Great Western Coffee Shop

i used to think it was my cotswolds line to hereford:
- single track so arriving within 45 minutes of schedule is a bonus
- the worst of the stock so if any long distance ends with a turbo, its us
- paucity of trains

however this is offset by:
- relatively cheap fares
- used to be friendly staff who knew most of the passengers as it was worked by a small sub set of crew (this is rapidly disappearing though)
-trains MOSTLY dont get cancelled

Having been on here a few months, beginning totink we dont get it that bad.

So what is the worst?

At the moment IMHO Cardiff-Bristol-Portsmouth for one reason...chronic overcrowding on two car units.

Severn beach seems to be the worst lately! Although on the Cornish mainline the 0604 Penzance to Newton Abbot seems to be the fist casualty for short formation/cancellation when any unit fails (this train is the main commuter train from Cornwall into Plymouth and is usually full and standing after Liskeard), whenever the Falmouth or St Ives unit fails then they nick the unit from the 0604, although this probably benefits the majority as by cancelling the one mainline train this saves cancelling 4,5 or maybe more trains on one of the branches!

TransWilts?

50% of trains cancelled yesterday ... not a single train from Swindon after the 06:19, last train of the day that actually called at Melksham (pop 24000) was there at 07:17 .... (yes, that's in the early morning) ... wouldn't mind a grotty old train that's more often late than on time (wait - that's what we have when it runs anyway!).

"You know you have it bad if you routinely have a backup plan to make your journey if the train fails to show up!"

And I thought my commuting into London from Maidenhead under FGW was bad (which it is!). This site has shown me how much much worse FGW is making it for other people!

To be fair to the TransWilts lot, from Decemeber you do have a service in both directions from Melksham, and the late train is at a more sensible time.

johoare

And thats one of the pampered Maidenhead commuters confessing.

(Can you see my swollen cheek)

11/11/2007
After yesterday and the last 2 Saturdays the Great Malvern - Gloucester section of the GMV to TAU route.
Maybe we should have a thread on which is the most reliable FGW route as FGW seem to alienate passengers on almost every route they operate.

I agree with you, Liam.   The Sunday trains from Westbury at 19:35 and 21:35 have been replaced by services at 17:05 and 19:35 - that's much better - and a new train runs from Swindon to Westbury at 18:31.

That's still a far cry, though, from services from Westbury at 12:29, 16:26 and 20:34, returning from Swindon at 13:31, 17:23 and 21:14 which is what was running this time last year and getting increasingly popular too! What services do you have on the line nearest you, Liam?  Can I ask if you would be contented with a similar service to that which is being provided on Sundays at my local ststion from December, or do you expect more than 3 trains a day?

I don't think my line is a fair comparison, 2 trains a day from Paignton/Torquay/Torre etc would be suicide on FGWs part.

Obviously your service isn't great, two trains a day in each direction would probably be better suited if it was at times that people wanted/needed to travel at, although until FGW sort out their unit allocations joke I can't see anything improving soon!

Any comparison is fair, provided it takes the appropriate factors into account. Although care needs to be taken to avoid comparing services in such a way that there's even a hint that a practical suggestion is being made that "service for X should be reduced to the same as service for Y" as we need to raise the game for everyone and not lower it.   Which is why my apparently absurd suggestion about comparing the TransWilts line to the Torbay branch came about.

But I say apparently absurd.

If I go to Melksham station now - 11:30 on Sunday morning - and want to catch a train to London, I'll have to wait until 19:50.  And, yes, I would get pretty darned bored waiting around and resentful of the loss of my time.  It's not actually relevant to me from a selfish viewpoint as to how many others are waiting too.

So my comparsion asked "how would the people of Paignton feel if they wanter to travel at 11:30 but had to wait until 19:50" ... and at that micro (individual) level, the question is valid.  After all - if it wasn't, then surely First would be running an eight coach train every 4 hours between Cardiff and Portsmouth - same capacity on the route as at present, and just look at the efiiciency and profit gains if the traffic stayed at the same level  ;D

That made me laugh out loud! And no I've never hit anyone... honest!!
But it's true, until I came across this site, I never realised quite how bad FGW could be! It makes me feel happier with my train service now (even if it used (pre FGW) to be even better!). Now if only my trains would run on time....

From my point of view:

Reliabilty: North Downs Line (Reading - Redhill/Gatwick Airport)
Overall:   TransWilts

The worst route has to be

S Wales - BPW - Swindon - Reading - London

The variables that affect performance that are under FGW's control are pretty common throughout the network, but NR Rail have problems with

Severn Tunnel
Chipping Sodbury Tunnel
Wootton Basset

and these affect the performance severely. These two tunnels are over 130 years old, and are in need of major maintenance! Even after this line was shutdown for 10 days last year to resolve track and flooding problems near Chipping Sodbury, the tunnel has still flooded several times.

Use that once-twice a week, never had an issue.

Cardiff-Portsmouth is still the worst servcie by far for me personally

The North Downs route must come high on the list. It should be an important connection between Gatwick Airport and Bristol, South Wales and the West Midlands.
That's what I use it for. The trains are slow, infrequent, often crowded, lack the luggage space needed for airport services. There is one toilet per train, often 'out of use'.
As for Sunday services (remember airports operate 24/7) the last two occasions I attempted to travel from Cheltenham to Gatwick, to arrive by 1245, the line was closed.

Gosh ... this is an old thread ... sad how little things seem to change ...

As a student in the 80's I took a summer job in Heathrow Duty Free and I can recall that Sundays were Heathrow's busiest days. Don't know if that's still the case or if the same was true of Gatwick. If it is then shouldn't the North Downs line run more frequently on a Sunday than it currently does?

The service on the North Downs on a Sunday isn't that bad really. The first three services at Reading on a Sunday are all North Downs trains, two to Gatwick and one from Gatwick. Services start running at around 0600 from both ends, earlier than on most lines on a Sunday, although it is later than Monday-Saturdays still. Even though the service is only hourly throughout the whole line the trains don't seem to be too crowded on Sundays in my experience. Often on North Downs trains I find one end of the three-car unit is busy but the other end empty.

What's more, once you work out the timing margins for catching a plane, the weekday service is not much better than one an hour. You can end up using a slow train with the fast one as back-up, as the other way round does not work.

However, we will have two through trains an hour once the builders have done at Gatwick. Now, will they be one fast and one slow? Both half-fast as now on Sunday?  And on Sundays?

Indeed, if you're travelling to Gatwick the difference in journey times between the stopper and the fast services does make the service not much more than 1tph. I guess the pattern would remain similar to now, just with the Redhill trains extended to Gatwick Airport. It would require one extra unit to do that though. Potentially if the stops were more evenly spread between the two services you could manage to run the service with 6 units still, but it would require tight turnarounds at both ends of the line. Finding different paths through the Guildford area and Redhill-Gatwick would probably be difficult as well.

Ollie, I'm surprised about your comment ref the North Downs line in terms of reliability having travelled it for two years i found it to be pretty good!  I must caveat this by saying you are better placed than I am to analyze data and my experience is based on specific regular journies

Be fair, that was five years ago!

Before we drift any further into the territory of the North Downs Line topic, I note that overcrowidng on Sundays was flagged there by someone last year. That's really a capacity issue rather than the service issue we have just been discussing.

Also, as far as I can see, the Gatwick remodelling itself has never been mentioned in this forum (nor the work at Redhill). This should add far more capacity to the relief lines than one extra Reading service per hour, so paths on the Redhill-Gatwick leg should be no problem.

The Gatwick remodelling will remove conflicts at Gatwick on the relief lines with the Gatwick Express services. At the moment though the Redhill terminators arrive at xx25, so they'd have to follow the xx30 Portsmouth service I imagine. They depart Redhill at xx34, there's an xx36 arrival from Horsham so they'd have to arrive early enough so as not to delay that.

Although the Gatwick additional platform is expected to be finished during CP4 (Jan 2014), there are alterations planned at Redhill during CP5 as well:


So all in all a lot busier than now.

Paul

From what I've seen about the Redhill platform 0 plan, it's justified mainly to improve reliability of the current timetable rather than to increase capacity. When they are joining trains and one half is late, the extra platform helps to avoid knock-on delays or cancellations and stock dispalacement. However, having altered these two stations, no doubt some unexpected new ways of using the new arrangement will emerge from the timetabling process.

That was in 2007, it certainly isn't the opinion that I have now.

Additional frequencies at Redhill resulting from Thameslink (2 tph each from Horsham & Three Bridges AIUI) have been described in the relevant RUS (Sussex, 2010). The entry in the latest CP5 enhancements list (Jan 13) goes on to say:


I'd say more trains through Redhill is a dead cert, not just a possibility...

Page 77 of this .pdf document from Network Rail gives the full context: http://bit.ly/16TG47Z

Paul

 

Moderator note: edited to shorten link. bignosemac

Hmmm.. interesting questions. There could be some scope to improve the existing offering. It's not an inconvenience to me, but travelling between minor stations on the off-peak pattern without doubling-back looks a bit tricky without a frequent all-stations stopper.

I suppose if Guildford had more capacity there might be even more possibilities like letting a fast overtake a stopper.

And, of course, in the old days they used to go to Tonbridge...

At the moment though the service pattern at Guildford is about a 25/35 minute gap between services, so it isn't really feasible to loop a stopper for a fast. The stopper at the moment is most stations Guildford-Reading too, so not much scope to add stops. It's between Guildford and Redhill where the service is currently skip stop, with differing patterns over two hours. If you make the stopper and fast services closure together at Guildford to allow for overtaking then you lose the roughly half hourly Guildford-Reading service which is very useful at the moment. The old service pattern would have been more useful for the minor stations between Guildford and Redhill with hourly Reading-Shalford stoppers and two hourly Guildford-Redhill all station services. Reverting back to that wouldn't provide 2tph to Gatwick though.

Worst route is Penzance to Plymouth or even Exeter in a two-car unit.

Best route is Penzance to Plymouth/Exeter in a FGW HST with the express cafe open.

Agreed, the 2tph to Gatwick with as much balance as possible between departures at the termini should be the objective (I did realise after giving it some thought that there is no way that could be maintained with jiggery-pokery at Guildford).

That should also mean the minor stations will get more through services to Gatwick without changing at Redhill.

Obviously a lot of holidaymakers use the line, I would like to see First push the advertising for these passengers (e.g. Flyaway Tickets) a bit more. The enhanced service should help them to do that (as much as I hate manoeuvring round the sea of luggage!).

As long as the trains are 166s rather than 165s as well they are pretty suitable for all the luggage, they have plenty of large luggage racks.

Heart of Wessex on a Sunday during the winter months is awful for trains South of Westbury... Although considering the level of service Melksham receives on a weekday basis. I feel like I have little to moan about.

But using Frome as an example:

Sunday 267 Bus Service: 4 Return Journeys from the town centre: 10:03, 12:13, 15:13 & 17:23

Sunday Rail Service: 4 Direct services to Bath Spa and Bristol Temple Meads. 5th (First of the day) Journey requires a change at Westbury (Times: 12:27*, 15:37, 17:31, 19:18 & 21:34)

*Terminates at WSB.

Sadly, The level of service has not changed at all since I've lived in and around Somerset since 2006!