The Winter Timetable

[whole diary]

[FGW My Second Home!]

I am a regular user of FGW^▸ (First Great Western) services, for work and leisure travelling locally within the Weston to bristol area as well as to London to watch sport (footie) at the weekend.

I have to say the service provided is generally ok, however when things go wrong, boy do they screw-up the journey....

In an idle moment I spotted this http://www.severnside-rail.org.uk/resources.asp

Is there more detail that can be shared, indeed a draft of the Winter Timetable?

[grahame]

Is there more detail that can be shared, indeed a draft of the Winter Timetable?

Welcome to the forum, "Second Home". I understand that the draft timetables were prepared, but had a number of errors in the printing - to the extent that it would have "created more problems than it would have solved to circulate them". 

There have been a number of shifts in the last couple of years .... and one of those shifts is that customers are now far more vociferous in making comments to the Train Operating Company and others involved in the operations.   

Take the "TransWilts" service that runs from Swindon through to Trowbridge - the county town of Wiltshire - and beyond. In the spring on 2005, there were just 8 responses to  a consultation arranged by the Strategic Rail Authority concerning the proposed removal of all Southampton <-> Swindon trains.  When the services were all consulted over in Spring and summer of 2005, an order of magnitude more people responded to FGW's request for inputs with comments about that service.  And in the Spring of 2007, my petition on the p.m.'s web site caused over 1700 voices to be raised.

With this increased customer awareness, a draft timetable that was missing a key service (for purely printing reasons) would generate a great deal of negative comment and a lot of input when ... all along ... the service wasn't going to be cut.