Cardiff City at Wembley - need for Extra Coaches?

[whole diary]

[IanC]

Next Saturday (22nd May) the greatest Team in Football will take part in the Champonship Play off Finals against Blackpool, so I ask, as Cardiff -> Paddington has 2tph is there any possibility for FGW^▸ (First Great Western) to lay on extra Carriages?

Does anyone know what the situation was for when Cardiff got to the FA Cup final in 2008?

[willc]

Chiltern and East Coast show what can be done if the will is there. Oxford United and York City are playing at Wembley on Sunday in the Blue Square Premier play-off final, with a place back in the Football League for the winner.

Chiltern are running two extra trains from Banbury to London at 2pm and 3pm (kick-off is at 5pm) plus extra coaches on most other trains from Oxfordshire into London during the afternoon and on early evening services back, with lots of extra stops at Wembley Stadium - and they will need every seat, 30,000 tickets and counting sold to Oxford fans. York's following will be more modest, sales heading towards 8,000 last I saw, but East Coast are operating an 11.25 extra from York to Kings Cross and a 20.25 return extra, both running non-stop.

[matt473]

Non-stop Cardiff to London hst's were teh rumour of the day on the hst I was on earlier. Although I cannot repeat just how glad they are that it is not a Swansea v Cardiff match in Wembley as the rolling stock plus fans would no doubt be trashed

[devon_metro]

Cardiff - Paddington is 1tph on Saturdays usually!!

[John R]

One of the two Bristol to London services is sometimes started back/extended to Cardiff on match days in Cardiff, so that's a possibility. 

[willc]

Chiltern have sold so many tickets from Bicester to Wembley for Sunday that they are advising people to go elsewhere if they are driving to a station as they think the car park - just shy of 600 spaces - will be full on Sunday afternoon.

[IndustryInsider]

Chiltern have sold so many tickets from Bicester to Wembley for Sunday that they are advising people to go elsewhere if they are driving to a station as they think the car park - just shy of 600 spaces - will be full on Sunday afternoon.

It is the obvious choice, though Haddenham & Thame Parkway and High Wycombe should see a large increase as well I should imagine.  FGW^▸ (First Great Western) are running two specials on Sunday to London around lunchtime, but I can't see them advertised on the FGW website (do a search for 'football' on there and you get all sorts of links to events dating back to 2005, but no sign of Sunday's game!), and I don't think there's any additional trains on the way back.  Given the high number of passengers who travel on a regular Sunday, there could be carnage unless the regular services are significantly strengthened! 

There's also a distinct lack of any mention of them on the Oxford United website, indeed you have to do a fair bit of digging to find details of Chiltern Railway's additional offerings.  Given that a large number of people who are very occasional supporters - or even less regular than that  - will be going to the match it's not exactly making the most of an excellent revenue opportunity when plenty of spare stock is sitting in the sidings!

[willc]

To be frank, no surprise that FGW^▸ (First Great Western) hasn't bothered to tell anyone what they're doing today. The last 'news' on the website they have posted up is about the late-night extras once flights resumed after the volcanic ash crisis. I know for a fact that information wasn't online until some point well into the evening, when other operators had got details of their overnight services up hours earlier. Had FGW provided any information about OXF^» (Oxford - next trains)-PAD^» (Paddington (London) - next trains) extras today, the likes of me would have made sure people knew about them.

A certain local media outlet has given copious publicity to Chiltern's services today (both extras and alterations) in print and online - because they bothered to tell us (and anyone looking at their website) about them. They will definitely be quids in, with pretty much everything that can run pressed into service this afternoon and evening (eg 2+3+2 Turbo formations in use).

Hopefully FGW will be putting some HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train) into service on Oxford runs instead of Turbos, but your guess is as good as mine.

As for extra services on Saturday between Cardiff and London, who knows? No sign of anything in the journey planner yet.

[IanC]

There's an advert on the front page of Today's South Wales Echo saying a Travel company will be doing a charter train to Wembley Stadium for ^60 return, leaving CDF^» (Cardiff - next trains) at 10.30am

[IndustryInsider]

Two additional trains in each direction.

http://www.cardiffcityfc.co.uk/page/NewsDetail/0,,10335~2054843,00.html

[IanC]

Two additional trains in each direction.

http://www.cardiffcityfc.co.uk/page/NewsDetail/0,,10335~2054843,00.html

Good to know something has been planned. It was cheaper the day I booked to go by the first train leaving Newport -> Paddington, and come back via Megabus.

[Oxman]

FGW^▸ (First Great Western) ran two 6-car turbo relief trains to Padd on Sunday for the Oxford game and strengthened a number of other services. These returned in the evening, along with an additional special formed of an HST^▸ (High Speed Train), which was arranged during the day. Several hundred fans travelled from Didcot and Maidenhead, so the HST stopped at these stations en route. I understand the services were well used, with a few thousand supporters travelling from Oxford, but why they were not advertised beforehand is a mystery.

[johoare]

A mystery but not a surprise...

[willc]

So finally, we get the answer to Ian's question - though needless to say, not from the website of the train company that doesn't seem to want to let anyone know what it's up to, although they have "kindly advised" Cardiff City about it.

You would think that passengers travelling to South Wales on Saturday evening who are not Cardiff City fans might like to know about a queuing system being in force at Paddington and between what times, so they could avoid it, should they want to. Nor are these extra trains in the journey planners' database yet. And they don't seem to have told the Cardiff newspapers yet either, going by Wales Online.

Would Andrew Haines have tolerated this shambolic approach to customer service? Why does Mark Hopwood?

One can only contrast the nature of the FGW^▸ (First Great Western) arrangements described by Oxman for Sunday's game with the slick - and well publicised - operation that Chiltern provides for big Wembley events. Okay, Wembley's a peripheral issue for FGW, but it was pretty clear from the moment that Oxford United got through to the play-off that 30,000 people would be heading from the county to London on Sunday, yet here we are with FGW rustling up an extra train on the day of the game, which rather suggests a lack of proper forward planning. At least it wasn't this weekend, when the Oxford-Didcot line is closed for two days for engineering work and even Chiltern might have struggled to handle any more passengers.

[JayMac]

Would Andrew Haines have tolerated this shambolic approach to customer service? Why does Mark Hopwood?

My theory is because the current Customer Service Director has absolutely no experience in Customer Service. Neil Micklethwaite is also Commercial Director. Two hats that do not sit well together.

Also a chartered accountant and former civil servant working in the Corporate Service Division of the DSS, as well as a former Cost/Benefit analyst at BT; not roles you'd associate with having to provide good customer service.

And in case you're wondering how I know this - his CV is available online!