Great Western Coffee Shop

I spent Saturday (11/08/2007) travelling around the Bristol area on FGW :

The brickbats :

- Several cancellations , particularly affecting Portsmouth - Cardiff , Weston-super-Mare - Filton Abbey Wood and Severn Beach line services (as has been mentioned elsewhere on the forum.) I also noticed that the 0825 Southampton Central - Cardiff Central (key Dean and Mottisfont & Dunbridge train) didnt run.

- London - Bristol services were running up to an hour late at one point.

- Ticket machines out of order at Chippenham and Filton Abbey Wood.

- Information points not working at Filton Abbey Wood and Stapleton Road.

- 0907 Westbury - Swindon was held up at Bradford South Junction so that a late - running engineering train could clear the single line. As a result , our passenger train was 10 minutes late into Melksham. I know this is a Network Rail issue , but it does bring into focus the level of priority given to Melksham line trains.

The bouquets :

- The Avonmouth station improvements (click on http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=498.msg1610#msg1610) look good. The "heads in silouette" artwork is very effective , and the hanging flower baskets are a nice touch.

- There is now a comprehensive local area & bus connections map on the information boards at Severn Beach station.

- The conductors seemed in good spirits , and were chatting away and being helpful to passengers.

- The trains seem a bit cleaner , with station staff going through trains picking up litter as they stood at Bristol Temple Meads , and a further plus point was that (for the first time) every toilet I checked flushed.

I will be back out there very soon.....

So instead you suggest they held the freight on the GWML!?!

I was more drawing attention to the fact that any other train seems to get priority over Melksham line passenger trains which , remember , tend to run only twice a day each way. There have been several incidences of this , which has led to FGW appealing the signallers decisions.

Also , it should be noted that we are not talking about a freight train in the conventional sense , rather an engineering train. Personally , I think Network Rail (their logo on the side) could have scheduled the train so that it had no chance of clashing with one of the few TransWilts passenger train services.