuring that Help points are answered, ticket offices are manned isn't too much to ask? Not everyone has access to online information when they are on the move......and notwithstanding thisI stress again that at the point I left my house (0730), everything was showing "on time" on the website you mention.

A common problem seems to me to be that the CIS information is computer generated rather than human. At times of immense disruption I do not think there are enough human resources available to overide the computers.
There is a quirk in the CIS at Hanborough for information on Down trains from Oxford. The screen will advise you of the time that a train arrives at Oxford and then progress to advising you that the train is, some minutes later, between Oxford and Hanborough. However as soon as that train crosses Wolvercot junction, the information changes and then tells you that the train is still at Oxford. I understand that the screen is fed with information from two different information systems and that to correct this a quite costly program rewrite would be necessary and so cannot be justified. We therefore just have to live with inaccurate information. Regular rail users at Hanborough now know this quirk exists but strangers must find it very puzzling.

Indeed it should be, but for those customers who have access to data on their phones - the majority of passengers I'd have thought - they can help themselves by doing what I suggest if the official channels for information are playing up.  In the example of Taplow you are lucky enough to be at a location where you can follow your train as it reports at numerous locations on it's journey (some 30 locations between Paddington and Reading), so if and when there is a problem with the CIS and the help phones (which of course would also be swamped during serious disruption), you can help yourself.  Sadly, for Hanborough the situation is very different due to the signalling!

I take your point entirely about the 07:30 set off being not mentioned on the site, but point you to your comment about people seeking out taxis at 08:10 when the information was available via that website to inform people that the train was on its way (and it duly arrived a few minutes later).  Up to you whether you want to make use of it - but I know I would!

OK - my last words on the subject as any response from anyone connected with the railway is inevitably going to be qualified with "well the pesky customers could have sorted out the problem themselves"- it is clearly wholly the responsibility of FGW to keep their passengers informed and this should be their first priority when there is a problem. It is NOT down to customers whom you mostly simply assume have access to the internet on the go to keep checking, at their own expense, when or indeed whether the service they have already paid for in good faith and on the information provided is going to arrive.

Yes I would and do check websites if FGW are incapable of providing basic information themselves, but don't work on an assumption that most/everyone can, or indeed should have to.

I repeat that this was a station with inaccurate information boards, a help point that was not being answered, and a ticket office which was unmanned & closed without any advance notice. That is most decidedly not customer service of any acceptable level, and if I had been one of those customers who went to get a taxi in the absence of any information I would feel fully justified in seeking a refund.

Anyway, Amen and Happy New Year!

Then again, there are some things a computer can do on its own. There really isn't much of an excuse for this display - a couple of lines of software ought to pick it up. It changed to CORRECTION and showed the next train as 15:10 just as that train came into view, on time.

[The clock is right. The 14:44 may or may not have run, as RealTimeTrains shows no real times at all for it.]

And my last words on the subject (as a railway employee, who, if you read my posts, is certainly not afraid to criticise the industry) is to stress that my attitude is certainly not "well the pesky customers could have sorted out the problem themselves", as during other posts in this topics I have described the service offered that morning as a mess, a repeat of the fiasco on the same day last year and agreed with you that the onus is on FGW to provide the information.  It is a poor show that the information screens weren't accurate and the help phone wasn't answered.

However, yes I would assume that the majority of those commuting from Taplow station (or at least one in a group who could then pass the information on to others) would have a data allowance and mobile phone that would have allowed them to find out, and those that wandered off to get a taxi (presumably from the handy facility on the station?) could have potentially used www.realtimetrains.co.uk (http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk) and saved themselves the bother, expense and probable additional delay not waiting for a train that turned up a couple of minutes later - after all, it is a website designed to help passengers and uses information fed from the industry.  The more passengers who know about it the better in my view and I certainly won't miss a chance to advertise it on occasions where it could clearly have been very useful.

I was travelling to Slough on 27th, caught the 07:46 at Goring, it was on time, no warnings of any delays or problems. We chugged along to Maidenhead, all on time and running nicely, then sat there for ages. Driver announced overrunning engineering works past Slough. Eventually moved off and arrived at Taplow, where we stopped for what seemed like forever.

Eventually moved off again and the driver made an announcement I could hardly hear (PA was a bit crap, plus train was accelerating at the time). Worrying that we were running direct to Paddington due to the delays (I heard him mention Slough, but not the exact details), I decided to jump off at Burnham if we stopped, which we did. So I knocked on the cab window, and had a brief chat with the driver when he'd finished speaking to control. He apologised a number of times for the delays, and asked me to stand in First Class while he made the announcement, and then knock on the cab door to let him know if it was clearer or not, which I did (he was talking a lot louder and the train wasn't moving this time).

We eventually arrived at Slough about 09:15 I think it was.