Great Western Coffee Shop

Correspondence below sent to FGW and local MP this morning in despair of the service:
Dear Sir / Madam

I wondered if there was any explanation for the 20 minute delay to the above service?  In addition to this delay, the frustration suffered by everyone waiting at Oldfield Park this morning was compounded by the following things:

^   An Intercity service sped though OIdfield Park with plenty of space available and did not make a stop despite there being c.90 people waiting at Oldfield Pk.
^   A 2 coach service finally arrived at c.08.11 which had people standing already, leaving several people unable to board at Oldfield Pk and Keynsham.
^   The information point at Oldfield Park was not working and has not been for several weeks.
^   The First Great Western line (0845 6002244) currently has information relating to Sunday 13 November!
^   No information was offered on the train as to the reason for the delay or lack of coaches, and no apology offered.

I am sure that the above is self explanatory enough to convey my frustration and anger at the current levels of service, and the prospect of paying more for such a service in January is totally inconceivable.  I want to make it clear that this is NOT an isolated incident and to this end a log of my experience of services offered since the winter timetable change is below:

Date      Incident               
10/12/07   07.51 delayed 16 mins
11/12/07   18.07 delayed 7 mins
12/12/07   Didn^t travel
13/12/07   Didn^t travel
14/12/07   Didn^t travel
17/12/07   18.07 delayed 6 mins
19/12/07   18.07 delayed 8 mins
18/12/07   Service ok
20/12/07   07.51 delayed 20 minutes

This gives a total of 57 minutes delay in under 2 weeks and as you can see several days I didn^t travel so have do not know what level of service was provided on those days.  I do not think that this level of service is acceptable. 

I also feel that the decision to stop intercity services at Keynsham but not at Oldfield Park in the morning peak has been ill conceived and taken without realising how this has further antagonised and alienated the commuters at busy Oldfield Park who now have a longer wait between services in the morning and suffer seeing the intercity service go through without stopping.

I am very disappointed about the service provided by First Great Western and I only wish there was an alternative for me. In the meantime, I look forward to seeing what response you feel is appropriate.  By copy of this email I wish Don Foster MP to note the current service levels experienced.  I have also made this correspondence public via http://www.firstgreatwestern.info.

Regards

Welcome to the forum, Barney.

You've hit the nail right on the head there, why stop a High Speed Service at Keynsham but not oldfield park? Even just one could proberbly relieve some of the strain at oldfield park in the mornings

It would probably anger the HSS folk who dont want local folk on their new trains!

It's silly. If i'm going from bristol to bath spa, i usully get the 17:30 HST. If i'm trying to get to Oldfield park, i dont even bother trying to get on the 17:22 to portsmouth habour, due to it usully packed, and depending on how many passengers there are, a couple of times, they get the 17:30 to stop at keynsham and Oldfield Park, it works fine! so where is the logic in not stopping a service in the morning!?

I refer you to this extract from a list of questions put to Andrew Griffiths :

The link below might interest you, shadow.
http://www.loial.co.uk/fgw.pdf

If the 1730 was to stop at Oldfield Park and Keynsham it would have to be retime not to cause problems at Swindon and Reading.

It would probably be 1724 Bristol TM - London Padd but this would follow the 1722 far too closely. There *are* reasons why it can't be done. Capacity between Bath and Bristol is very tight

Thanks Lee

I dont mean make the 17:30 a timetabled stop or anything, It's just happened a couple of times to me before the new timetables came into effect.

What if the following was implemented? :

- Remove the stop at Oldfield Park in the 1722 service, thus potentially speeding it up and removing Oldfield Park passengers from an already overcrowded train.

- Retime the 1730 slightly earlier, and include a stop at Oldfield Park on a service which FGW say in the leaflet will have "additional capacity."

Would this be feasible pathing-wise?

That sounds good!
But the 1730 comes from weston super mare now i think, so would that put a hicup in that idea?

Arrival time at Bristol Temple Meads is 1729, so yes, you would have to see if you could turn around the 1648 arrival at Weston quicker (20 minutes turnaround time currently) and path the 1708 Weston departure earlier so it arrives in Bristol before the XC service does at 1725.

Not easy, granted, but nothing like this ever is.

20 minute turnaround is already fairly tight.

Agreed. Looking also at whats coming towards Weston in the opposite direction, the best I can suggest is to start the 1708 Weston-London service at 1700, and have it arrive at Temple Meads at 1721 (4 minutes before the XC service as opposed to 4 minutes afterwards.)

This would give you a turnaround time at Weston of 12 minutes. I dont know whether that would be feasible or desirable, but I am open to other suggestions.

Or alternativly, ECS from SPM to Bristol to form the 172x service to London, and have the HST at Weston leave later and call at all of the shacks.

I would suggest a 12 minute turn around at Weston is too tight, and the single line out to Worle doesn't help matters. Re the ECS from SPM, would there be one available? One seems to come out to form the 1700 to Paddington to fill the gap caused by the 1430 from Paddington working down to Weston.     

Barney please let's be factual. There is no way that a High Speed Intercity train sped through Oldfield Park at all in the last six months. There is a temporary speed restriction of 40mph in that location.

Before you ask why it's been there so long, it is because the people who chose to purchase property next to the railway do so without thinking that living next to a railway can at times be a noisy. Therefore when work to clear a collasped gully started some months ago it was halted by the local nimby's kicking up in the Bath Chronicle. When it is shut down completely for another whole weekend in the future that will be something else to complain about!

Thanks for that explanation 12hours as I have been wondering why that speed restriction has been there for so long. You are right HSTs just cruise along that stretch of line before accelerating as they head towards Twerton Tunnel.

Don't get me started on that!

THEY CHOSE TO LIVE BY THE RAILWAY - AND THE RAILWAY WAS THERE FIRST!

I live next to a railway line - and have only had a real rant once, when the line was shut and a 59 was parked nearby idleing! 9hours infact....