Great Western Coffee Shop

The FGW Train departed London Paddington at 19:26 instead of 19:06 from a delay of an earlier train.

The train crew managed to make up time and the train arrived in Plymouth 4 minute early.

I just wanted to say well done to the train crew.

Guy

No  - well done the timetablers for putting excessive padding into the timetable

why is padding such a bad thing??? it gives better flexability and you know what time the trains getting where you want to go by...

24minutes?  I don't think there is that much padding!

5 mins per station wouldnt surprise me, then just lucky with fast loading... its still a very difficult route to make up time on

Why?

BEcause in 2004 I could get to London in under 2 hours

Now because of padding it takes nearly 2.5 hours

In each direction that is an extra hour  day - or 20 hours a month or 12 days a year I spend sitting on a train

In 2004 the train got there on time 3/5 - slightly delayed 1/5 - very delayed 1/5 - I got compo for the very delayed.  Now very delayed  is on time.

I'd rather get home on time or slightly late 20% of the time than spend nearly two weeks more a year sitting on a train!

What a load of tosh.  PAD-PLY services have 2 mins per station - and that is just dwell time - not padding.

I will check our systems when i'm next in, because something is not adding up.

The problem as I see it is that the official definition of an on-time train is arrival at its FINAL destination within 10 minutes of its booked time.Thats ok over the long haul where padding in the timetable enables a train to regain lost time.But if your travelling on that same delayed service over the shorter haul your train will still be delayed as there is much less oportunity to make up time or even loss more time.For instance there is now a regular time keeping problem on some Penzance to Paddington trains between Penzance/Plymouth because of heavy local commuting combined with SDO.The up 0844 and 1000 Penzance/Paddington and down 1306 and 1406 Paddington/Penzance HSTs are regularly delayed because of overcrowding between Plymouth and Penzance yet as long as they arrive in Paddington "On time" these ongoing problems are simply masked over in the official statistics.The saying "There are lies,damned lies and statistics" springs to mind.

It does have a lot of slack over the Berks & Hants, and also between Taunton and Exeter, so if the driver was "putting his foot down" then its quite possible to make time up.

The service left Paddington 13minutes late due to awaiting Train Crew.  It was 10 minutes late on departing Reading, and picked up time by only stopping for 1 minute at each of the stations on route to Exeter (it stopped everywhere on the B&H), and as DM says, for some reason it was timed nearly 20 minutes from Tiverton to Exeter!  It was Right time from Exeter, and recorded as 5 early into Plymouth, although it picked up the final 5 minutes during the last 5 minutes of the journey, as there is make-up time built into the end of most journeys to try and keep them recording as 'On time' (how they get away with that I don't know!).

It would seem a good job by the traincrew & station staff to get the service moving quickly at each station, and the only place it seemed to have been padded was between Tiverton & Exeter.

no sorry you misunderstand my reply, i didnt mean that there was 5 mins of padding per station

Fair enough, but your quote was "5 mins per station", and the max time per station on that and most service is 2mins.

sorry mate my mistake,clarity wasnt always my strength