Great Western Railway: on-board catering, buffets, Travelling Chef, Pullman - ongoing discussion

[whole diary]

[SDS]

Rumours going around the internal forums are that the Travelling Chefs will be regraded to Customer Hosts regardless of any 'consultation'.

05.53 PLY^» (Plymouth - next trains)-PAD^» (Paddington (London) - next trains) is being made a Pullman as of September.

[bobm]

In that the crews usually, and not unnaturally, run a meal service in both directions I wonder what the team on a 05:53 Plymouth to Paddington would do on a return journey.

Leaving London just after 10 or 11am seems a bit early for a lunch sitting.

[Rhydgaled]

Rumours going around the internal forums are that the Travelling Chefs will be regraded to Customer Hosts regardless of any 'consultation'.

If that is a change of job description, the service might not necessarily change that much. I seem to remember someone posting on RailUK that Wrexham & Shropshire (WSMR^▸ (Wrexham, Shropshire and Marylebone Railway)) did not have a chef and yet offered hot meals. Never used the service myself, but if I remember correctly WSMR was highly regarded for its catering.

Losing the chefs on FirstGW might not therefore be the disaster we fear, if a similar level of catering is provided by other, non-chef, staff. I don't hold out much hope though, sadly.

In that the crews usually, and not unnaturally, run a meal service in both directions I wonder what the team on a 05:53 Plymouth to Paddington would do on a return journey.

Leaving London just after 10 or 11am seems a bit early for a lunch sitting.

Since 05:53 is quite early in the morning, perhaps the staff have a break at London and return a little later. I'm not sure what staff hours regulations are, but could that be an issue?

Enjoy the Travelling Chef while you can.  I have been told today by a very reliable source that they are to be phased out.  No definite date yet, but probably by Christmas.

Pullman Restaurants however will remain.

Predictable unfortunately. Many services that at present have a travelling chef are fairly soon due to be downgraded to the new shorter IEP^▸ (Intercity Express Program / Project. This will offer more capacity on routes, save money, give a consistent and safe service and meet customer requirements. Intended to replace HSTs.) trains. Since these have no catering for steerage, a travelling chef service cant be provided.

I must point out that not all the IEP trains will be shorter (although a lot of them will be) and that both the longer IEPs and the shorter ones provide a trolley (and only a trolley) for standard class.

My question on the proposed new FirstGW catering offer on the IC125s is what is the point of the static trolley Mondays and Fridays? If the trolley isn't moving, surely you might as well go to the buffet for a wider range of items?

[Umberleigh]

Enjoy the Travelling Chef while you can.  I have been told today by a very reliable source that they are to be phased out.  No definite date yet, but probably by Christmas.

Pullman Restaurants however will remain.

Predictable unfortunately. Many services that at present have a travelling chef are fairly soon due to be downgraded to the new shorter IEP^▸ (Intercity Express Program / Project. This will offer more capacity on routes, save money, give a consistent and safe service and meet customer requirements. Intended to replace HSTs.) trains. Since these have no catering for steerage, a travelling chef service cant be provided.

From the railways point of view, it is therefore desirable to cease travelling chef services in plenty of time. They don't want people saying "we had a travelling chef on the old trains but lost this after the downgrade"
Much better by far to be able to say "the new trains have a similar catering offer to that previously offered"

Surely there is an argument to keep the TC^▸ (Train Crew, or Travelling Chef, depending on context) on services to Penzance, with a journey time almost twice that of London to Swansea?

I'm guessing the trolley is maybe due to coaches at the country end now being a coach further away from the buffet, it's already quite a trek

[thetrout]

Enjoy the Travelling Chef while you can.  I have been told today by a very reliable source that they are to be phased out.  No definite date yet, but probably by Christmas.

[Chris from Nailsea]

That is a very unhappy trout. 

[chuffed]

Trout Pout to end all Trout Pouts !

[bobm]

I have been a semi-regular user of the Travelling Chef.  When it has been available it has been generally very good - in particular the full breakfast - but all too often it has been unavailable due to crew or set probems.  Perhaps by concentrating resources on a total of eight Pullman services they can improve the reliability and provide the advertised service.

[TaplowGreen]

I suspect it's also a commercial decision, would be interesting to know if the Travelling Chef was profitable? 

There can only be a certain number of people prepared to pay ^4.50 for beans on toast, or ^2.25 for two slices of toast......

[broadgage]

I suspect it's also a commercial decision, would be interesting to know if the Travelling Chef was profitable? 

There can only be a certain number of people prepared to pay ^4.50 for beans on toast, or ^2.25 for two slices of toast......

IMHO^▸ ('in my humble opinion'), these prices are reasonable if it is served on a plate at ones first class seat, arguably a bit steep though for queuing up for a cardboard box

[broadgage]

Hmm ...  Who's going to break the news to member broadgage? 

Broadgage was already aware, but did not like to comment until this was confirmed publicly.
Although I seldom used the travelling chef service, preferring the Pullman, the withdrawal of the travelling chef is still most regrettable, unless it is replaced by something better, which seems unlikely.

A cynic like me would suspect that this to prepare us for the inevitable catering downgrade that the new trains will bring.

[IndustryInsider]

It would be a shame to see the end of the Travelling Chef as it's a little different to anything else on offer from the other long distance operators.  It would be interesting to see what kind of profit/loss it made.  I enjoyed what I had on the odd occasion I used it, though the cost was high and it would not have been something I would want to rely on for a meal given the number of times the advertised service wasn't actually provided. 

Good to hear that the Pullman service will hopefully be expanded to include a South Wales service as I was hoping for in a post a few weeks back - nobody else seems to have commented on that though, which surprises me a little.

[Umberleigh]

Re South Wales Pullman, when are the High Speed Trains (HST^▸ (High Speed Train (Inter City class 43 125 units)))s being withdrawn on this route?

Edit: VickiS - Clarifying Acronym

[IndustryInsider]

Cardiff is due to be wired by 2017, so I guess they will start to be phased out then, though I suspect it will be quite a slow phasing out with plenty of High Speed Train (HST^▸ (High Speed Train (Inter City class 43 125 units)))s still covering diagrams until Swansea has been completed

Edit: VickiS - Clarifying Acronym

[TaplowGreen]

It would be a shame to see the end of the Travelling Chef as it's a little different to anything else on offer from the other long distance operators.  It would be interesting to see what kind of profit/loss it made.  I enjoyed what I had on the odd occasion I used it, though the cost was high and it would not have been something I would want to rely on for a meal given the number of times the advertised service wasn't actually provided. 

Good to hear that the Pullman service will hopefully be expanded to include a South Wales service as I was hoping for in a post a few weeks back - nobody else seems to have commented on that though, which surprises me a little.

If they weren't making a profit at those very high prices the costs of running the service must have been huge and/or maintaining the service was outweighing the commercial benefits to FGW^▸ (First Great Western), evidenced by the unreliability/erratic nature of its provision as alluded to above.......no business is going to stop doing something that makes a healthy profit without a very good reason- I suspect demand for the service had dropped off and with it income, despite the best efforts of those devotees in this chatroom!