Great Western Coffee Shop

As regular forum members/site visitors will know, the reliability of the Westbury-Swindon service via Melksham over the Christmas/New Year period (http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=8186.msg82556#msg82556) has, ahem, not been all it could have...

However, a normal service is due to resume on Tuesday (04/01/2011) offering the opportunity of a clean sheet, and the chance for FGW to prove to TransWilts & Melksham rail users that they need not worry about a return to the fearsomely bad reliabilty of a few years ago.

So what do you think - Will FGW do us proud and deliver the normal schedule of TransWilts/Melksham rail services (such as it is) in full, or will they suffer an extended Christmas/New Year service reliability hangover?

One vote only per forum member, which you may change at any time up until the poll closes. Members unfamiliar with the TransWilts/Melksham timetable (2 services in each direction per day on weekdays) can find it at http://www.firstgreatwestern.co.uk/Documents/Custom/TTs%20Dec%20%2710/GW10D_TT25_WEB_%281%29.pdf

Lee's not around today ... and has asked me to keep an eye on the running today / this thread.   I'm doing so ... I've noted what happened this morning and I'll have an eye out tonight.

All back yesterday, (no problem more that one service about 15 minutes late) and so far so good this morning.   Looks like the optimists were right - congratulations.

Let's continue to be optimistic;  it wasn't just on the TransWilts that FGW had issues on some of the days over Christmas and the New Year - in fact they seemed at times to have an exceptionally high number of issues considering the slack traffic and reduced services offered. But yesterday was much improved, so perhaps we can just put the last two weeks down to experience and have a robust, reliable service henceforth  ;D

I am going to take slight issue with Lee using the word "full" in the subject line ... to me, a full service is a train service that runs in a manner appropriate to the corridor that it serves, and I look forward to having a full service at some point.  I collected a visitor off the 19:11 arrival on Monday - that was the very first train of the day, and although it ran (as did the 19:47), I think the term "full" to describe the service is an example of George Orwell's doublespeak!