Great Western Coffee Shop

This hasn't been a brilliant week.

Monday - an inexplicable 35 minute delay on the 7.26 ex. Twyford.  Major signalling problems etc.

However, today - a little ray of sunshine.  The 7.26 was on time and formed by the correct number of coaches.  The driver, a well spoken chap, made clear announcements, and after being cleared onto the up main at Maidenhead, drove smoothly and quickly into Paddington.  It was text book stuff, and the type of service to which FGW should be aspiring. 

I even complimented the driver on arrival!!

Hi, Visoflex, and welcome to the forum.

We do indeed forget - all too often - the excellent service provided at times; memories are of missed connections, crazy train timings (at least in my neck of the woods) and incidents such as one I came across last night where something like the loss of a ticket is not accepted as a genuine mistake - even when a receipt is produced - but as an attempt to defraud.

Actually, I have a huge amount of time and regard for almost all of the local staff on the trains that I use, and I admire how well they're coping with, basically, being in the firing line of a service which is bound to have unreliable traits while it's run on a minimum possible budget with some of the oldest trains in the country.

I don't personally use the local trains between Reading and London very often; can you, perhaps, fill us in with a few more details such as how often they are delayed / shortformed?   I would love to get a better picture.

There is no real pattern of problems.  We've certainly had trains which are short formed from 6 to 3 coaches.  The second unit was taken to provide another service out of Oxford.  Sometimes the short formed train doesn't stop at stations further down the line.  The major issue when penalising train companies for late running, is that in an attempt to minimise their liability, trains miss out intermediate stops.  FGW have now raised this to an art form.  Trains arrive at the terminal station on time - but the passengers are late.

Semi-fast Reading to London trains are invariably overcrowded, particularly from Maidenhead.  Failure to run is sometimes posted on the FGW website as "a member of the train crew being sick/unavailable/etc" - however Class 165/166 are single manned.  They seem to have reduced their driver rosters down in the same way that the rolling stock has been allocated.  Just enough to cover a normal diagram, but no backup to cover unusual incidents, breakdowns or other unplanned events. 

The local paper has intimated that the December 2007 timetable could be reverting to something approaching the service we had in 2004, no details as yet.

Many thanks for that further insight  ... we too in Wiltshire are looking forward to further major timetable changes this December - first details overdue as they were expected at lunchtime on 8th June and I don't know what the delay is at Network Rail - "hopeful but pensive / unsure" at the moment, I think.

I've followed up further on "missing out stops" on one of the main board - this seems to be endemic!

http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=366.0

Grahame, do you know if they intend to put them on the FGW website like they did last year? would be useful if they did.

I don't know.   I do know that they do not intent to have a big public consultation like they did last year, but rather to limit the consultation activities to "stakeholders" - which typically means other rail industry parties and various levels of government.