Great Western Coffee Shop

Wiltshire Times article on an incident that happened on the 5.07pm service from Bath on December 22 2007 (link below.)
http://www.wiltshiretimes.co.uk/display.var.1989989.0.panto_trip_turns_into_train_ordeal.php

What worries me is why nobody seems to notice that a little girl like this was in such a space.

I cannot understand why an ambulance was not called, loss of consciousness in my book requires medical treatment, lack of air - lack of oxygen to the brain !

I would not have got on such a crowded train with my child !!  Shame his son did not go to Trowbridge and drive back to Bath and pick them up if it was so busy.......

Before you say anything YES my family and I have done both of these.

Local services over the Christmas and New Year were pretty poor which FGW have admitted to. Next Christmas I suggest they run fewer local services but longer trains. Better to have a reliable infrequent service with longer trains then a service where you don't know if the train is going to turn up which was frequently the case over the Christmas holiday period with services either cancelled or running short of their destination because of a lack of traincrew.

This story even made the national press and guess what? it doesn't even have a comment from MTLS!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=510408&in_page_id=1770
 

or:

"ShopExs"
"XmasExs"

additional trains, 67s+mk2s perhaps running from Salisbury - Weston.

Now your talking! What a useful service that would be.

God they've got to sort out the Cardiff-Pompey services!

I wish they would Vacman.

Theres overcrowding, which you will find on any rail companie's services from time to time, and theres seriously and at times dangerous overcrowding thats a daily occurance on this line not just at peak times, on weekends too which is sometimes even worse with passengers often left behind at stations. Not too inconvenient if there is another service along in half an hour or so but this line now mainly operates every hour since the removal of most of the Westbury-Southampton services last December.

I know there are issues that many of you could highlight that need fixing on other parts of the FGW network but this one really does need fixing and quick as its been more than proved over the past year that three carriages of passengers doesn't go very well into two.

Now just to provide a bit of balance to this post so it doesn't look like having another go at FGW. Wessex trains had their overcrowding problems as well and this is nothing new on this line. The difference between the Wessex franchise and the current FGW franchise is that they were in a position to respond to this problem by making the 158s operating on this line three carriages because the terms of the Wessex franchise weren't as harsh as FGW's in terms of having to make premium payments to the government.

Where I would be critical of FGW was that they went further then the recommendation of retaining three diagramed 3 car 158s and said only one was required, (see the following post: http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=1527.0) thats where they got it wrong and in an indirect way have admitted so in saying that they took too much stock off service in Dec 06. Now they are eagerly awaiting the release of 150/1s from the West Midlands franchise to be able to increase the 'West fleet' once again to something near what it needs to be. Of course some of these 150s will be needed to give the Devon Metro its everyday trains back again unless of course you are all happy with the 142s that you now have?  ;)

UMMMMM I think we'll get rid of the 142's thanks! hopefully we will get some of the 3 car 150's from LM which will sort a few things out!

Crumbs, Vacman you were burning the Mid-night oil last night.

Seriously The last time I took a service from Newport to Westbury in the Evening peak, it was packed to BTM, and leaving BTM was well like the BLACK HOLE of Calcutta.

But then when some smart a*** cuts a 3 car unit and puts on a 2 car, it's asking for trouble.

History lesson: Black Hole of Calcutta, a small Dungeon whers 123 of 146 British Prisoners suffocated on June 20th 1756.

I thought you might say that  :)

There's a full page about this in The Times today (although it would have been better if the picture had been an appropriate train, rather than the gleaming newly refurbished HST).

Part of me hopes there will be a couple of similar incidents (with no lasting consequences obviously), as it seems to be the only way that anyone in government will realise what they have done to the service.

Now, who's going to write to the Times and point out exactly why this happened on this route. Or shall we all do it?

That's a bit rich, Smokey: last time I ventured to offer a history lesson in this forum, you told me off!!!   :o  ;)

Using My posh voice,

"I say old boy I don't remember telling you off, maybe you took what I said in the wrong text, If you think I was telling you off, then I'm sorry and I'm eating a big slice of Humble Pie"

your input to this site is valued :) :) :)

No need to apologise or eat anything you don't like, Smokey  ;)   I was joking!  ;D ;D ;D

(And thanks very much for your final comment  :-[ )

Well thank you Chris, I'll take that as an invite to dine at your expense to night.

Nice Chinese for me and the family, I'll just tell 'em to send you the bill.

Cheers to your good health!!!!

We're really taking the subject heading seriously in this thread aren't we?

Whoops have derailed a bit, better bring it back on track, Overcrowded trains are not fun, but if the next ones twenty minutes later or more, then most folk will squeeze themselves in.

There is a H & Safety issue here, FGW should never have reduced train size from 3 to 2 cars, indeed it should have been increased from 3 to 4 cars.

But the real culpit here are the H & S boys, there is no spare stock, why because all the old slam door stock had to be fitted with SDO by 2003 I think, (Vacman will know) H & S orders.

Being expensive to fit, all the old stock went for scrap.

Prehaps the DAFT should decree NOW that London Midland MUST use the 180s untill there new stuff is built ,and cascade the 3 car 150s to FGW NOW

Now theres an idea! That would really help things out at the moment. I think its crazy that the 180s are heading towards the sidings whilst passengers are crammed into two car trains. Problem is this is too much like common sense for it to happen but we live in hope! Still prefer to see the 180s on the Cardiff-Portsmouth line though despite their costs I think you would encourage more to travel on this line if they knew they would actually get a seat on the train.

Yes, sorry, John: point taken!  :-[

Smokey is quite right: why were previous three car services reduced to two cars, when they were already crowded when they were three cars?  I've asked Insider (http://indefenceoffirstgreatwestern.blogspot.com/2008/01/up-close-and-personal.html) and sent in a comment card to FGW about the 1753 Bristol Temple Meads to Nailsea, for example, making exactly this point.  Response - nothing: it seems to me FGW don't have an official answer, but they are too embarrassed to admit it publicly - they just got it plain wrong with their franchise bid.

I hope Laura Booth gets over her clearly traumatic experience and is able to take up FGW on their offer of a day out sometime: trains aren't bad, but sometimes it's the people who 'manage' them who are.

Insider may not have answered you because he had already answered the question. See link below.
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=1527.msg9700#msg9700

Lee, I'm sorry if I'm being a bit thick, but I've trawled through that link you gave and I can't find Insider's answer to that question: which bit of it do you mean?  Sorry!  :-[

All Cardiff-Pompey, during daytime, and peaks, Saturdays and Sundays are FULL AND STANDING.

The 1753 heading down to Weston is indeed busy. I've estimated it averages 200 on a service with 150 seats. But we can all get on, and after Nailsea it's fine. I think those on the Bath and Westbury line would welcome a service which has much space as it has. The gripes have been when they leave people behind on the platform (or the crush results in children fainting). Thankfully we only get that sort of crush in North Somerset if the service goes pear-shaped, not as a daily occurrence. 

Thanks, John: I'd put it slightly higher, at up to 250 (now we're out of the Christmas / New Year lull) for a service with 147 seats (two car 150).  But, as you say, we can all get on (just about, and provided we don't have bikes, for example), and of course after Nailsea it's fine.


Agreed, John, but some of this overcrowding on the 1753 seems to be due to the rather weird timetabling: services departing from Bristol Temple Meads to Nailsea are as follows:
1718 - then, just seven minutes later,
1725 - then 28 minutes until
1753 - then 29 minutes until
1822 - then, just three minutes later,
1825

As I understand it, the Bath - Westbury line has much more regular intervals between trains - and I mean more regular, not more frequent??

The most relevant link from Insider's blog is this one.
http://indefenceoffirstgreatwestern.blogspot.com/2007/11/answering-some-questions.html

I would advise reading all of it, including the comments section.

Does the 1530 from London get extended to Weston, as that would be ideal. 1715 Bristol - Weston then the 1745 would be the 1600 which goes to Taunton (?)

Sorry, d_m, but I'm struggling a bit with this: are you possibly referring to the pre-December 2007 timetable?

In those 'good old days', the 1746 BTM to Taunton via Nailsea was indeed the Paddington HST - generally reliable, and plenty of room for us commuters as most of the remaining Paddington passengers got off at Bristol!

However, the new timetable gives us a 1753 which originates at Cardiff: unfortunately, rather prone to problems with signalling at Cardiff and soggy conditions in the Severn Tunnel area generally causing more delays / cancellations.

From what I've seen, a lot of the Paddington services that used to extend beyond Bristol (to Weston or Taunton, for example) now terminate at Bristol, to form services starting from Bristol to Paddington.  A lot of the previous continuity seems to have disappeared.

On the other hand, I may have completely misunderstood your point - in which case, sorry!   ;)

Bath-Trowbridge:
17.07 - 2car - Weymouth
17.25 - 3car - Westbury
17.36 - 4car - Pompey
18.07 - 2car - Weymouth
18.25 - ?car - Westbury
18.36 - 2car - Pompey*

*18.36 is normally VERY BUSY

So in total, between 5 and 7 we have 15 coaches doing the trip, however in the Nailsea list, there is 2 HST's with (5coaches of SC) and the rest are 2car units?

Understood me perfectly well  :)

Couple of observations. Firstly, the evening services are constrained in that they have to fit around the timings of the XC services (as well as the Weston single line). If the 1725 set off any later it would hold up the 1744 XC service by the time it got to Worle. So I think there are real difficulties in getting a more even pattern in the way that the morning service achieves.

Secondly, in the morning HSTs run every half hour, by virtue of being able to position themselves in time when they otherwise would not be used ie early morning (or running up from the South West). This isn't possible in the evening, as they need to turn around at BTM to run back to London (or else more sets would be needed). So there is much less capacity in the evening than in the morning.

They've recently switched the services that carry on to Weston from the 00 departure ex Paddington to the 30 departure (and added an additional service by the way, so we now have 6 hourly depatures from 1430 to 1930). Effect is that HSTs now leave BTM at around 15 instead of 45.

I think the 1753 just about copes (I tried to count the number waiting one evening, and it seemed consistent with the number standing once on board), but any further increase in passenger volumes will leave this service prone to excessive overcrowding.

Not good. The 180s would have huge loading times on the Snow Hill lines (commuter). They are too long for Harlebury station.

Also, the 150s are going to Northern, not FGW.

Keep the 180s on the Cotswold Line, or give them to Chiltern and release some 168s for LM, to release 150s for FGW.

the 3 cars maybe.

but as far as i'm aware theres a contract signed and sealed for 10 or so 2 car 150's to go to FGW

Maybe vacman/ollie can shed some more light on this

168s are Clubmans and they are also Turbostars.

The earlier batch LOOK (from the outside) like a Thames Turbo, inside like a Turbostar. The later batch have the Turbostar look outside as well!

Chiltern do operate Thames Turbos too.

The Safety Issue with overcrowded trains is a bit strange, OK we all would like to have a seat in a train.

Yet in a Crash, a busy train well loaded is sometimes safer than a lightly loaded train, put a strawberry or 6 in a Jam Jar put lid on and shake it about, result a Mess. Now fill a Jam Jar with Strawberries lid on and shake it about, because it's tighly packed little damage occurs.

However if this 7 year old had been crushed on the Branstaple-Exeter train that was 2x142 units with one packed and the other Empty because of H & S issues, the Media would have HUNG the safety lobby OUT TO DRY.

Don't like your logic.

if people are stood up, they are thrown around. They might also be standing in the crumple zone of the train.

The main reason why only one person died in the Lake District crash last year, was that the train was not overcrowded, and everyone was seated.

Pacers are useless though, most of the train is a crumple zone!

More like a Fly Off Zone, leave the Chassis and Wheels behind!! :o

yep

http://mark5811.fotopic.net/p10570452.html

There's a letter in this month's Modern Railways mentioning this incident and generally bemoaning the reduction from 3 to 2 coaches on the line.

Lets hope they do become 3 cars from May then!

I've used this service from Bath to Pompey before a few times, and one time it said on the board before the train had arrived that it was reported to be overcrowded.. but there was no resolution or any extra transport laid on.  If they knew this service was so busy, why was it reduced to one an hour? I don't understand the logic, is there an answer?

Cardiff-Portsmouth has always been hourly since 1988. The recent overcrowding problems started when DFT/FGW reduced the fleet of three car 158s back to two cars and its been chaos 7 days a week ever since on a great deal of services that are not operated either by the sole three car 158 or services which are operated as four car and thats not many, only during 'peak' commuting time Mon-Fri.

Weekends have seen the worst overcrowding because of the less frequent timetable which makes it all the more annoying when you see empty sets sitting in the sidings which could be used to lengthen services  >:(

Once again I do say that overcrowding happened on this line under the Wales and West and Wessex Trains franchises but thats why Wessex made some of their fleet of 158s three carriages to help relieve the problem.

The good news is that three car 158s are making a comeback. See:
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=1670.msg12673#msg12673

Sorry, i didn't word that quite correctly, it used to be a half-hourly frequency as far as Westbury didnt it?

"might"

Local services run between Portsmouth-Cardiff trains to give a half hour frequency between Westbury-Bristol.

There used to be a service from Cardiff-Westbury every half hour when you took into account Cardiff-Portsmouth and Cardiff-Weymouth/Brighton, however they replaced the Weymouth/Brighton services with services to Taunton.

Not in wessex days. Its back to how it used to be with Taunton/Wsm getting an hourly service to Cardiff and rightly so as Wiltshire already has one, however overcrowded it is  :P

I think thenew timetable is pretty bad though. What was wrong with:

........Westbury-All shacks-Bristol
Taunton-Cardiff
Ports-Cardiff
And
W-s-M/Bristol-Cheltenham.

It worked well, as the Avon Valley all shacks connected with the Cheltenham and the Severnside all shacks!

I know it wasnt in Wessex days - it was Dec 06-Dec 07  :)

I agree it makes sense to have a CDF to Taunton service as there is already one going to Bath Spa and Wesbury direction.