Great Western Coffee Shop

I appreciate this has been covered before, but travelling on the 17.22 Paddington to Hereford, there was an announcement apologising for the lack of a buffet car; which indeed had completely vanished as I walked through the train to get off at Honeybourne.

As an infrequent traveller I wondered if this was now an isolated incident or was still a more frequent occurrence.

(there was a perfunctory trolley service in 1st Class that appeared to vanish after Reading).

Its rare for the 1722 not to have a buffet - whether it gets a 1st class trolley and/or a buffet as far as Evesham is more variable.

I was on the 1751 last night and that is always a 2+7 or mini buffet these days.

Have to say, I did notice there was no buffet on that train whch is why I went for the later one.  1st can be rammed enough with 2.5 cars of first - when its only 2, its not pleasant

Out of interest there seems to be a growing Buffet Graveyard at Laira depot where last count I think about 7 or 8 coach F's were sitting there.

Yet at the same time a lot of sets don't have a new style or old style buffet, and thus only an inadequate static trolley. I had assumed that this was because the buffets were in for conversion, so could understand a few sets being short, but obviously this isn't the case.

There is somewhat of an void between the old buffets being stood down and the new conversions entering service

These off lease buffets were today transfered to Eastleigh for storage.

Was on the 1822 last night and the buffet CH was actually on the 1722 last night - it was worse than I thought.

It was set swapped for a 2+7 fairly late on - fair enough. 

He was put on the static trolley in A.  There was supposed to be a Paddington CH to do the first class trolley.  You would say fair enough except:

1. The CH doing the first class trolley was only booked as far as Reading (hmmmm - lots of good that is really)

2. They did not show up

So first had no trolley and for the enterprising souls who made it as far as A, the only complimentaries the CH had was a tea bag as they were all locked at the back end of H to be administered by the absent CH.

Not good for what was 50% of the main cotswolds lines evening peak trains.

1822 was fine today, by the way

Did the trolley actually show up because according to the CH tonight, they never did - unless they showed up literally last minute as the train was pulling off and he was already in A

06:00 Plymouth-Paddington this morning had an extra Coach F locked out of use, leading the 8 A-H coaches.

probably a stock move to OOC

Despite the fact that apparently a 2+8 is unable to keep to the timings hence the fact from next week it is 7 minutes slower in order to allow the Chef ::)

Tonight its a 2+7 again albeit tonight its a mini buffet

It is, however, extremely cosy in first.

I hope you haven't had to share a table ;)

I have never moaned about sharing a table with other first class passengers..........and there was not a single table with less than three people at it (other than the two seater ones)

However there are FOUR customer hosts.

One who is up the duff who is limited to tea making (should be be rostered on if thats all she can do) - two on the trolley (one is a regular and the other may be a trainee never seen him before) and one seemingly a spare part.

If there are ANY trains as far as WOS tonight where there is a missing trolley/absent buffet - we know where their CH probably is

I did think it was a strange choice of service to send the extra coach up on  ???