Great Western Coffee Shop

Not only was there someone checking tickets on the train, there was a cleaner picking up discarded newspapers and coffee cups!  :o What's going on?!

grahame speculates on a possible reason in the link below.
http://www.savethetrain.org.uk/melkshamrailway/241_Fare_Strike_Day.html

You re easily shocked then ...but there are always a number of travelling cleaners picking up the crap the passengers cant be bothered to put in the bins!!! nothing untoward is going on they are just doing the job they are paid to do..so dont panic

I think "Always" is stretching a point.

I travelled on a mid-morning FGW shuttle from Reading to Basingstoke last week and the guard was going through clearing up the mess himself, bless him. He kindly offered me a Metro to read before he bagged it (the bins were already full to overflowing) and I noticed with a wry smile that he kept a copy of the Sun to himself to read later.

That's the first time I've ever seen a cleaner on the train, and I've been travelling the same route since September 2005...

Are you talking HST or Local Services ?............they tend to be more frequent on HST services and get on at one station and off the next to get on another train, see them every day.
And if the T/M is litter picking, he is trying to keep his train in a reasonable state for the paying passengers

Some Local staff do that - they take PRIDE in there train!

Yep, this is definitely a new thing in the last few weeks.

Cleaner was very surprised when I objected to him throwing away a discarded newspaper that I was just about to pick up & read!

Some of us like newpapers to be left on the seats! (As long as they are not all messy & screwed up.)

Penzance HST cleaning team always leave papers on the train.

Exeter annoyingly don't! I do the 19.53 Exeter-Padd quite a lot (with a 180) and there's never any left!

Its quite good really as in Cornwall we get first edition newspapers. The ones on the train are second edition and have the late night footbal results etc.
Also the Metro is quite often left behind.

Would love to know where they are for the FGW service from Portsmouth to Cardiff then, the trains are always dirty, I refuse to use the toilets on the basis that it would be cleaner for me to use a bush then the ones on the 156 units.

FGW dont have any 156 units mate

Perhaps if people put their litter in bins there wouldn't be a problem...