Great Western Coffee Shop

Do you want to see if there any disruptions at the same time as visiting "The Coffeeshop" - to see if your journey is likely to be disrupted?

I have added a little map at the top left of the page showing all services that have been notified with last minute changes in the last two hours.  Colour coding is as follows:

red - cancelled completely
blue - running a shortened route
green - skipping stops

You'll also see

yellow - catering change
orange - shorter train
grey - other change (e.g. extra stops)

If the dot at the end of the route is black, the train hasn't yet reached its destination, (or wasn't scheduled to, anyway!).  If the dot is coloured, the train should have complete its journey by now. All services are show from start point to end point "as the crow flies" - somewhat diagramatic!

If you click on the image, you'll be taken to a page I'm testing to give you some further specific information.

Can you force the image to be cached Graham? Takes yonks to reload every time I go on another page....

I have added this graphic on the top of this website which shows the current train running information.   As this information can change quite rapidly, my initial thought was to have it displayed afresh quite frequently rather than instructing user's computers to store the image so that it could get quite out of date - however, you'll notice that at least one user disagrees with that decision.

Do you find the (new) download speed acceptable?   Or would you prefer me to set a substantial timeout on the caching to speed up your page loads?   Please let me know by voting above.

A nice thought, but an incredibly confusing map!!!

Constructive comments (i.e. what would make it better) welcome ... but bear in mind that there are practical and technical limits to what I can do.   

I did consider putting certain intermediate points in, in the knowledge that all trains from Brighton to Great Malvern go via Bristol, for example.  However, there are some routes such as London to the West Country that can be via Chippenham or via Westbury(ish) and without a full timetable I would end up generating a misleading map ...

May I advise you take the info from a different URL then? ;)

Thanks, Tom ... I have been doing a bit of experimentation (with the alternative source you suggested, thanks) but although I've come up with a reasonable test case showing intermediate stations too, there are some ongoing issue with it which may (or may not) get sorted.  I prefer to provide something that is clearly diagramatic than something that looks close enough to being a real map but causes confusion in areas that it isn't.

i wasnt sure what the lines on the map were all about but thats a good idea now i know

A nice touch! I take it that it updates automatically, and you don't have to do it yourself.

Hmmmm, a possible new high speed route from London to Penzance...

Good point - the map is intended to give regular users a quick glance to show them were there are ongoing issues that may effect their journey, but for the newcomer it can look a bit odd; I've added a  "? about" onto the image to encourage people to click on it ... taking them to the more specific details and also the description.

Referring to that page, can I just point out that they are affected trains and services, not effected ones!

Clearly you can   ;D  ... and have done.

And I have corrected the page.  Thanks - I always have trouble with insurance and assurance too!

Can I suggest that you change the colour of short formed trains to purple - it is too similar to the red of cancelled.

And the "effected" is still there.....

I have now corrected the second occurrence of the error ;-) ... and will look at the colours; there are various tweaks that I'm looking at and I'll roll it in with that.

grahame's map is starting to look like the met office radar with all the different colours appearing!

Sad to say that today's long list of short formed/running services has shown that FGW still don't have enough rolling stock to run a completely reliable service when a few units are faulty. As the summer holidays have gone on the daily list has increased day by day.

Not that there is any extra spare rolling stock left in the country for them to have even if they wanted more rolling stock for the West fleet.

There must be huge reluctance to let the 5 142s go in October if the current fleet is as stretched as it is. Am I right in saying that the 150 refresh was suspended for the summer holidays to provide as much stock as possible for the Cornish branches/Weymouth line services?

Basically, until new stock is introduced to the West fleet, which won't be in the lifetime of the current franchise, you just can't see this situation ever really improving despite the best efforts of the FGW maintainance crew to keep them running. These units have been thrashed going back to BR days and they are tired and worn out. No amount of new paint or fabric on the seats is going to change that.

Though to contradict my own argument about old rolling stock, look how well the 34+ year old HSTs are preforming since the fleet had new engines installed. Just goes to show what great pieces of engineering they really are  :)

1606 Paddington - Penzance I *believe* is running today on one engine!!!

I can't really see those 142s going back in October? The 150/143 refresh will take a while to complete and Devon can't do without those 5 units as passenger numbers seem excessivly high since their introduction.

It was reminding me of a 1970s style nail and string picture... please tell me I'm not the only one old enough to remember those awful things....

Its ok Phil I know what you are talking about ;)

Hear hear! Unlike the trash that is being built at the moment. I wonder how reliable the Javelins will be...

You really do start to wonder if the HST will ever be retired! What a sad day that will be when it does finally happen.

But preserved lines will get hold of them - if just for some more slam door carriages!

<thinks> HSTs going up the Severn Valley Line! </thinks>

I seem to recall an HST in Minehead, on the West Somerset.

Don't know if you noticed my piece on how the railways might look in the South West in 25 years time, but I still had the HSTs (in a rebuilt form) running.   A number of other outlandish / provocative / thought provoking things in there - but HSTs still running might not be beyond the bounds of possibility.   How long did the 1938 tube stock survive on the Ryde to Shanklin line  ;)

Having the image above just shows how poorly FGW operate.

Pretty much every main route/area has a problem all the time!

Yes ... I would much rather see something like this:

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/tragra4.png)

which is a status report from just a few minutes ago; there will always be an incident or two without a disporoprtionate investment in spare people, spare lines and spare trains ...

Thanks to those of you who voted in the poll ... a clear majority in favour of the present frequent updates so it will stay as it is, although I'm mindful of the comment received about download speed and bandwidth that lead me to ask the question in the first place.

I don't think the poll options were really that brilliant really - I would rather see it update every 10 minutes (and therefore stay relatively up to date (I doubt you fetch the page as often as every 5 minutes?)) than see it reload upon every page load - which for anyone on dialup is dire.

Would it be possible to have two maps? Perhaps one showing serious disruption and cancellations, the other showing the more annoying rather than delay implicating issues such as short-forms, catering shortfalls etc.,

Also, appreciating the programming implications and the fact that certain services do get from A to B via different routes, would it be possible to have common waypoints inserted where appropriate so that it looks a little more 'lifelike'? For example London>Penzance services being plotted via Exeter and Plymouth and Malvern>Weymouth services being plotted via Bristol and Westbury.

You should be applauded for taking the time to try and produce this graph though, Graham.

Many thanks for those inputs - all good ideas and some easier to implement that others - but some drawbacks too.

Yes, I would like to provide a way of telling much more easily the serious issues, which I think I would define as a service not being provided at all to at least one station on the scheduled run of a train - so emphasising cancellations, short workings, and stops being skipped.  As for it being a second diagram - that's a possible but I think I may have a more effective way and I'm working on it.

Geographic - I HAVE been doing some experiments, but there are a range of issues that remain a concern. The answer is "I will, if I can resolve the issues"; if you want to see what I have managed so far:

(http://www.wellho.net/demo/train_geographic.php)

and that is OLD data and will not change if you refresh this page.   The colouring of different issues is simply something I took out for simplicity while experimenting,  but you'll see I have a few problems around places like Didcot, Trowbridge and Bristol, and I know of further possible problems at Totnes, and a few others.   And the other thing I need to be very sure of is that I don't commit myself (or anyone) to any form of manual process, but rely on automated publicly available and robustly presented data that I can leigimately use.

P.S.  I don't mink having to add in new locations from time to time as FGW restarts services to Tavistock and Portishead.

Interersting you mention London to Penzance showing via Exeter and Plymouth ... the question comes further up into making sure that they show via Westbury or via Bristol as appropriate.

(link below)

I think the mods and whoever update the shite map need to get a life.....

The map is automatically updated ... so it has no life  ;)

This user has posted some 29 messages in the last hour, including links to sexually explicit sites and personal insultd against ordinary members.  As such, I have suspended the user's right to post - he / she will have received a message via the login screen explaining this (or will do so when he/she next attempts to log in), and I and my fellow moderators are available by email if there is a logical explanation to be offered as to how and why the posts fit within our acceptable user policy.

The map may not be very good .... but there's no need for anyone to come here and look at it if they don't want to, and they could also provide something better themselves. 

Cron jobs have no life? Shame.  :P