Great Western Coffee Shop

Thinking here of South West Trains - connecting to their on train wifi means that the TOC then has your contact details - fine by me - and after travelling the TOC often sends out a customer survey - also fine by me. Trying to think if I've seen the same from other TOCs, it's certainly more common with South West Trains.

An observation on the the information the survey is after - it's focussed purely on the customer experience on their network, their stations and with their own staff, and avoids even the opportunity to collect journey start and end points. This reinforces the impression that a TOC evolves to provide an island of services in their own geographical area and undervalue the principle of the rail network as a coherent whole.

That immediately puts me in mind of different times, and Gordon Pettit's book covering the story of the battle to transform the Regional Railways ugly duckling into something considerably more swan-like. Nearly forty years later, some of the current TOCs still benefit from the trains purchased by Regional Railways even if the opportunity of the inter-regional services that were pushed at that time has in some cases withered away. In an age of the DfT's spectre of "Minimum viable product" inter-regional services are some way away from regaining that edge.

Mark

They cannot verify that your email address is correct, so just use something (hopefully!) fictitious such as moi @ me . com   It'll let you log in and then they will not have your contact details  ;D

Good point. I'm happy to provide information to allow SWT, the moment they rediscover their interest in it, to realise that as an when political forces permit, they have the opportunity to build on the 'Less than daily' flow of people travelling to and from stations that aren't on their network, including the likes of  Trowbridge, Bath, Bristol, Cardiff as well as destinations through Devon and into Cornwall.

Mark