What happened to the early trains / lessons to learn

[whole diary]

[bobm]

Not a good start to the summer timetable, with the 08:49, 09:52 and 10:47 (Melksham times) all cancelled.  Don't know about the 12:07 yet.

"This is due to a member of train crew being unavailable."

Cancellation of 08:49 was quite close to the time it was due /  initial help point advise was to wait for the 10:47 (would her been brilliant thing to do as that's cancelled too!) but people had appointments, connections, tickets for events.   FGW^▸ (First Great Western) / Twitter and Station Manager a great help in getting Taxis - took 8 people from Melksham up to Chippenham.   Don't know about passengers from Westbury and Trowbridge.

Kiss and ride passengers for 09:52 decided to drive to Westbury themselves;  we were a bit overstocked with taxis (that's probably because people saw about the cancellation online, and estimates were based on a guess as to how we might do).   I do note a scathing review on our Facebook page, but it's unclear as to whether that's from an intended traveller or an armchair critic.  Certainly not someone I met at Melksham Station; and (for Melksham where I have been) at least, everyone who's come to the station has made their journey so far.

Very VERY disappointing ... hopefully just "one of those things"; I can personally accept it if the train crew member involved had a significant crisis, on the basis of "these things happen"

For the record, the member of train crew missing was the driver.

Edit by Grahame  I have split this topic as it's turning into a technical analysis which might rather concern potential service users ...

[SDS]

Paste from Tyrell.

2M05 and 2M06 are were cancelled due to no driver available.

2M07 and 2M08 are were cancelled due to no driver available.


I do believe it was a diagram error. Aka someone forgot to assign a driver to that diagram.

[John R]

That's pretty poor if it was a diagram error.  And if so, once they realised, did they try to find someone willing to work a few hours of overtime, so that at least the later services ran?

[phile]

Diagramming or rostering error ?

[grahame]

I have split this topic off from http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=14018.0 as it's getting technical and perhaps would concern people who are not regular rail users - it was starting to highlight flaws that need to be resolved rather than publicised!

[grahame]

My understanding is that it was technically a rostering error and at one point it was expected that the next round trip would have been cancelled too.

Once the problem was realised, taxis were arranged for departing passengers; tricky one to know just *how* many as it was a new service.  Two very full taxis for the first service, 4 hardly used for the second, 3 fully used for the third and 3 (or which two were filled) for the fourth.  Not too bad going, considering it was being worked out on what can only have been educated guesswork!

I was a little disappointed that the chap who turned up in a First van wasn't able to help ("I'm only here to ....") ... but that's perhaps an operational discussion to have locally.  His was a very different role, but he should have known who to call, I think.

[bobm]

I was a little disappointed that the chap who turned up in a First van wasn't able to help ("I'm only here to ....") ... but that's perhaps an operational discussion to have locally.  His was a very different role, but he should have known who to call, I think.

Out of interest was he there to update the timetable posters?