Great Western Coffee Shop

anyone any ideas when the summer timetable is out for FGW TRAINS!!!!! ;)

Hi, Jonboy, and welcome to the forum.

Typically, summer timetables are only available quite close to the date they start - 18th May this year.   Experience has shown that many people pick up and mis-read early timetables and turn up for trains not yet running, and because of that rail industry policy tend to be "leave it late"

Online journey planners WILL give your journeys past that 18th May date, and sites like realtime trains will give you all the proposed departures, train timings, etc, months ahead.

hi and thanks to repley , fair enough i will wait , i look to see if any extra trains get added on in devon and cornwall , as i holiday there every summer.

i stay one week in paignton and 2 weeks in newquay ;D

at least the dawlish line is reopen back up , that line is great.

By franchise commitments the timetables must be available in printed format at least 30 days before they start , so they should start to arrive to booking offices sometime next week.  I guess they'll be available online about the same time.

Hope this helps!

Very prescient topic as it turns out. Did our OP, jonboy40, have a crystal ball?  :P ;) ;D

The May 2014 timetables have today gone onto the FGW website:

http://www.firstgreatwestern.co.uk/Train-times-and-tickets/Train-times/Timetable-from-18-May-2014



Moderator note: I've taken the liberty of slightly editing the topic subject to remove the question marks, now that we have an answer. bignosemac

only 4 return trips to okehampton??

Every time a new timetable comes out I look with hope and anticipation only to feel disappointed and let down. Why? Because I live in Worcester. The new Cotswold timetable has some dreadful timings still in it. Why is the fastest train from Paddington to Worcester 2hrs 12mins with most around 2hrs 25mins. As an ex operator on  the Southern I will just not accept it is for reliability. The performance bar has been set too low and yet we still see failure to achieve it.
If the timetable is set for reliability why are the weekend timings with fewer trains to cause timing problems just as bad and please, someone tell me why FGW have been allowed to give one train 31 mins from Slough to Paddington.
These timings offend someone who had to go in front of his Divisional Movements Manager the same day if trains had suffered delay without reasonable cause on his patch.

Good to see that FGW have bought back the Bath-Bristol-Cardiff timetable so you dont have to consult various timetables to see complete services between Bath and Bristol and Bristol and Cardiff.

Also a new London-Oxford summary timetable.

Not impressed with provision of providing Sunday services details on some timetables either only showing times until a certain date (22nd of June in Central TT 1/1a) or not showing them at all.

too many railworks coming up on Sundays - it'd stretch to many pages

I echo the earlier comments made by jdw.wor concerning the anticipation of a new timetable and subsequent let-down when one sees no improvements especially to the Cotswold Line timetable. For the last couple of years, I have given up travelling from Great Malvern to Dorking on a Sunday, because the journey time has become so painfully slow. I may have said this before but there seems to be no aspiration to improve the service.

That's been the case for years, nothing new there.

and when was the last time they printed full Sunday timetables that weren't subsequently wrong each week?

I see FGW have decided to remove the large print versions of their timetables from the website, just normal pdfs now:
http://www.firstgreatwestern.co.uk/Train-times-and-tickets/Train-times/Timetable-from-18-May-2014

Guess there was not enough demand for the large print versions?

Anyway, picked up a copy of the FGW Network Timetable yesterday which I haven't done for a while and was most impressed with the content.

Going back to comments made a few weeks ago between us Chris, I was delighted to see it included a full set of Sunday timetables for each timetable. Yes I know there will be times when they don't apply but many do take into consideration work taking place at various times in the Reading area, Severn Tunnel and between Swindon and Didcot so I'm happy.

Just got hold of mine ;D ... and some good stuff in there;  nice to see train numbers and all the timetables.   Couple of very pedantic questions I would have, but that's a heck of a book to produce.

Agreed, that was my thought when looking through it last night that a lot of work has gone into producing it. There must be a market for a complete network timetable as FGW have been doing them for a few years now.
 
If I was going to be ultra critical it would be that I didnt appreciate the advert that appeared at numerous times throughout the timetable titled Are you heading in the right direction? Paper is out and digital is in at First Great Western. We want to reduce our carbon footprint.

I am well aware of benefits of digital and am grateful for it in so many ways, but I also like a paper copy of certain things in life. I've paid my ^4 so please don't lecture me. If you want to reduce your carbon footprint FGW why don't you make the Network Timetable available online as a digital edition? Easy to do and a pdf version would be fine. Wouldn't need to go to the trouble of producing a version such as 'flip book.'

I did raise this last year with the publications department and their response was basically "you can download the individual pdfs from the website and make your own".  :(

Perhaps if they saved the pages for every time that advert would appear they might reduce their carbon footprint.

American Airlines saved a rather large sum of money from withdrawing olives in their First Class meals (http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7E-c6ni5MfYC&pg=PA107&lpg=PA107&dq=Bob+Crandall+olive+story&source=bl&ots=Say2jSbu--&sig=4xhyzJFpGt6fbW-ZenVJHRqM5_s&hl=en&ei=tgNXTpC6E4fC0AHQnISQDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false) in the 1980s. Consequently there was some upset about this and the decision was reversed to "Available on request" ;D

Hmmm, there's a lot in the book that isn't on the website or individual timetables. A complete set of Sunday timetables for a start.

As this book (with certain extra pages) is produced for staff, the incremental cost in producing public copies is a small figure, covered by the cover charge. If the staff ever go digital, you can guarantee that the overall cost of continued production for public copies would be too high.

Good to see that Central books 1 and 3 now include a full set of Sunday timetables, well the online versions do. Don't know if the expanded versions are going to appear as printed versions at stations:

Central 1: http://bit.ly/1mO0Kk6

Central 3: http://bit.ly/1ksnwfO