Meet the Manager - in fact "Meet the Managing Director" - online on 5th Nov 2019

[whole diary]

[moderators]

Meet the Manager - in fact "Meet the Managing Director" - online on the Coffee Shop forum

I (GrahamE writing) am pleased to announce a further "Meet the Managing Director" session live on this forum, to run from 17:00 to 18:00 on Tuesday, 5th November 2019. 

All members are welcome to submit questions - please send them to user "moderators" which the admins have specially set up for the purpose. The "best" questions will be sent on a week ahead of the session to Mark Hopwood's team so that - once again - discussions on subjects important to our members can be seeded with considered responses to fuel the discussions on the day.

Questions which don't make the "cutoff" for addressing during the interactive session will be forwarded to the GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) team for further written answers, which we will publish here.  This was the intent last time too, but issues at our forum end lead to it failing to happen.  Members are welcome to resubmit questions on matters which weren't raised during the August session - however, we (the moderator team) won't be selecting issues already aired in the previous interactive session - better to use Mark's valuable time to address fresh issues than churning over old matters.

The session is intended to look forward to service changes in December and what happens thereafter, however that does not mean that more general questions aren't also welcome.  To help inform our team of what questions are of wide interest, our Frequent Poster survey ( http://www.passenger.chat/22199 )last month suggested a number of areas of potential interest:
91% - Will you have enough trains and staff? 
74% - How are you following up - right length trains, tuning, changes in May 2020, DA3, etc
48% - How are you balancing speed v reliability of service and connections?
26% - Is everything coming in at once or are there some phased introductions?
26% - What's the prognosis for ongoing engineering and holiday provision, e.g. this Christmas / New Year?
17% - How / how much / what are your plans for future special events
Should no question at all be submitted on the first couple of topics here, we'll make sure that we "seed" something appropriate - we want to avoid the "Strictly" problem of no-one asking the key questions because everyone thinks tat someone else is sure to have done so. (Caught us last time!).

Submissions close - end of Sunday 27th October 2019.

Date for your diary - November 5th, at 17:00.  Useful discussion anticipated - Red Squirrel will be igniting each of the fireworks, Bobm will be overseeing the show with GWR in Swindon, and GrahamE will be safety marshal with a bucket of sand and an extinguisher which - on past form - he expects to sit here and not be required.

[bobm]

In keeping with forum conventions may I welcome member moderators to the forum?   

A number of questions have been mentioned already in the lead up to the official launch of the event.  Now we are open for questions do please submit these in the manner outlined above.

[grahame]

An update - December 2019 timetable changes and their effects on connections and fares, staffing and rolling stock availability, Christmas Engineering works, all getting clearer and closer.   Our government has included a bill on the railways in its Queen's Speech proposals, and Williams should be reporting soon. Have you any questions for Mark Hopwood - primarily on the December 2019 timetable changes and related matters - for our "Ask the MD" session on 5th November?   Please send a personal message to "moderators" with any questions.  The following to be shortly posted on Facebook (Mark pictured at last week's Stakeholder conference):

An opportunity for you to ask questions of Mark Hopwood, the Managing Director of Great Western Railway. 

What's happening on 15th December?

Great Western Railway operate 240 trains calling at over 270 stations in an area from London via the Thames Valley to the Cotswolds, South Wales, and South West England, with over 100 million passenger journeys made every year. Major modernisation over recent years has seen extensive electrification, signalling and other engineering works, with many older trains replaced with newer ones and other trains "cascaded" to provide additional capacity on other routes.  On 15th December 2019, a new timetable is introduced with 3 out of every 4 trains running to new times - many journeys being faster as new schedules are introduced which take advantage of the new train's better performance, and their ability to have shorter dwell times at stations as they take up and set down passengers.  With any changes, there may be some teething troubles, and with any changes there are bound to be some losers, even though the overwhelming majority of journeys should be improved.  See https://www.gwr.com/plan-journey/timetable-2019

On 5th November 2019, Mark Hopwood, MD of GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) will be online on the Coffee Shop Forum ( http://gwr.passenger.chat ) to answer questions, with a primary focus on the December Timetable change. Questions are welcome (via personal messages to the moderators on the forum) by close of business on Sunday 27th October - allowing us to give Mark time to check with his team and give us good answers on 5th November. Time on 5th November may not allow all questions to be put and then discussed, but we will forward all appropriate questions that don't make the cutoff to GWR for further comment and publication a week or two later.

If you are not a member of the forum and wish to put a question, you are welcome to register and ask. You are also very welcome to read the existing content on the forum, and indeed the "Meet the Manager" session as it happens, without even registering. The "Coffee Shop forum" is run by customers of GWR and the views expressed there are those of the individual posters concerned.

[TaplowGreen]

Are we ever going to see the questions/answers that we were promised after the last session or has that undertaking just been quietly forgotten about by the moderators?

[grahame]

Are we ever going to see the questions/answers that we were promised after the last session or has that undertaking just been quietly forgotten about by the moderators?

They have been far from quietly forgotten. They discussed just yesterday.

A single point of weakness on the Coffee shop "side" of the last session, a perfect storm where than single point of weakness was tested by a hardware failure, and has been further tested by something taking months to comeback from repair ...

Plan "B".   A request to members to resubmit any questions that were not answered, and a modified system for us to look after the questions better ... either they will be asked in the open session on 5th November or submitted shortly thereafter for further answer.  And then you will hear.

The repaired system is "due" back.  Having said which the 143s were "due" to go by the end of the year, but they won't.  So plan "B" should get you your answers.  I hope you had a backup of hat you asked 

I think I apologised for the problems in an earlier thread - if not, please accept this thread as my apology and acceptance of failure on the part of the Coffee Shop.   And please note that we have taken steps to ensure that you can get your answers - all be that three months late.

[grahame]

Bump!!

https://www.facebook.com/CoffeeShopCRP/posts/2487384684841969

Please, members, send your questions by personal message to "moderators".

"Surely someone else will have asked that" - a comment made to me in person by several people.  So - everyone is thinking the same and few are asking.  Please can YOU after reading this send in a question.   Thank you.

[rogerw]

Done

[grahame]

Final call!

Questions for "ask the MD" by p.m. to "moderators" please ... closing at the end of the weekend to use chance to sort, fill any gaps from high-priority matters from the Frequent Poster survey, and get the questions to Mark in good time so the he can ask his team on technical matters and be fully briefed for 5th November

[grahame]

A big thank you to EVERYBODY who wrote in with your questions - please excuse the lack of personal answers to each of them.   All questions have now be compiled up ready for 5th November, and have been submitted to GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) to give Mark and his team a good opportunity to look into any elements that would otherwise come at them from left field.  Some questions are composites, with related matters linked, and there's a few at the end which may well take the form of question and prepared answer without time for discussion - but that way we are able to get feedback for 100% of the questioners, and to do so on the day too.

Look forward to seeing you on 5th November for 5 p.m., folks ... your MC will be Red Squirrel, your support team in Swindon will be BobM, your technician keeping prepared to oil any wheels if they stick will be myself, and other moderators will be in the audience as cheerleaders and crowd control!