Great Western Coffee Shop

http://www.trainsardine.org/

Looking at this site reminds me just how far we've come here in FGW land as the story is very similar.

Methinks they are going to get into trouble over the posters they have made - they are using Stagecoach's writing design, which I expect is copyrighted! ;D

But all in all, it is a good website, and judging by the YouTube videos - needed. :o

They seem a happy and content lot in EMT land ............. not

No its different, besides the SWT font only has a few characters.

"aec" will write "SOUTH WEST TRAINS (with the dash above I) so only an amount of photoshopping could have produced the font on their logo which I presume is Tahoma or similar.

Ok.

But I doubt they're happy about its use!

I can't imagine that is their biggest concern.

Their explanation of why EMT are short of carriages on the Norwich Liverpool route drifts off into the realms of fantasy though. Firstly it implies Central kept back some carriages (presumably meaning the 158 centre cars that DfT allocated to Northern). Then they suggest EMT could have ordered more carriages if only the ROSCOs weren't subject to a competition enquiry.

The only bit that sounds correct is that the passenger data provided by Central Trains was out of date.
I can't imagine EMT have ever attempted to order more new trains for this route, the DfT wouldn't allow it.  That must sound familiar to Portsmouth - Cardiff route users...

Paul

Basically, they could do with some 180s! ;D

Central Trains used a mixture of 158s and 170s on that route.  Then when they acquired some 3 car 158s from TP Express they mainly used 3 and 4 car 158 combinations on the route.

Apparently, Central trains were asked to give figures for their routes towards the end of the franchise, but hadn't kept up-to-date figures so submitted some collected about 2 years ago.  At the same time Northern had submitted up-to-date figures for their York to Blackpool route, which appeared to have more passengers but actually had around the same number.

This meant East Midland Trains got some 3 car 158s with the centre coaches removed, which were put in units running York to Blackpool.

It's work noting that Northern Spirit branded the York to Blackpool service as a Transpennine Express service, which made sense, but DfT opted to keep the route with Arriva Trains Northern, then Northern Rail after the First TransPennine franchise started.

I find it interesting that another forum has a thread headed "EMT now have their own version of the FGW Coffeeshop".   Clearly the Coffeeshop is the one to emulate!

Indeed ... and a read that as a huge compliment to the folks who post here. And at the same time - what a tragedy that we were goaded into setting up a site like this in the first place!

I was at a meeting last night, of a local rail user group in Trowbridge of which I'm just an ordinary member.  We were being addressed by a senior member of Wiltshire Council's Transport team - the gentleman responsible for strategic planning of sustainable transport in the county. The meeting was running on, and the chairman announces "Anyone for Bradford-on-Avon ... the next train is at xx.xx and you'll need to be leaving now".   A shout from the back - "When's the next train for Chippenham" and the room dissolves into laughter ...   While  the train service linking the three largest population centres in Wiltshire, each of which is to grow by 50% by 2026, is a laughing stock ... sites like ours will continue to thrive!

I was hoping to attend last night but was unfortunately being entertained on the XC service from Stoke to BTM, now there's a waste of 125mph stock, easily justified Cl 220 on Pompey/Cardiff after that journey.

I was hoping to raise a question regarding the redevelopment of the old Bowyers site, especially in light of the new Trowbridge gateway development not far away from where the meeting was being held, in a similar vein to the BTM campaign for a transport hub adjacent to the station, the current lack of planning for a similar transport interchange next to Trowbridge station will probably be seen as a missed opportunity in future years. and would get rid of the bus station that the town centre has now become.  >:(

They're at least now aiming the campaign at Dft, rather than EMT:

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/TrainSardine/


Incidentally, passengers of Northern Rail have also set up one of those e-petitions because local peak trains have had to be cut back to allow Virgin Trains to run extra London services.

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/localrail/

I don't know the areas / lines / cases, but I wish the petitioners well.  Although the petition I started ( http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/wessextrains/ ) didn't achieve the changes we were looking for - or at least the main one - it certainly helped raise the visibility of the case, and I'm sure these two will at the least do that too.

Looking at the Train Sardine site now it looks no way near as professional as this one.  The images are all saved in the wrong size and at the wrong rate of compression.  The forum's not moderated and full of spam.  They've also not built the website to work on different size monitors. 

The general conscious of Train Sardine across different forums, seems to be that while overcrowding is an issue on East Midlands Trains services, especially between Warrington and Manchester, it is down to DfT giving EMT less carriages than Central Trains got for the same Liverpool to Norwich route, so a protest against EMT is pointless.  It is also well known in the north that peak North TransPennine Express trains leave people behind at most stations that they serve between Liverpool and Leeds, again highlighting why should EMT be picked on by Train Sardine?

Because of my job, I tend not to get involved in the issues which prompted the introduction of this site.  However, as I have said elsewhere, I enjoy Coffeeshop for the humour, insider knowledge, passenger feedback and friendly posters.  IMO, it is much more than just a vehicle for a pressure group.  Shame I can't meet Singles from Switzerland though.  http://www.youforum.co.uk/train_sardine/viewtopic.php?id=25029

Still, there are always Mates from Melksham I guess :-\

Thank you for those kind words about this forum, Northwesterntrains.  The team of moderators does an excellent job, and I don't thank them often enough - so thank you for giving me the opportunity; it's one of those jobs which isn't noticed very often when it's being done well ... but the comparison with other sites that get spammed does help to show the sort of tasks involved.

I've just revisited TrainSardine, and they have only around 10% of the posts that we have here on "The Coffee Shop".  Both sites were set up to service a need - a need to say "things aren't what they should be", and neither would have existed in the first place had it not been for very serious concerns amongst a number of people about what the Train Operating Companies were doing. I know that the Coffee Shop would not have been created if First Great Western had provided even a half sensible service on the TransWilts line ... and I can't help but wonder if I should (ironically) also be thanking FGW for just how busy we are.  And with that busyness and number of posts, we have far more people willing to assist in providing the background services that keep images to scale, spam away, and so on - the sort of things you commented on.

Here's an admission. I would be happy - very happy indeed - to see improvements that reduces the need for the campaiging element of this forum. We had 3240 posts in the first two months of this year.  I would much rather have had 1500 posts, and appropriate travel opportunities available at my local station.

I'm noting also G.Uard's comments, posted while I was composing offline. Yes, we have grown to rather more than a pure protest site ... in any case, it's not much good just protesting and being negative - we need and have always encouraged constructive approaches.  And I'm personally very happy to help passengers, operation staff, and managers on services that are running properly making the most of those proper services - but with a bit of jealousy, and a bit of "please make it a level playing field and do the same for us".