Great Western Coffee Shop

Whilst most other operators are providing a near normal weekday service over Christmas, Arriva have decided to operate a service worse than normal Sundays. They are providing 1 tph on all core routes. That consists of:

Hourly Plymouth - Edinburgh
Hourly Bournemouth - Manchester
And vice versa

Therefore the following are cancelled:
Hourly Bristol - Manchester
Hourly Reading - Newcastle

Clearly XC don't understand that many of their customers are leisure travellers at this time of year.

I nearly forgot, many of these services are 4 car Vomits and all 5 HST sets with over 500 seats are sat in sidings.

What a joke.

bus company...don't invite them to tender again!...amateurs

I wouldn't even call them a bus company!
out of the 3 arriva services i had to get today... not one of them was on time. infact, the first was 15 minutes late, the second was 40 minutes late, and the 3rd didn't even turn up, so i had to get the next one!!
This is a regular occurance in the Shires and Essex area... probably because 70% of the buses are old, and the newer ones don't get looked after!! So i don't really expect much from their train services..

Appalling.

This makes my blood boil. No wonder there're no advance tickets left, leading to Daily Mail headlines that damage the whole UK railway!

Is there a petition to get rid of AXC? 'Cos if there is, put a link here as I want to sign it!

Bus company? Not like First, National Express or Stagecoach then?

Erm....'Former contract hire company' don't have the same ring to it ;D

can we start an online pet to get them off the franshise?

Cornwall only has three long distance XC services normally. This week, being one of the busiest travel times, they've cut it down to two... sort of.. the 0940(ish) penzance - manchester is running as far as >>>>>> PLYMOUTH


WHY!?!?!?  ??? ??? ???

The AXC frequency of services have been causing FGW a few problems as a number of train crew are regularly booked to pass on services which dont happen to be running,..this has caused certain turns to be altered/ extended

I never knew FGW and XC pooled crews! It makes sense if they do...

They don't. FGW staff travel on Cross Country services in between jobs. Exeter drivers might take a XC train from Exeter to Bristol to take over a working to Cardiff for example.

Presumably FGW has to pay Arriva for their drivers travelling on the cushions.

Ce la vie!

More useless work for the "bean counters".

There's an agreement in place. It works both ways for many TOC's - i.e. ArrivaXC staff will travel PAO on FGW's services too. I'm not sure how much FOC's pay though as their drivers are always travelling PAO (or in taxis) and can offer no reciprocal service for the TOC's - I presume an agreed annual payment is made rather than for each journey?

Yep, XC's excellent service means that there are NO direct trains from Doncaster to Birmingham between Christmas Eve and Monday 4th January. Plus a 50% reduction in the number of trains between Doncaster and York and Newcastle.

I think XC want to drop the Doncaster route in the future and route all trains via Leeds.

Bloody annoying, as it adds an extra 20 minutes to the Birmingham - North East journey time! I always choose via Doncaster trains at the moment.

Fortunately there isn't enough capacity between Leeds and York, so I gather. This is why the aspirations to run a third Leeds to London KX service via Hambledon junction cannot be achieved (Network Rail). The only other alternative for XC would be to run direct Sheffield to York (via Pontefract Baghill) which would result in the the xx.30 service from New Street to Newcastle arriving in York before the service via Leeds (which left New Street 27 minutes earlier).  Mind you the DfT is to blame for the Newcastle services running to Reading now instead of Temple Meads.  Only a handful of passengers now travel beyond New Street, whereas previously there was a good loading Bristol TM, and Parkway (connection from Wales) going well beyond Birmingham; and dont forget those trains that started back at Paignton.

I certainly think Bristols mix of services to the East Coast (Edinburgh services) and to Manchester is an improvement on the old timetable.