Great Western Coffee Shop

Am I right in saying that  coombe junction halt is the least used station across the fgw network or is there somewhere else? In 2013/2014 the footfall was 42 and I think only two trains a day stop there?

I'd be pretty sure of that, although the intermediate stations on St Ives branch often have artificially low figures due to the high percentage of branch line rovers purchased.

Coombe Junction had no services calling for quite a while due to the platform falling into the canal (that's a colloquial report) - was that during the year in question?

I think that was around 2010/2011 passenger numbers dropped to around 38 but I see on this link http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coombe_Junction_Halt_railway_station that in 2008/2009 there was a huge jump to 128. I rember my aunti saying in the days of steam if you missed the train at liskeard you could get down the hill to coombe station before the train if you were lucky. I wonder how often the pay phone and help point is used? I think there was discussions back along in turning moors water into a park and ride for looe I'm not sure but I don't think the cement trains to moors water run anymore that's my guess because the track is so over grown!

Some people who get on at Coombe Junction Halt have to buy returns from Liskeard because their train home doesn't stop at the station.

Surely Pilning, with 1 train a week in each direction, is a lesser used station.  I can't imagine too many people waiting for the SO trains.

The ORR station usage figures are ticketed arrivals and departures, and need to be read with salt - not just a pinch but a whole ounce.  They are published with good guidance as to how the figures are arrived at - how things like season tickets are counted, for example - and noting the effect of Rover tickets, rangers and others.  The also exclude journeys made by passenger under the age of 5 because they travel ticketless.   OK - those things apply for the most part to all stations, but then consider.

Are figures for places such as Didcot and Cheltenham Spa elevated because of people buying split tickets.   A Bristol to Birmingham journey with a split at Chetlenham is 2 votes for Cheltenham.

Are figures for places like Shirehampton and (in the past) Melksham elevated because shorter distances cost more, and people "overbuy"?

Again an example from the old Melksham figures ... they may have been a bit high because of people buying Melksham to London rather than Chippenham to London returns - but only coming back as far as Chippenham in the days that the service was really poor.

Other special cases - Dorking West (an FGW station) has only 16 passengers in the 2011/12 year ... or so we were told. In practise, I think it was because an umbrella "Dorking" ticket was sold most of the time, and got attributed to Deepdene and/or Town.   Same problem, Dorchester West with 172 passengers in 2006/7.

The real way to find out about lower use stations is to observe and count all the trains, or if you're a CRP / community partner of some other sort, simply ask FGW for help / info - talking with other CRP representatives from lines operated by different TOCs, these days FGW are much more on side to help - indeed that's been a noticeable improvement compared to what it was in the last decade.

That's an interesting thought there.

A lot of Conductors and ATE's on the Severn Beach line only change the origin station at Severn Beach/Avonmouth & Clifton, where the price changes.  To maximise revenue and ticket sales, they sell tickets from Clifton for example, to Temple Meads, regardless which station after Clifton you got on at, as it's the same price.

All they have to do is press the reprint button on their avantix.

Not experienced this practice for a while now. At least before Clifton. Since changes to local bus services I board most often at Avonmouth, followed by Shirehampton if I fancy the walk, and lastly St Andrew's Road for the variety. One or two times from Sea Mills as well. All tickets purchased since at least December 2014 have been from the specific origin station. And I hear the ATEs asking other passengers where they boarded. One of the ATEs told me some months ago that they'd stopped generalising the origin (despite the flat fares) precisely because it was skewing the passenger count figures for individual stations on the line.

Whilst there may be a 'repeat last transaction' function on Avantix, it's actually quite rare these days, on the Severn Beach Line, to have a succession of passengers wanting tickets to the same destination. Even when they do want the same destination as the last person there might be a railcard involved and a different payment method. There really is no time saving to be had by the ATEs in generalising the origin station.

I now make an almost weekly journey from SRD to BTH. My ticket always has Stapleton Road as the origin, even when, as happened last week, I bought it on the 0841 Weymouth train. The TM on the SVB train was running out of tickets, receipts, patience, and time, so I hopped on the WEY train without one, in the front carriage of 4. After Keynsham, I realised there was no TM in the carriage or the one behind, and set off walking. I couldn't get into the rear portion, so hopped off at OLF then back on to the rear portion - I didn't want to be messing around at BTH. The TM hadn't realised there was no-one in the front portion.