Great Western Coffee Shop

On Monday, 13th July, from 19:00 to 20:00,  we're hosting a "Meet the Director" session on this forum with First Great Western's Operations Director, Ben Rule.  We have had many discussions here of late concerning the introduction of the SET, and this is an opportunity for members to put their questions and enter into discussions on this and other topics.

As this is a "first" on this forum, we're asking for questions to be submitted by 1 a.m. on 13th to our admin team via admin@firstgreatwestern.info ; our admin team will select questions to cover a wide range of topics during the hour, with questions being released onto new threads at intervals.  This will allow us to select a wide range of topics, and let us pass the selected questions to Ben ahead of time, allowing him to pre-type answers.   Any registered members are then welcome to follow up in the discussion.

New members are also welcome to sign up in advance (it's free!) - and our admin team will process all such requests made before 9 a.m. on Monday in time for them to post in the session. I would like especially to encourage some of the "lurkers" who we know are avid readers to take the plunge at this point, and to pass on this message to anyone with an interest;  this forum thrives on real discussions, and we hope that lots of facts will be clarified, and points of view explained, on Monday.

Every page on this forum states "This form is provided by a customer of First Great Western, and the views expressed are those of the individual posters concerned. Visit www.firstgreatwestern.co.uk for the official First Great Western website. Please contact the administrators of this site if you feel that the content provided by one of our posters contravenes our posting rules. Forum hosted by Well House Consultants". Exceptionally, I think we can take Ben's views expressed during next Monday's session as the view of First Great Western.

We have started a fresh board for this session and we'll be starting each new topic raised with Ben in a fresh thread. That way, our members can select to be notified about new posts at a board or thread level during the conversation.





Edit note: Two rather minor typos corrected, purely to improve clarity. CfN.

Graham, at the risk of looking daft, what is SET? The closest to it on the abbreviations list is SETI and somehow I don't think it is that :)

The Super Express Train that comes out of the Intercity Express Programme  ;D

Acronymn page update needed, I fear!

Thanks - I wasn't trying to be obtuse - I figured it meant something like that.

Some of the these picture may inspire some questions ...

(http://www.wellho.net:/pix/mtd1.jpg) (http://www.wellho.net:/pix/mtd3.jpg) (http://www.wellho.net:/pix/mtd5.jpg)

(http://www.wellho.net:/pix/mtd7.jpg) (http://www.wellho.net:/pix/mtd8.jpg) (http://www.wellho.net:/pix/mtd9.jpg)

(http://www.wellho.net:/pix/mtd6.jpg) (http://www.wellho.net:/pix/mtd4.jpg) (http://www.wellho.net:/pix/mtd2.jpg)

This just appears to be an extremely difficult version of BNMs picture quiz.

Edit (As Graham has mentioned in the future, he has now fixed the problem)

I'm just getting loads of "Image not found" but I have just woken up

My "issue" - sorry folks.  Had to reload the database of images and overlooked those additions.   Fixed now!

The posts above will look "odd" with their comments as the images have re-appeared, so I've enclosed a snapshot of my goof in the attachments to this post.

Thank you to those who have emailed questions so far.  Please keep them coming.

Could I ask, however, when you do please include your username so we can use it when putting the question on the night.

Seating Extremely Tight (in both dimensions, and on the shorter units in numbers)

I can answer that one now. Greater legroom on the Class 800/801 than the HSTs.

Comment on the pictures - chosen to help you think about things you may want to ask. Old and new stations.  Local and long distance trains.  Electric and diesel. Small stations and large, posh and basic.  And passengers, passengers, passengers of all sorts of shapes and sizes - with and without luggage, fit and less able to get around, with prams, with suitcases, with plastic bags. Daytime and nighttime.

Not a competition and I'll tell you where they happened to be taken - Reading, Paddington, near Freshford, Westbury, Crewe, Castle Cary, Trowbridge, Melksham, Swindon.

To provide some more background information in the meantime, this is the man you'll be dealing with (from his profile on the FGW website (https://www.firstgreatwestern.co.uk/about-us/our-business/our-executive-team)):


As grahame has already suggested, I think we can take anything posted by new Coffee Shop forum member Ben Rule as being the official view of First Great Western - unless he qualifies any particular point.

I'm looking forward to the debate later today.  ;)

After the event ... - well - the technical stuff ran smoothly, and a very useful time was had by all.   I've see a few folks back in the studio discussing the game, and the three of us admins who were here (in Nailsea, Swindon and Melksham) as referee and linesman had little to do but pass a new ball to the players every so often.

I've had a poke around at the server to see how it performed, grabbed a backup copy of the databases, and will take a further look in the morning to see what it did to request rates, etc - this Monday compared to last.    I'll leave it largely for members to comment onwards - and perhaps looking to do such things occasionally in the future.    That must be a vote of success, I think!

A very large Thankyou to all who were involved in this evenings event it made for a most interesting hours reading and I now have a much better understanding of what is to come  again many thanks WP.

I thought the whole concept, and the execution of it, was excellent. The range and the depth of questions were spot on, the moderators,,well, moderated in their usual brisk and robust fashion and hats off to Ben Rule and the backroom boys and girls for their  detailed answers. This level of communication can only raise the game, and improve the image of FGW in the eyes of their customers. Congratulations and thanks to all concerned, and I look forward to the next session !

Seconded 100%