Great Western Coffee Shop

Interesting how different parts of First Group support the New Year Celebrations:

First Great Western - temporarily suspends the Reading blockade 31 Dec and puts on additional trains Paddington-Reading in the early hours of New Years Day to "...help get customers home from celebrations"

First Devon and Cornwall Buses - Most buses to stop between 1900 and 2000 New Years Eve and no buses at all on New Years Day.  (A bus driver's comment when decision to stop early questioned by a passenger - "We have to get home to our families as well you know"). Lucky other essential services don't hold this view (eg: Fire and Rescue, Ambulance, Police, Hospitals and... First Great Western's trains which all ran on New Years Day including all Cornwall and Devon branches).

 

Indeed, Stagecoach weren't running any buses past approx. 8pm in Torbay last night  ::)

Service close down early on NYE.
No trains at all on First ScotRail on NYD, but then that's been like that for years. I doubt they would be able to run any trains due to "staff shortages" on NYD!

FCC
Some Later trains into the early morning.

FirstBus and FirstRail, do seem to have a different attitude to public holidays even though they are the same group. They also have a very different view to inter-staff travel. I.e. its non existent for either group.

Staff who work for First Devon and Cornwall buses are able to travel on FGW trains within the region if travelling on work business, I also believe FGW staff can travel on First Devon and Cornwall buses to/from stations, depots, etc.

Stagecoach buses were running in Portsmouth on New Years Day, but First buses were not.

First Bus Bristol were running a Sunday service on NYD. I Rather wasted my money on a trip to Asda at Cribbs Causeway in the afternoon - hardly any fruit n veg, fresh milk or bread at 3pm. Deli counter was closed as well. Plenty of Quality Street, Christmas puddings and booze though!

Really? News to me. That will save me a quid when I don't have to buy a priv plusbus.

Back in the sixties when BR started running down services on Christmas Day in England some of my batchelor colleagues from SW Division would go to Scotland over Christmas gricing. A4s on the Glasgow Aberdeens. In those days Scottish Region ran pretty extensive services on Christmas and Boxing Days.

Remebr coming back from Hinton Admiral to Southampton on Boxing Day in the mid 1950s behind an Aurther or maybe an S15 with a very loose tender coupling. We were in the front coach and the oscillations when coasting were quite severe.   

Not defending any bus company here but the majority run commercially so if they won't make money, the buses won't run. The railway however as we all know is subsidised so their franchise contract more than likely forces them to run a service. If buses were used then a service would run but in a lot of ares there probably wouldn't be passanger numbers to justify it. Prime example would be where First in Bristol ran an extremely limited service last Boxing Day to see if such a service was viable. This time around such a service did not run so safe to say the service was not used. Ultimately services don't run to make a loss so for them to run someone has to pay for them be it local authority, central government or general users

Only valid when on duty or travelling to/from work.

How far away from work would be reasonable?? :-)