Great Western Coffee Shop

I had a chance to travel on some of the Cornish Community Rai lines that have service levels similar to the TransWilts over this weekend.  A learning experience - and an enjoyable weekend.   Oodles of picture and a few comments at:

http://www.wellho.net/mouth/4510_Learning-from-the-others-Community-Rail.html

Sorry about the poor quality of today's pictures.  I blame the weather!

Newquay on the weekend isn't a straight comparison as they use the passing loop on summer weekends, about 30 mins from Par.

In Cornwall the partnership have for branch frequency improved so much that the main line is now behind the branchlines. You've probably seen my moans about Plymouth to Penzance poor service. In fact summer Saturday's par to Penzance suffers even more with many "Intercity" services going to Newquay instead of Penzance. There is several 3 hour gaps on Saturdays on the main line.

Nothing is a straight comparison  ;) :D ;D - and that's why Community Rail is so important as it takes advantage of the uniqueness of each line and area.  Which doesn't stop me learning ... very much the same as in our hotel business, I stay at other hotels and observe.  I come back with 20 notes - 10 which are "no way would we do that", 7 of which are "interesting" and 3 "perhaps we could adopt this".

if these pictures where in a quiz I would have got every one. well I think!

when I get chatting to a lot of tourists they are very surprised at how infrequent the trains are down here I did say to one guy from London that you can't really compare London with cornwall on the level of service.

They weren't - I'm busy promising the summer quiz at http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=15912.0 and I'm not going to muddy the waters with another  ;D ... Please do feel free to post all the answers though as I may have forgotten which was where by now.


I have a theory that you shouldn't have to wait much more between trains than the time taken for your journey. So a 3 or 4 hour gap is fin Glasgow to Oban, but not Golders Green to Holborn.   Basically means there's a movement from "people will usually take a train" where there are two or more trains running the service to "will use the train IF they run at the right time both ways" with single train services.  Some exceptions on shorter runs - Looe, for example, where a second train would I suspect be hard to justify.  But not my territory / knowledge base.

well I won't name them all but lets just say you visited gunnislake looe, Newquay and st Ives branch lines  not sure about falmouth though!   ??? 

Didn't do Falmouth, nor one of the others.

No need - Ollie and I did a Falmouth Line bash, years ago!  ;) :D ;D

I used to do it daily. Along with St Ives, Falmouth has the best public transport links in Cornwall.

Unfortunately locals have been priced out of Falmouth since the arrival of the university. Every other house is a multiple occupancy, inflating prices beyond belief.

hmm I I've worked it out st Ives you missed out on as well!

The pictures even go in a pattern....Gunny, Newks, Looe!

I got confused one of the pictures is looking out to Newquay headland. at a quick glance I thought it was coming around into st Ives but at closer inspection its not!

Indeed.   It's called "interlacing". You'll find image numbers 1,11,21,2,12,22,3,13,33 and so on if you view source!