Great Western Coffee Shop

(Previous prices in brackets)

Travel within 1 zone £7.50 (£5)
Two zones £15 (£10)
Three zones £20 (£15)
Four/Five zones £25 (£20)

Zone map for reference https://www.gwr.com/~/media/gwr/pdfs/maps/weekend-first-pdf-060916.pdf?la=en

Whilst I think the one zone and four/five zones are good value, the two and three zone prices are now a bit steep for journeys of around an hour, hour and a half. But we knew that this would happen since the reduction in First class accommodation. As the saying goes, supply and demand with First being very busy at weekends.

Best advice, if you can, book well in advance if you want the cheapest way to travel First class on weekends.

I'd like to see a price break between 4 & 5 zones...otherwise why have 5 zones in the first place?

It penalises up services frankly...while down services can get TAU-PNZ For the price of one 4/5 zone increment of £5, up services only get Swindon/pewsey for the extra non-paid zone.

I also object to the second zone from London...its extremely small

So that you have some differences on shorter journeys.  i.e. So you don't have a massive single zone at one end at £7.50

Some 2 zone, Plymouth to Newquay as an example is cheaper to buy a first off peak day return, so my advise is check the off peak first price before buying.

Plymouth - Newquay is good value for time taken considering how slow HSTs are on the branch!

Off peak day return £10.00 , 1st Off Peak day return £19.20

I probably had close to my £9.20 in snacks and drinks across the 2 legs!

I should add on a XC weekend first the uplift is only £5 compared to GWR £15.

Tell me about it. Travelling to/from Bath or Westbury - London, these two stations are right next to zone 2 in zone 3 where it has gone up to £20 for an hour and a half journey. I struggled to justify paying £15. £20 each way for the length of journey is too steep for me now.

They were always going to put Bath into zone 3 because of the amount of traffic to/from London.

As I said GWR can charge these Weekend First prices because there aren't so many seats to fill now.

Zone 2 is too close to London...£20 for an hour to Swindon? Not me....

I can soften the blow a little for you Chris, £15 to Zone 2 up from the previous £10.

I'll soften the blow a bit more Chris. Come to Swindon and I'll buy you a pint!  ;D

There won't be many that will take up the offer of Weekend First between Didcot and Swindon for £15. Not there there were at £10 though either.

From my experience, Weekend First on the Penzance/Plymouth - Paddington route on a Sunday afternoon should be stopped altogether or severely restricted AND limited to advance booking. With the much reduced First class accommodation, more than once I have seen (especially) families with young children plonk themselves down at a table and pay their £15/£20, only for people holding full 1st class tickets being unable to use them as much OF the 1st class accommodation is taken by those paying a (relatively) small premium for WF.

The trains are simply too busy and overcrowded to cope with it and this represents extremely poor service for those who have paid the often astronomically priced 1st class fares-the sort of customers who one would imagine GWR would be keen to retain and keep happy.

I guess that's why GWR have increased the price of Weekend First TG because of the issues you describe on their long distance services. There were times on SW services when it could get cosy with two and a half coaches, even worse with just one and a half.

I agree 100% with TaplowGreen that subsidised tickets should not be offered on overcrowded services where others have paid an astronomically priced full fare.

Perhaps, after Weekend First is removed, we can do the same to season tickets?

<grins, ducks & runs>

Agreed, no off-peaks in the peak to ensure all season holders get a seat!

GWR have now started providing a customer host and trolley service on weekends with the same range of complimentaries usually found on weekdays making the new Weekend First prices slightly more palatable.

That commenced several weeks/month-and-a-bit ago?

I took advantage of the upgrade with my wife and daughter on the 1900 PAD-PLY a couple of Saturdays ago, but saw neither hide nor hair of such a service - but that may have been down to the large number of pax returning from the rugby at Twickenham who had congregated in the buffet area rendering access nigh on impossible.

Not sure of the times at weekends, but I've personal experience of a Saturday mid-morning and a Sunday around 1630, both with full trolley several weeks ago

Yup, that's when it started on services I was travelling on. Alas not enough for me to continue traveling in first come the new year, can't justify £20 each way for an hour and half's journey. I do feel the zones are a little lop sided. How can Paddington to Penzance be £25 and Paddington to Bath be £20?

Personally i think weekend first should be for season ticket holders only now that first class capacity has been reduced quite significantly... i have had several incidents where as a first class ticket holder i have been unable to get a seat... on one occasion i boarded mid route found first was full... i sat in standard and then witnessed people who boarded at origin being charged up... i don't think this is fair

Hang on Season ticket holder who normally pay relative low fares to us ordinary peak hour travellers to get a further perk!  My company (through the anytime tickets I need to buy for work) already subsidise season ticket holders why should they be the only ones to have this advantage.  Outraged of Swindon.

Fare point well made .

Hang on. If someone holds a first class season ticket, surely it isn't a perk that they get a seat in first class  at weekends?   Though I disagree that weekend first should be limited to those with season tickets, of either class. That would limit the market for weekend first upgrades somewhat.

Think that was the idea, such that anyone with a st class ticket can always get a 1st class seat

Weekend First on long distance routes (Devon/Cornwall) should be scrapped or severely restricted and made reservation only - there's been numerous times when I've been returning from Devon on a Sunday when First class ticket holders have been unable to find a seat due to people who have bought weekend first supplements at earlier stations on the journey - on Penzance/Plymouth - Paddington services 1st class is often full before Exeter.

The capacity simply isn't there to sustain it - and this won't get any better with the new trains.

Exactly, which is why I find it crazy to be charging £25 from Plymouth/Penzance and £20 from Bath/Westbury to London.

According to a TM I encountered yesterday, if you have split Standard Class tickets your WF upgrade must also be split.

That would have cost me £35 each way (if TM on return believed the same) on a trip from Weston-super-Mare to Paddington, split at Bristol TM and Didcot.

When I asked if he minded whether I checked to see if individually excessing each Off Peak Day Return to the cheapest available 1st Class Return would be cheaper than paying £70, or if I just upgraded WSM-BRI and DID-PAD for £15, and moved in and out if the cheap seats for BRI-DID, the TM decided to issue the £20 WSM-PAD WF upgrade.

No problems on the return. TM upgraded through journey.

From the GWR web site:


It talks about for your JOURNEY and how many zones you TRAVEL through, not your ticket, so doesn't depend on any splits you have - it's a journey upgrade.

Weekend First has become a very messy and confusing web of differing arrangements across various operators - some allow pre-booking, some don't allow people with standard advances, some charge a flat fee, others a tiered charge. This is without staff inventing their own rules.

As far as long distance trips go on Sundays - particularly Penzance/Plymouth to London, Weekend First should be stopped as there are not enough seats for those with regular First class tickets, I've seen it happen on a number of occasions when 1st Class is full by Exeter, largely by those who have bought supplements, and 1st class ticket holders can't get a seat.

I always thought Weekend 1st was designed to utilise 1st class when it wasn't busy but now that there are only 1.5 carriages that is rarely if ever the case on those services.

Well, 1A92 16:56 Plymouth-Paddington was announced at Reading yesterday (Saturday) as "Formed of 9 carriages". Do you think that would help?

I understand there was an extra carriage on a train for the Prime Minister - presumably with her entourage - to have a carriage of their own. If they were to share, I suspect it would help  ;D

Never had a problem upgrading to weekend first when I've split my tickets Westbury-Newbury, Newbury-Paddington so I can use my Network railcard.

Don't upgrade much now as travelling from Bath/Westbury to Paddington the upgrade is £20 which for an hour and a half is poor value. Yet for £5 more you can travel all the way to Penzance from London. GWR have priced me out of First class now with Advance tickets also very pricey.

Are there many pax who buy walk-up First Class tickets at the weekend? Surely it would be the responsibility of the ticket office staff to offer the cheapest fare - namely the SSS/R together with suggesting that pax upgrade on board? How many walk-up First Class tickets are sold via TVMs at the weekend?

It used to be the case that Weekend First passengers were banned from Coach H, are there no longer any restrictions now with the reduced First Class capacity?

Nope, not any TOC that offers weekend first restricts which carriage you can sit in. I remember the Intercity days when coach H was restricted to full fare First class passengers only at weekends. Coaches F and G had window stickers denoting these were the weekend first carriages.

I'll go further and say I remember when weekend first used to be £1!!! Was then £3 for most if not all of the remaining Intercity years.

There might be a "get out clause" there in that Weekend First is at the discretion of the Train Manager.  If First Class is full or likely to become so, they can suspend weekend first so a passenger might not be able to upgrade.

Yes, I'm not sure when it went up to £5 but I remember it then going to £6 in 1999 and then £8 in 2001 (£10 for London to Taunton and west). It didn't increase then until the zones were introduced in in 2009.

Are you certain ?
It seems to me that a pedantic train manager MIGHT still argue that each TICKET needs upgrading, rather than each journey. The key wording could be "if you need to change trains- - "
What if you don't NEED to change trains, but choose to change TICKETS in order to save money ?

Yes, I'm pretty certain.

The key sentences are "The price of your upgrade depends on the number of zones you travel through" and "you’ll pay one fare for the whole journey.".   The business of changing trains is a red herring in that it's talking about a different circumstance - but the wording "even if" clearly says to me this is just an example to show it's always just a single upgrade fare ....

Clearly a pedantic train manager could (and did) argue that each ticket needed upgrading - but I think they would be (and were) wrong to do so ...

My understanding is that the TM gets paid commission on the sale of upgrades such as Weekend First so it's perhaps unlikely that they will suspend it!  ;)

So I wasn't imagining things! On my travels this weekend I thought I heard an HST announced as "This train has 9 carriages"; saw it pass; counted them up; there were indeed nine...