Great Western Coffee Shop

Hi I have been looking at your web site for some time and have just had the courage to join and enter an observation that perhaps your members might comment on
My wife and I are occasional rail travelers on the route from west Wales to Weymouth to visit our family like most people I like to get a bargain and to book in advance and to get the cheaper tickets sometimes we travel together and others my wife travels alone. We used to get the Cardiff to Weymouth service although it was an adventure delays cancellation,  It was the most direct route. It suited when she traveled alone as she has concerns about changing train and delays. Now when we booked our tickets we have found that FGW in there infonaut wisdom do not run direct from Cardiff to Weymouth but now start in Gloucester and we have to change at Bristol Parkway. Any ideas why?
 We sometimes travel via, Southampton  with the Cardiff to  Portsmouth service another pain then to Weymouth with SWT (When we get to Southampton we rarely have any problems with the forward journey).   Would it not be nice if FGW would give up these routes and let SWT run them. They might get their act together and gives us a service that is run properly and not an afterthought. We have been traveling to Weymouth for many years and the service  have been slowly getting worse with overcrowded dirty slow delayed and canceled :-\ trains.

Hi Bradnock and a warm welcome to the forum.

You make a number of good points in your post that many who post to this forum would agree with, one of them being the loss of direct Cardiff-Weymouth services. I'm not even sure whether FGW will even run services direct from Cardiff during the summer months either; lets hope I'm wrong.

Overcrowding was a huge problem for this route last summer but that has been slowly getting worse over the past few years. IMHO the only solution would be for FGW to bring back a regular loco-hauled service during summer weekends and the school summer holidays. This will free up stock to bolster other south coast services that get equally busy.

As far as the state of rolling stock goes, all the fleet that runs on the Weymouth line, 150s and 158s are being 'refreshed' so you should start to see an improvement in the state of rolling stock over the next few months.

FGW should be using top'n tailed 67's on a couple of weymouth services this summer.

Hi, Bradnock, and welcome to the forum. I understand that the timetable was changed in early December, sending trains from Weymouth and Brighton, and the Westbury "stoppers", North rather than West from Bristol to even out the timetable between Bristol and Westbury, where there were 2 trains an hour but they were like London buses - running in a pair, then none for a long time.  Also to give a wider selection of Jourmey options from Bath, Bradford-on-Avon (which had a huge service increas), Trowbridge and Westbury. The change (which has not changed the trains-per-hour) has also meant the return of a through service from Weston-super-mare (and that line) to South Wales.  Any timetable change of this sort will bring winners and losers ... and it's particularly tough on the losers if the new service is less than 99.5% reliable (see how FGW are doing on that score here (http://www.savethetrain.org.uk/running.php) in whether or not it runs, let alone on time and making connections.

Which leads me on to your second point. 

South West Trains run a modern fleet of Electric trains along the South Coast to Weymouth, and I believe the trackwork is in excellent order.  There's a lower proportion of freight and other services on that line, and this service is one of the important backbone services of the operation. The line is double track (but is there one simgle line stretch now?) allowing a train that's delayed in one direction to pass a train that's on time in the other direction without delaying it too. 

First Great Western run the Weymouth line using trains that have got to the point where they require a lot more tender loving care, and in order to give them this love they have moved maintainance from Cardiff to a new section of the depot which is / has been behind in completion in Bristol.  Their fleet has far less room for manoever if there are failures at a typical rate, as part of the First bid for the franchise underspecified the trains needed and now they can't get enough of the type which they would, after all, like to be running.  The Weymouth to Great Malvern service runs over a lot of busy lines where there are "crossing" operations with other services considered to be more important, and it includes some big chunks of single line working. Some stretches (Worcester to Malvern in particular) are shared with a singled main line that's been having more that its fair share of problems, other stetches (Bristol to nearly Worcester) are shared with expresses and the Weymouth service sometimes has to be delayed to let a late running express go through first.

Help me, everyone - is that a reasonable summary?

You are correct Graham, there is a short stretch of single track on the Weymouth-Waterloo line between Dorchester South and Moreton, why I don't know and don't understand why it wasn't doubled during electrifications in the mid eighties.

Going back to what is often referred to as the Bristol-Weymouth line, even though services start from further afield nowadays, there has been very little change to the amount of trains operated over the line since the days of BR with around 7 to 8 services operated on a daily basis though during the summer months BR used to run extra 'fast' services on Saturdays for holidaymakers.

Outside the summer months the line can be quite lightly used west of Frome and has been under threat in the past but has probably been saved by the large amount of passengers carried during summer Saturdays and school holidays. At these times frequent overcrowding has taken place with FGW often having to lay on coaches to get everyone home after a day on the beach. The hope is that FGW will be able to operate a loco-hauled service this summer which will increase capacity on the line as well as releasing a unit to operate elsewhere on the network.

The section of line in question was actually singled at the time of electrification. I'm afraid in those days a lot of "improvements" were double edged swords.   

Anyone know the reason why they did this?

Money saving!

Many thanks  for the explanation on the change of the route from Cardiff To Gloucester / Malvern then to Weymouth, Very interesting though As you explained it seems to be inviting disaster in the busy summer season (Perhaps they could get an old 31 and a few coaches back for the school holidays) I have found in other peoples post that I am a little belated in mentioning a change of franchise to SWT  For the Cardiff Portsmouth route and Weymouth line because as already stated SWT already share a good part of the Cardiff Portsmouth track.
 As I mentioned before SWT trains had better stock from Southampton to Weymouth That was before I met my first 444. Why get rid of the 442 they where in my and a lot of other peoples minds where far better, Send them back to Portsmouth and lets have the old Stock back. It ain't just FGW that know how to cock it up.