Great Western Coffee Shop

Hi all,

I was planning a day trip from Whimple to Sherborne by train but I have now realised that this is Hst diverts day! Is it going to be chaotic - I have to change from FGW to SWT at Yeovil!

there are some swt services running all the way threw i belive, also as this has been going on a couple of weeks i feel confident enough to say it should go smoothly this weekend its been getting better since it started and the facilitys at yeovil are good the people in the buffet are friendly its a nice place to wait

There are some SWT services running through.  It is the final weekend of the Taunton-Exeter blockade.

Details of these through SWT services as well FGW services operating between Yeovil and Exeter can be found here:
http://www.southwesttrains.co.uk/NR/rdonlyres/11B597A5-A58E-4BEB-92E0-F96FF14AA505/0/1130WestOfEngland.pdf

I know I have talked about this on another thread but if SWT can publish full timetable alterations online then why can't FGW do the same and not just expect us to use the journey planner?

That is the million dollar question. FGW used to be one of the best TOCs for publishing engineering work timetables online and in booklet form every weekend. This stopped happening December 06. Publishing booklets every week is a bit of a luxury but they could have continued to publish them online like NXEC (previously GNER) do. See below link:

http://www.nationalexpresseastcoast.com/Documents/PTT%20Sunday%2030%20November%202008.pdf

To give FGW some credit, they do publish revised timetable posters online when engineering work takes place on most local services and some mainline services but not when the work involves a more detailed timetable such as when the line between Swindon-Didcot, Taunton-Exeter or Warminster-Salisbury is closed which IMHO is when they are needed most. Sadly I can't see this ever changing so the annoying Customers are advised to use the journey planner to check journey times before travelling will remain the order of the day when travelling at weekends/public holidays.

 

Instead of my planned visit to Sherborne, I took a FGW HST from Honiton to Exeter St Davids - Fantastic! I think it would be good if a service ran daily London Paddington > Reading > Westbury > Castle Cary > Yeovil Junction > Crewkerne > Axminster > Honiton > Exeter Central > Exeter St Davids in the morning and vice versa and in the evening and vice versa, if that makes sense...

im sure its faster!! or would deffo be if it wasnt single line! ok so people from taunton miss out thats the only downer

eh... i'm sure it's not  ???

I took this one of the diverted HST trains to London from Exeter St Davids. To get to Yeovil Junction from Exeter St Davids non stop took about 1 hour and 10 minutes. It then ran slow to castle cary for some unknown reason.

The Train Manager made an announcement when we stopped at a passing place which made me smile :)

"Due to the 1960's of Dr Beeching, having the line between Exeter & Yeovil made single track for most of the route, there will be a timetabled delay whilst we wait for the SWT Exeter Service to pass us before we can continue on our way"

if the slow down was on the bit of single track between yeovil junction and pen mill im guessing that this is due to the token exchange and this section probably has a  low speed limit ...its not normally in passenger use