Great Western Coffee Shop

Not Sure if this thread has been created yet? Haven't seen it personally..


There is a rather large pink box on platform 8/9 at Paddington...been there a little while now.


I'm sure someone can post a photo here in the coming days...


Any ideas....What's in the Box...No Peeking (this is what is on outside) and it is a FGW PR stunt.


My guess is a mock up of new First Class?? Any other suggestions??

It was there on Wednesday and yesterday when I passed through and is about 3m square.

Didn't take a photo I'm afraid.

I suspect a mock up of the interior of one the new trains, possibly complete with very small people , or manequins, in order that the interior may appear less cramped than it is.

I walked past late one evening when it was being installed, so I know  ;)

It's Noel Edmonds with the live GW franchise direct award show.

Deal Or No Deal?...

Linked to this?
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=13747.0

If it is, I'll merge the topics.  ;) :D ;D

As of around 1530 today the contents of the box remain a mystery. My forum colleague bobm was at Paddington this afternoon and sent me the following picture:

(http://i598.photobucket.com/albums/tt68/bignosemac/photo_zps88bf1d74.jpg)

Does the box have a roof or lid ?
If not a camera phone and a fishing rod might be called for, provided that it is not used near OHLE.

Just the right size in fact for...

Internal email has confirmed that it is a mock up the new first class design.

Sometime next week it shall be revealed....

..........I've heard a rumour it's a statue of Bob Crow, posing a la Lenin with clenched fist, looked up to adoringly by the brothers! (...........it'd certainly stop people running on the platforms!)  :D

Will it also show what it will be like in First during peak times with people having to stand because there aren't enough seats in First?

Maybe a stock of forms as well to make claiming a refund easier?

Removing, what - 20 seats - from peak 1st class won't, IMHO, mean standing....just that pax will have to sit in every seat, rather than every other. That, plus a reduction in Advance 1st tickets, should mean everyone will have a seat available

I'm in agreement with ChrisB - there will probably be isolated cases of there not being enough seats, but for the vast majority of trains it will just mean you get to make friends on your table of four.  That in itself might be enough to dissuade the odd person from travelling, or to downgrad to Standard Class, but the overall good of providing more standard class seats will help (certainly not solve) the capacity crisis between Reading and Paddington in the peaks and also on the incredibly busy weekend services heading to/from the South West and South Wales.  One of the most frequent comments made to me by friends who commute/use FGW regularly, but have no connection with the industry, is that First Class takes up far too much of the train in comparison with Standard Class. 

A key question for me, is will this result in a reconfigure of the IEP layouts to provide less First Class seating than has originally been suggested?  After all, these refreshed HST sets will largely be gone within five years anyway.

Posting personally in this instance, and based on comments that I have received from family and friends who know of my interest in the railways - I concur with IndustryInsider's conclusion.  :-X

I'm sure that the comments received by II and CfN are representative of generally held views about 1st class. However, any industry should be wary of taking action purely because of people's perceptions of a situation, when the hard facts may suggest a different course is more appropriate.

As an example, HST's are very lightly loaded in 1st west of Bristol, even in the peak, so I can see why people in that area may wonder why there is a first class at all. But the same service is heavily loaded beyond Swindon an hour later. Similarly, off peak sees (generally) light use of first, but the same trains will also have spare seats in standard, so there isn't actually a problem. Yet it won't stop someone, seeing a nearly empty first at 11am and saying,"it's a waste".

I'm sure that FGW have done their research in terms of passenger counts, and set out the impact to DfT, both in terms of pure financial and potential adverse reaction. I suspect the view is that the relatively few cases where first passengers will be unable to get a seat is worth the wider benefit and cost (particularly from a political perspective in the run up to a general election).

Will there actually be any compensation (refund of the difference in cost) in such circumstances? I can't see that the Conditions of Carriage specify it, as it only describes the position where 1st class is "not available", which I would take to be not present at all.





   

FGW's Passenger Charter (http://www.firstgreatwestern.co.uk/~/media/PDF/AboutUs/Passenger%20charter/Passenger_Charter_2013.ashx) covers this:

True, but hundreds of thousands of FGW customers have become used to the cheap, 1st off-peak advance fares, that have been available since the 1990s.

There are going to be more than a few disgruntled people when these fares disappear. Perhaps they will downgrade to Standard, or maybe they will drive, or fly from Newquay or Exeter to London City Airport (coming soon).

In the bigger picture, is a move to air a problem?

Probably not, if you don't have kids and don't care whether Earth is capable of supporting human life in the future... ;)

We'll all be dead before it's a problem.

So you don't have children or grandchildren then.

As Al Gore pointed out, green issues are an Inconvenient Truth, and I'm sure many people get bored with the global warming flag being flown in their faces, but I do have children, and grandchildren, and hope to see a cleaner, more stable environment in which they can flourish, long after I'm dead.

The box appears to have disappeared.

Did any member of the general public get to see the contents?

Well if it's a matter of life or death, why not give Devon and Cornwall an electrified high speed line with extra capacity built in? That'll blow air out of the picture, and much better for the environment that diesel trains...

If the Government won't invest in green options you can't blame the people for choosing the best available options.

I'm looking forward to taking my grandchildren on a jolly flight around the Cotswolds when they are old enough to appreciate it.

Modern jets compare favourably with a car with only one person on board in terms of CO₂ emissions. Electric trains win hands down.

I asked on Facebook. Here's the reply:

Very strange then that it was put in such a public place.

why? Stakeholders are generally public....

Indeed. I've said as much in private correspondence with FGW.

There's at least one first class coach going around with a couple of the new style seats.

The picture in Modern Railways of the mock up of 1st on IEP astonished me. The table in the bay of four only extends half way across, so the two aisle seats have nowhere to put so much as a cup of coffee.  It's the most ridiculous thing I've seen for a long time. 

Indeed, but not to have revealed what was in the box to everyone seems a wasted marketing opportunity to me having gone to the lengths to have had the box constructed and placed at Paddington.

Perhaps its a plan to make window seats more attractive to passengers and stop 'aisle blocking'  :D   ;)

In all seriousness that sounds baaaaaaad.

I haven't seen the Modern Railways picture, but other pictures I've seen have the odd table that extends half-way, but it appears that most of them extend the whole way across.  Such as in this image where if you look at the seats in the background there is a table all the way over the bay of four.

http://www.dca-design.com/images/content/news/HI32ps0081_full.jpg (http://www.dca-design.com/images/content/news/HI32ps0081_full.jpg)

(https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-CMwmRIPHgqg/VBsXF8wufNI/AAAAAAAAihc/_HO-bCqY32M/w1580-h889-no/20140918_183153.jpg)

Hmmm... Speculation and voices tell me it may or may not be something to do with The Internet ;D

That's some of the wifi equipment.  If you look on the ceiling in the centre of the train there should be two white receivers/transmitters as well.

Aha.

I did wonder what the two white domes were that I saw in the ceiling of a Mk3 carriage the other day.

At least two HSTs with equipment fitted are already trialling wifi....unannounced.

All the hardware, including all the SIM cards, needed to provide wifi to the whole train is being installed in the buffet vehicles.  No buffet vehicle in the set will mean no wifi.

The staff aren't being trained on how to reset the box....so if there's a hiccup, that's it until the depot resets it.

Isn't the wi-fi system also to be used by the buffet staff for card transactions? Or is a different discrete system being fitted for that?

Chatting with Customer Hosts I've been told that their ancient, British Airways cast offs, EPOS machines are being replaced by a full online Chip & Pin system at the same time as the wi-fi goes live.

I'm not sure I want my card details transacted over a public unsecured wifi thanks....

Question for thetrout - wouldn't / won't it be https rather than http, in effect creating a robust encoding tunnel between the device (your laptop / the buffet payment terminal) and the server being reached?

the login page will, but otherwise it's open (on the Adelantes at least)

Good heavens - how on earth do they do that?  Yes, of course any http pages are unencoded, but I wasn't aware that https transmissions can be decoded and sent open.   Class 180 units are remarkable, but somehow I don't think their WiFi can buck the rules (and reasons behind) the encoding - was the WiFi equipment built in Cheltenham?  ;D

I suspect we're talking at cross-purposes here.

we must be.....

Card Machines can and frequently are used over WiFi networks in Restaurants etc whether they use codes to connect or unsecured. When a waiter(ess) brings over a card machine for customer to pay that is hand held, it uses a Wireless Network or Bluetooth to process the payments.

Without knowing the setup I can only speculate

If the equipment for the WiFi is being installed in the Buffet Cars. Then I would speculate the the terminals are connected by a cable to the system. If this was done on a separate network  GPRS Connection. This would be effectively like a card machine telephoning the merchant bank via a dialup modem. Many card machines still do this to this day.

End of the speculation.

I think ChrisB is referring to a Wireless Network which has a code to access (Referred to as WPA2-PSK, WPA-PSK or WEP) vs a Wireless Network that is open and no passcode. In reality anyone who believes Wireless Networks using WEP, WPA2-PSK or WPA-PSK are secure has stumbled into fictitious legend.

I'm not 100% familiar of how the card machines transmit the data. But I do know it can be hacked whether it is on a fixed line connection or not. Usually this would be done by an organised cyber criminal who would be using a hacked chip and pin machine. There was a BBC Panorama program on this a while back which explained the idea and the flaws with Chip and PIN.

In the most part however. The chip and pin machines communicating to the bank networks is secure end to end whether it goes over a public connection or not. I'm not familiar fully with the process and it's a long time since I have fitted a card machine for a client. I do know that when the card machines get reset following a failure, you need to authorize the terminal ID with the bank again. Otherwise they WILL NOT to work! So there is an element of security there also.

I've got to dash and catch 1A37 now, I will expand on this later. Please post further questions if you like. And please don't think WPA2-PSK and WPA-PSK and certainly WEP is secure. It is nowhere near as secure as you think :-X :-\ :)