Great Western Coffee Shop

I have taken the following post off the google uk railway group. Seems a valid point to me would any of our members working for FGW like to comment or pass it on to the powers that be.  Happened yesterday 8 sep pm:-

How dumb is Control at FGW? Genuine answers would be genuinely appreciated;
I rarely find myself entirely unable to dreg up even the hint of
justification for an operating decision, but in this case words and
rationale fail me. Those not of a nerdish bent, and those with their own
life to lead,  may choose not to read further.

Last night they had trouble getting a unit out for the 19.42 all stations
Reading to Bedwyn.. so far, so not unusual. As the clock ticked by, I
expected it to be cancelled outright, as also is not unusual... instead, in
due course it was announced the train would still be running, but would call
only at Newbury and Bedwyn. It was already clear that the train wouldn't
leave ahead of the 20.11 HST to Plymouth, which also calls at Newbury, so
this meant, in effect, that the service would run as an entirely useless
service train, conveying only a handful of passengers for Bedwyn, and was
effectively being run ECS to maintain the inward working from Bedwyn.


But here's the relevant background arithmetic which you'd expect FGW Control
to be on top of.. wouldn't you?


The standard schedule for an all-stations train from Reading to Bedwyn is 50
minutes, and the standard reversing allowance at Bedwyn is 5 minutes.
However, exceptionally, the 19.42 is allowed 5 minutes padding between
Newbury Racecourse and Newbury, has a 16 minute layover at Newbury to allow
the 20.11 HST to overtake, and is allowed 14 minutes for reversing in the
siding at Bedwyn.  In essence, then, this train has some 30 minutes spare
in its schedule before any impact on the return working need kick in. Or to
put it another way, the 19.42 could leave Reading as late as 20.02 and still
reach Bedwyn on time, or could leave as late as 20.11 and still reach Bedwyn
in time to make an on-time return working.


But what happens? A whole bunch of us harangue, in the most courteous
Newbury-line manner, the Duty Manager who is to his credit available on the
departure platform and who gives an eloquent, impromptu speech explaining
essentially that what the ivory tower decrees is law, that his role is no
more than to run what he's given, less coherently that it's all the fault of
the person who committed suicide at Twyford some nine hours earlier, that
while he could indeed relay our arguments to Control it would make no
difference, and that the next train for the 95% of us who don't happen to
leave in Bedwyn will be at 20.41. Note, perhaps relevantly, that this 20.41
happens to be scheduled 59, not 60, minutes later than the 19.42...


I move up the platform to discuss the matter with the train driver who
validates my argument with reference to his schedule, but confirms that
whatever the ivory tower deems to be sensible just, by definition, is..


Train is signalled out at 20.13 (just after the HST). But driver has no
official notice of the change in stopping points; couldn't we, I suggest,
just sneak out and run as normal, then, pretending we hadn't heard the
announcements? No, driver strolls off to tell the Duty Manager he wants a
bit of paper; Duty Manager runs away (literally runs) to get something from
the office.. Five minutes later we leave in this almost empty train. Reach
Newbury 20.34, just two minutes later than the scheduled departure time;
reach Bedwyn 20.48, four minutes ahead of the scheduled arrival time. And
then the unit sits for 6 minutes in the down platform, into and out of the
sidings, and sits for another 8 minutes in the up platform - and in all this
time not a single train transits this rural fastness in either direction -
before we head back towards  Reading.... and I get off at Hungerford
half-an-hour late.. [Incidentally, there was no announcement that passengers
for Hungerford and Kintbury should "circulate" via Bedwyn, even though doing
that saved me 25 minutes.. ]


Is this the first time they've thrown 100 passengers off a train just so
they could make it arrive early somewhere nobody wants to be?


We've always known that without customers it's much easier to run trains,
and 15 years have taught me that FGW takes this dictum to heart... but what,
in the real world, were these people hoping to achieve last night? Every
single one of the omitted stops could have been made and the return working
could still have been within a minute or two of right-time [and all this on
the charitable assumption that the orginal tardiness in procuring the unit
wasn't itself down to incompetence, which in a literal sense of course it
was].


I'm not at all averse to omitting minor stops in cases of serious delay
where the next train is not far behind and where the majority benefit at
only slight cost to the minority .. but in this case absolutely the opposite
applied. I may ask FGW what the rationale was, but what's the chance they
will actually tell me? And if there's such a chasm between operating staff
and customer-facing staff, how can we get through to operators that they're
there not to play trains but to service customers?