Is it one of the ways that "the railway" is increasing its income from the same number of passengers while "not raising [regulated] fares"?

Advance fares were introduced to help fill seats on quieter trains, as I recall.  With trains getting so much busier and (we hear) services on Sundays being reduced, there are now and progressively will be fewer - far fewer - spare seats to offload.

 
That was a good day,still have my badge even though I didn’t make it into the picture.

 

I have some disquiet over service reductions though in certain instances they can make sense.   

At Melksham, we lost two round trips on Saturdays "so that the others can be more reliable".  The services lost were the ones that had been running pre-2013 and we were left with just the Westbury - Swindon shuttle with extended gaps in the middle of the day where those previous skeleton services had run.   In some ways a logical cut, as the trains cut had been run at times the stock wasn't really needed on other lines either - quietest time of day.  However, I spite of us being told they were being cut to help reliability, the reliability of the remaining service got worse.    This broke the promised message we had been sold - "fewer trains but more reliable" though of course we don't know if it would have been even less reliable had they remained.   As a result of this failure to deliver what we were sold on, we find it harder to trust GWR these days.

GWR services on the South Coast to the east of Portsmouth - to Brighton - were also lost.  Two round trips a day.  There was sadness rather than retention campaigning as they were lost.  Again, comment / promised that it will "let us do better / be more reliable with the other services" which has had a hollow ring, and I'm not sure that the promises - or implicit promise of the marketing hype - has been delivered.

In December, GWR cut a peak train from Warminster to Westbury in the interest of "the reliability / time keeping of other busier trains".  Problem is that as a result, they then offered no route home for students and working people from Salisbury from 16:42 to 19:13 - for sure, there are fewer passengers on the train culled than on the one it held up, but should they really be prioritising saving a couple of minutes delay over getting people home at all?   With an extra call on the train that was got in the way of sometimes,  the issues could have been compensated.  But, no, in spite of their being three minutes of extra allowances in that train, they won't add the call and seem to be intent on performance stats one serving their existing customer base.   And - we were presented with a "fait accompli" on this one - no notice at all of the significant change prior to it happening and the train just disappearing from the timetable.

So - whilst we appreciate the need to update timetables, and to provide a reasonable level of service overall that may be a lessening for some, we treat planned cuts with extreme unease and we don't trust (sorry) GWR to deliver the benefits to us that they promise.

 
I and others elsewhere are noting that since the change to the GWR booking engine, First class Advance tickets seem to have virtually disappeared and/or are only available on a few random services, has there been a conscious decision to do away with these by GWR?

 
Lot 17: Apparently a 'Train traffic light' !

 

Under normal circumstances - Southampton to Clapham Junction and then change for Twickenham, can be done in less than 2 hours but definitely check nearer the time for engineering works.

 

........as part of the failure of management of this problem - fixed it for you! 

 

All the cuts do is take out some of the unpredictability of which trains might be cut.  But there is already uncertainty as GWR latest figures shows over 1 in 20 trains cancelled.   

It's not like anyone has a crystal ball and can tell me which 5% of trains will be cancelled this week.  So even thinning a timetable still makes cancellations a lottery.

https://www.gwr.com/-/media/gwr-sc-website/files/about-gwr/what-you-can-expect/our-performance/GWR-Periodic-Web-Report-P2611.pdf

And of the trains that do run, more than a third are late

 

Best I can find is the super off peak travelcard £73
10:50 changing Chichester and Clapham Junction, arriving 14:10

But advance tickets for 20th June have not yet been released,
And SWR don't yet seem to be offering tickets, as ought to be cheaper changing at Woking and New Malden (Twickenham via Kingston loop)

But then digging bit further, discovered there is a 52 hour engineering work planned in Surbiton area, so possibly trains will go via Addlestone and Twickenham

https://sacuksprodnrdigital0001.blob.core.windows.net/operational-rules/Operational%20Rules/EAS%20documents/EAS%20ARP%2025-26%20Sections%205%20&%207/V2/NAT%20MAPS%20EAS%20ARP%20FWLA%202627.pdf

 
Pictures and text suggest this was a great success - and that I was wise not to go for the sake of my wallet.  Did any Coffee Shop members go?

 
Best ticket advise sought - 2 adults, day return on 20th June 2026, Southampton to Twickenham to attend a major event (a rugby match between TBA and TBA according to Google) that starts at 3 p.m.  No age related railcards

Looks to me like "super off peak" only allows travel too late in the day.     

Not sure how direct or indirect will be acceptable - I would suspect that Southern fares via Gatwick are out.

 
69 lots, 12th to 17th March 2026.

https://www.wilsonsauctions.com/auctions/tfl-museum-depot-auction-3223

I am not seeing any *I MUST have that* items ... but others just might.

 
A Google search (already!) comes up with this thread as its top hit  ...

Your other overnight question asks about long-standing members, and we use aliases here so it could well be that David is a member, and / or retains his interest in other ways. 

I would ask anyone who knows / reads this to be aware of GDPR, as we at the Coffee Shop are, and if they have current details not to publish them in the open forum without permission.  The most appropriate way would be to get in touch with David and ask him if either his details can be shared, or he can get in touch with infoman if he wishes.

 

15th May 2019.   See https://www.passenger.chat/r20407.html



We (Coffee Shop) have 69 members who registered over 15 years ago and have been logged in within the last year.

 
Posted in campaigns,

as I could not seem to find a more suitable location

I do recall dashing through the Reading over bridge going back a little while(2008?)

and seeing the early days of coffee shop members(four?) in a stall handing out the coffee leaflets

Just wondering if those original coffee shop members are still engaged in the coffee shop

 
Posted in campaigns,

as I could not seem to find a more suitable location

Not sure what years it was 2008?

Always remember seeing his e-mail address wegetyouhome@??.??

What ever did happen to him?

 
I suspect that they are owned by the catering company (Rail Gourmet?), or Hitachi as in the post above for the IETs.

 
According to Mark Hopwood yesterday at Travelwatch Southwest, further cuts are being made to the Summer Sunday timetable at the May timetable change, as part of the management of this problem.

 
An update from the ASLEF regarding Sunday’s in the working week:

‘In a recent meeting, GWR informed DDC that progress is being made with our 7 day railway submission to the DfT, but these discussions currently need to be managed with a small team focusing on completing the deal. There are a number of stages still to go and meetings have been diaried with key stakeholders in the coming weeks which are important in taking this forward. We will keep you informed when firmer details are available.’

Expect this to drag on and on and don’t expect there to be enough drivers to crew the summer Sunday service again this year.

 
No GWR trains to Dorking Deepdene on Sunday

From gwr.com

SWR and Southern seem to be running normally to Dorking Main.

 
From the BBC

 

Hmmmmm. Barrel of oil already at us$93 - up almost $20.
If it carries on for more than another week, I think you're going to be wrong.


That's not right either. when was that - 2022? Oddly, no comment here ....

 
I'll post my notes in "Frequest Posters" in a few minutes ... once I have taken out the grossest of spelling mistakes. 

Summary of the day from our chair, Nick Buckland

1. Delighted to see the heat / strength of discussions and energy - even after lunch

2. Okehampton is an interesting lesson in "live in interestning times", "reach important people" and "get what you wish for".  Although the rail link has been a huge success, the loss of the 6th form college in the town is noted, as is the degraded links from Bude - a less frequent bus service and a need to change with concern at need to change between bus and train on the way, and the breaking of connections - not so much at Okehampton itself but to and from ongoing buses into Cornwall at Bude

3. Customer Interest Groups - changing. TWSW?  *Their* 50 focus group, sample too small.  Risk of national decisions on small local group. So - energy never more required. Apparently a  "Passenger Council" to be appointed by the bill in Lords.  How get people in - no-one seems to know ...

 

Indeed.   Bryony called me a little later and I understand that David was conscious and in Musgrove Park.  I will keep members posted as I hear and can post.

 
This is in answer to a request from a fellow campaigner for pointers to data on loadings and journeys of trains to and from Torbay (TLCs PGN TQY and TRR, to help provide data and inform him and his colleagues of when and where people are going. 

Source 1: https://www.railwaydata.co.uk/loadings/gbr/?TLC=PGN - covering an "average weekday during the summer of 2024" and show numbers of arrivals, departures and through passengers on each timetabled service. Change PGN to TQY and TRR to see the figures for Torquay and Torre to cover the the intermediate stations between Newton Abbott and Paignton. These come from a "no longer maintained" site, so I have member's mirror at
https://www.firstgreatwestern.info/mirror/PGN_2024.pdf https://www.firstgreatwestern.info/mirror/TQY_2024.pdf and  https://www.firstgreatwestern.info/mirror/TRR_2024.pdf . Note that were "no source" is shown on the trains, I suspect it's Exeter St David's - a station in which the apostrophy often causes problems.

Source 2: Our own forum using https://raildata.org.uk - Rail Data Marketplace data.  This shows destinations - using URLs such as https://www.passenger.chat/PGN.html (and change to TQY and TRR, and thre is a link on each page to give you the top 50.

Neither source answers the complete question of "where are people going on which train?" but it sounded to me like these two sources together are a little more information that the Torbay team had looked at so far. Split tickets, ticketless travel, ranger and rover tickets, etc, will clearly skew the figures.

Source 1:







Sample from source 2 (full links above)