Great Western Coffee Shop

I was travelling back from Axminster to Bristol today and arrived at St Davids at 1642 intending to catch the 1653 XC service to Bristol TM, which was on platform 6. At the same time a 1641 service to London Paddington pulled in on platform 5 formed of a class 143 Pacer. The destination board said Taunton and the station staff confirmed (not to me personally, through shouting) this was an HST substitute as far as Taunton where an HST would take over.

Needless to say this was pretty well rammed to the gunnels and getting worse given the number of people with chunky luggage. The XC Voyager on the other hand was virtually empty - 2 other people besides me in my carriage. The Pacer departed at about 1646 and the Voyager on time - my train arrived at Taunton at 1720. The Pacer was on 1 side of the island platform and the HST on the other with passengers moving between the two. The XC service then (I think but I wasn't paying attention) left before the HST.

There's no regular 1641 service and I realise it's a bank holiday. It did occur to me though that surely the sensible thing to do would have been to move any passengers on non-TOC specific tickets onto the Voyager as far as Taunton (it remained no more than 1/4 full as far as Temple Meads). The Pacer would inevitably lose time given its 75mph max speed anyway (although it seemed to be far enough ahead not to affect the Voyager). Is there any reason this couldn't have been done and is this a regular sort of problem?

Oh, and before anyone comments they'd prefer to spend 30 minutes on a Pacer than a Voyager - if you'd really rather stay on an extremely cramped, probably rather hot train with bus suspension than a virtually empty air conditioned express service (admittedly with some faults) then it's your choice I suppose. But not mine.

I'm very sorry to learn of that situation, The Grecian - and thanks for posting those details.

We do have several members on this forum who are also staff of those two particular TOCs - and who will, I'm sure, be able to offer some comments.

Chris.  :-\

Hmm.... (musing to myself)

Pacer? Or Voyager? Voyager? Or Pacer?

Kind of between a rock and a hard place....

 :P ;) ;D

Bit of a risk of people missing the HST or having to further delay the HST to wait for the XC service.

The XC did actually depart before the HST.

It looks like the swap may have taken longer than they would probably hope. (8mins)

I was lucky coming back from penzance - I changed at plymouth and got an XC HST all the way to temple meads

Although as pointed out the Pacer was Full, They actually are not that bad at 75mph on welded rail and with all the hopper windows open at that speed would have been  quite airy

Due to the overcrowding the 143 left EXD around 4 late to start with, and fgw control would have hoped the hst from Taunton would have left earlier and not cause any delay (cost) to the XC. 

One of the problems of multi-toc & delay blame i'm afraid.

The HST should have run all the way down from Taunton to Paignton, but was terminated short due to a technical fault, so the 143 saved the day for the Pgn-Tau pax.

I tought I heard Bob Crow talking about Mcnaulty that were 600 people dealing with attribution of delays.
Surely there's not many, but I do wonder how many there are.

Perhaps if they were all put in controls and told to not worry about whose fault it was but to bang TOCs heads together and tell them to co-operate to minimise the overall delay and cause the least inconvenience to passengers it might be a more useful occupation.

Interesting responses. As I say I wasn't personally inconvenienced - but obviously others were. I certainly wouldn't criticise the FGW staff, they seemed to be doing their best to resolve the problem and a Pacer is better than no train at all.

It just seemed like the kind of thing that BR might have resolved by directing passengers at Exeter onto the XC service and getting them to change again at Taunton - more changes, but they'd have more room, particularly given the bank holiday luggage. Unfortunately the railways have 'target culture' like everyone else and I can understand why FGW would prefer their HST to depart on time to avoid a fine, even if it would be more inconvenient for travellers.

Still, it's arguable there wouldn't be as many services under BR so swings and roundabouts (although that's contentious in itself).