Great Western Coffee Shop

FGW gets a lot of bad press in places (and in this forum at times) so I thought I would post how pleasant the journey home was last night.

Not only was the departure on time, I got a seat and the view was of a glorious sunny evening.

Sadly with the incoming dark nights and the clock change less than a month away I suspect until next yearr these things may be few and far between!

07:07 out and 17:06 back are my regular trains.

I can say that for me, 98% of journeys arrive within 10% of scheduled times, which I think is pretty good. 99% of the time I get a seat.

Excluding the hassles we had the last 3 weeks with overrun works at Westbury area, followed rail breaks at Aldermarston, the service has been pretty good.

The other 2% tend to be mostly person hit by train around the Southhall area and occasional signal issues (including theft of cable)

At Paddington the train pulls in at plat 8 perfect for picking up my bicycle ;-)

Welcome to the forum, John. Is that from Theale - the train which runs from / to Bristol via Bradford-on-Avon in both the morning and the evening?  Good to read that they're mostly on time - or close enough for you to consider them on time ... and that it's rare for you not to et a seat.

In many aspects / areas First do indeed provide an excellent service, and in some of the aspects / areas where they don't it's due to matters beyond their immediate control and business interest.  Hopefully this forum helps passengers and understand some of the systems that are a bit laberynthine at times, such as fares and who's responsible for what on the railways as they plan for the future.  And as people understand, they can make better use of the system, more tuned inputs to the next franchise consultations, and be more understanding of just what's going on and why it might have happened when something's less than perfect for them.

I think one of the issues that customers (and dare I say it Train Operators) face is that when we are buying ticket we perceive we are buying a service to get us from A to B (Possibly via Y and Z sometimes!). We shouldn't have to worry that the Trains and tracks (and signalling and catering) are run by different companies.

I actually agree most of the time I think the FGW service is very good - its just when things go wrong their commication skills are sometimes in question!

When you buy a ticket to travel on the National Rail Network you enter into an agreement with the Train Companies whose trains you have the right to use. That
agreement gives you the right to make the journey or journeys between the stations or within the zones shown on the ticket you have bought.  I should imagine that "Train Companies" also includes infrastructure providers in this respect.

You lucky so and so.....
Leave an hour later and you're in the thick end of the scrum.
And the sun is now way past the horizon at that time of night. :(

Thanks for the welcome. Yes it's the HST services.

At a push I can just about get the 17:12 to Theale from Reading, but involves a 2 min change from the 16:45 Padd to Rdg which pulls in at 17:09, often there is only matter of 30 seconds to change... but standing in Coach A/B minimises the distance to get from Plat 4 to Plat 1

Tonight the 17:06 was unusually on platform 4 at PAD with the 17:00 to Bristol TM alongside on platform 5, therefore the two trains on opposite platform faces each had a destination of Bristol TM on the window stickers! Hopefully everyone got the right trains, the electronic indicators on platform 4 did show Bradford-on-Avon as the 17:06's destination.

Yes it was, which meant a longer walk from the bike racks.... upside was I got G&T they were handing out  ;D