Thinking about the areas that have had Penalty Fares for longest, which as far as I'm aware are in the former Network SouthEast area, the following apply/ied:

• A large proportion of trains were DOO.
• A relatively large proportion of stations were staffed, and the rest (and staffed stations out of hours) had ticket machines for cash purchases for local journeys, and PERTIS machines to cover for other needs.

These conditions increased the need for and utility of Penalty Fares because:

• Without frequent ticket checks by guards, there were less frequent checks by RPIs (or whoever did them) and therefore the economics worked differently for the "I'll pay if I'm checked" passenger.
• Passengers mostly had the opportunity to buy a ticket, or at least pick up a permit to travel, and therefore there wouldn't be too many "gotchas" that genuinely didn't have the opportunity to buy a ticket or at least show intent to purchase.

Now that self-service ticket machines are more widespread, perhaps the second point is less important these days, and thus PFs can spread to provincial routes. With more people travelling perhaps the first point works differently now, as perhaps guards can't get through everyone, or for some other reason the "need" for PFs (in the eyes of the operators) has changed. This means the PF map now looks like a random patchwork.

I note that when TfW started PFs (or somehting similar) in the Valleys, there were comments about people having to allow extra time to buy their ticket as they were "no longer allowed" to board without a ticket at their local staffed station. Errr... you were never "allowed" - you've just been given a new deterrent!

 
I would imagine that carriage washers have been frozen solid since Christmas?

 
Thinking back to last week's travel, are there parts of their network other than the lines serving mid-Wales and the Cambrian Coast for which TfW do not have the kit to wash train exteriors (at least, presumably the depot at Machynlleth does not have a carriage washer otherwise they'd surely be using it). I recall the shorter distance trains that run to Warrington as being clean, the valley lines metro train from Merthyr was squeaky clean, or had started out that way, and the Cardiff - Manchester services were clean. Not sure where the trains that run via the likes of Builth Road are serviced or their current state of exterior cleanliness, at one time they weren't brilliant.

Mark

 
https://www.gwr.com/about-gwr/what-you-can-expect/community/community-investment

 

Leap years are regular ...

We've had "Meet the Manager" session on the Coffee Shop over the years, as recent as October 2024.  With technology moving on, perhaps we are not the best forum for those these days, but something *is* needed.

We anticipate their being a senior GWR manager at the TWSW general meeting on 6th March, and there should be a chance to network engage.  You will see I have use woolly words "anticipate" and "should" in there, and TWSW is not a forum for all - rather for reps of user groups.  There is a degree of flexibility there for independent transport advocates to attend - needs to be agreed / booked ahead.

 
Ah. Image not available to guests  Cue my own ongoing grievance about the misuse of 'regular v frequent'.

'Regular' could be, for example, 'once every 100 years'.

'Frequent' could be, again for example (and in railway terminology), 'once every three months'.

CfN.

 

"Regular" doing some extraordinarily heavy lifting there.

 
I saw a tweet that said the Falmouth line was open, though with cancellations

 
If there was a convenient port in the south of England, add a call there and they'll have reinvented Motorrail to Scotland.

Mark

 
From Time Out.


A very real and useful option - top left to bottom right on the North Sea.  Is there a case for a bottom left to top right service? I recall making businss trips from Harwich to Oslo, back from Gothenburg, and also trip from Newcastle to Bergen.   The Harwich to Esbjerg service is no more - the most northerly you'll get on the mainland now is in the Netherlands.    Is there a case for a Harwich to Hirshals and / or Kristiansand service?

 
Still on their web site, but no dates, mind.

Mark

https://www.gwr.com/about-gwr/what-you-can-expect/meet-the-manager

 
Thanks for posting that, Mark.  Ah, those four-hundred-year-old railway bridges, eh?  Image not available to guests

YouTube has a whole board based on the demolition work of 'Blaster Bates', at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpzbCG8ICvmluYV8aa8zh7w

I commend it to our readers - there's some very funny material there!  Image not available to guests

 

Indeed.  About two months ago, after a medical appointment at the BRI (the hospital, not the railway station, bobm Image not available to guests ), I walked to (the other) BRI and bought a single ticket to Nailsea.

The train was delayed, by well over 15 minutes, but I simply got the next available one to get me home.

I couldn't be bothered to make a claim on 'delay / repay': I'd have got a notional refund of rather less than a pint in Wetherspoon's, for example.  Image not available to guests

CfN.

 
Nothing mentioned on JourneyCheck re short-forms but the entire service on the north Cotswold line today is made up of five car units. This is very unusual as normally nine car units make up the majority of the Sunday service.

 
............I can remember a time when GWR managers used to spend time meeting their customers at stations and listening to their concerns in person...........I believe that forum was called "Meet the Manager" - seems to have fallen into abeyance now though.

 

 

Yes, it was. But at the time everyone was far more concerned with the huge business of covid and I felt that although the treatment was poor ("trains were still running - not our decision that you could not use them" as I recall) it was not a time to follow-up and make a song and dance over it.  Pragmatic acceptance as sometimes happens.

I have had similar thoughts with regard delay / repay claims on rangers and rovers ... and in Interrail ticket compensations too. There have been a couple of occasions where significant delays have been suffered but ... yes ... I believe it's worked out by dividing down the cost over the number of active days, and then based on an assumption of a return trip on that day.   I am planning a 7 day Freedom of North East at £101.45 in a few weeks - that's £14.50 a day and so £7.25 per single journey.  So for delay of just under an hour, I would get £3.63 back.  Shrug shoulders and move on.

 
Just completed the survey, and yes, it does rather focus your attention of what it is that you want/expect from GBR.... although I now realise that I forgot to mention in the  appropriate free text area that I prefer the old BR title, which I rather expect most people will refer to it as over time anyway.

 
From The BBC


I can identify with this.  I studies studied at The City University, lived at Petts Wood in north west Kent with my patents parents, and commuted ... 20 minutes walk to station, 45 minutes by train to Holborn Viaduct and then a further 20 minutes walk (through Smithfield meat market!) up toward The Angel.  I missed out on the social side of Uni, but with lectures on only 4 days a week I was left either time to work / earn my keep the other day and at weekends, and to make use of my train time reading, making (illegible!) notes and to thinking things through.


Edit note: Two of grahame's trademark typos corrected, for clarity. CfN.

 
My friend is currently in the USA having travelled thereto by container ship.
Weather very cold with snow and high winds.
Nice and warm on board.
Food was excellent, and included Beef Wellington.
They intend to return on a second cargo ship, or possibly the same one.

 
Surprised that this film isn't used as an exemplar for what happens when we do not survey for bats. Also, Coffeeshop readers might like to read the description and play "Spot the error".

Film from 1962 hosted on BFI: the marines demolish a bridge using explosives. Most of the debris falls to the ground, some of it takes to the wing and flies away in terror. The fate of the lamb is not recorded.

Mark

https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-royal-demolition-1962-online

 
Thanks for this, appreciated. It also appears as if some parts of their site are dead or not implemented.

Mark

 


The definition of Stakeholder has been an interesting one, with a strong slant towards players other than passengers / passenger groups.  Much more a business to business and government affair.


Good advise,  and I / we for WWRUG appreciate those engagements as far as they go.  But yet at the same time, this route won't necessarily get you beyond an official answer  (and perhaps to a different question than the one you asked) and may not get the problem itself addressed.  But then a passenger rep forum (the topic of this thread) gives passengers a chance to make inputs, with no assurance of any answers. At such meetings GWR can, will and should give you a customer update, and those updates tend to be marketing lead rather than addressing passenger feedback.

 
In the course of my browsing the Coffee Shop forum (as I tend to do, as an administrator Image not available to guests ) I found that we had three topics, on different boards, relating specifically to defibrillators.

I have therefore moved and merged them all here - as ever, in the interests of consistency and ease of future reference.

Hope this helps, CfN. Image not available to guests

 
Stop Press: my Penryn correspondent tells me they've just spotted a train!

 

Hard to find much ... their data is very much open data sources (many of which we have and used on the Coffee Shop) but much of it is far better done than we have done.  https://trainslive.uk/about-the-sunset-update

The wayback machine gives no clue - it crawled just once - the blank page when the site was first registered on 27th December 2021 (clue - hobbyist project for Christmas?) with 123 reg, and I conjecture that one of the early thing done was to add a strong GO AWAY message to crawlers via a robots.txt file.


Brave to go out on a "high".  Their domain is registered by/to Cloudflaire and actual owners redacted, so no source of evidence there.  I find myself guessing as to whether their team wants to move on, and / or whether they have funding issues, and / or whether they find their server loads and admin mushrooming with all the AI crawlers, and / or whether things have moved on to apps and social media and getting new membership and engagement has become an issue.  All guesses based on what else I have seen - I do't actually know.  I also note sites like railway data - https://www.railwaydata.co.uk - which provide some similarity of content.

 
So the preferred handle is 'West of England MCA', or just 'the MCA'.

Not that this will bother the great majority of people who still don't know or care much what it is or where it is...

 
The Squirrel family's centre of gravity has shifted a bit towards Cornwall since one of our kits moved to Penryn. They had an exam on Saturday, and had booked their train on Friday. Best laid plans etc!

There was an option to retake the exam later, but a decision was made to drive instead. They certainly found things pretty messy down there, although it looks like the locals won't be short of fuel for their woodburners for a while! Much of the traffic west of Truro seemed to be people taking their chainsaws for some exercise.

 

 
Anyway... who are 'Trainslive', anyone? It's worth spending a few minutes on their site's home page.

Mark

https://trainslive.uk/

"Complete UK Rail & Tube Travel Toolkit

Get real-time train information, plan your journey, and track trains across the National Rail and London Underground networks. Simple, fast, and reliable."

 
Their management has a stakeholder conference where one can engage with any & all varieties of management once a year - yet to hear whether a 2026 version will be taking place.

Meantime, their management will & do engage with many user groups throughout the year at station manager & above. If you ever have a problem, drop a line to their Head of PR, Thomas Lydon. He will either deal, or find a more suitable manager.

If however, it relates to changes to train operation at stations, it's the local Network Rail manager you need - they have a public contact number that will provide suitable contact details when you explain the problem.