Great Western Coffee Shop

Upto 38,000 Reading fans will be heading to Wembley on the bank holiday Monday, many travelling by train. (15:00 KO).

I expect morning/lunchtime travel towards London to be fairly staggered although coming back, I fully expect services departing Paddington between 17:30 and early evening to be extremely busy.

I know in the past the odd extra or strengthened turbo has appeared late on, although as things stand there is a distinct lack of services with only 3 HSTs (Cornwall/South Wales/Bristol) and 3 turbos (Bedwyn/Cotswolds/Oxford) per hour fast from Paddington.

To be fair, you've hardly given the railway any opportunity to work out any additional services, let alone publicise them.

In the meantime, Adelante_CCT, I've taken the opportunity to link this topic to the Coffee Shop forum's calendar.  CfN.  ;)

I'm amazed there are that many Reading fans!  ;D

You'd be amazed how many previously unseen lifelong, loyal, diehard fans emerge when any club reaches Wembley!

True, this was more of a warning to the uninitiated about the busy services, and of course this thread can be updated if or hopefully when additionals are added in due course.



Well I did say upto 38,000  :)



Very true TG, I am a season ticket holder though so at least I can be excused from that group  :)

We'll see what they do, but I imagine more than a couple of extra trains will be difficult to path as I would think two tracks will be closed so Crossrail works can continue?

Perhaps a couple of 9-12 car Turbos could run to really provide some high capacity additional trains?  Also encourage Reading's fan base from the Didcot area to travel via Oxford/Chiltern and others to travel via Waterloo.

Has all the makings of a bit of a disaster!

'Twas ever thus, railway can't seem to cope with major sporting events.....having said that, some lessons seem to have been learned judging by the service GWR are providing for the Champions league final in Cardiff, so maybe they'll surprise us!

Thankfully the mighty Plymouth Argyle gained automatic promotion this season, so for the first time in a few years I don't have to contemplate the agony of the playoffs!

I sympathise with NR/GWR in this case as Crossrail work has been planned for ages and to postpone it would cost a lot of money and could jeopardise the on-time completion of the project.  And with such matches you then need to have fall back plans as the time the majority of fans arrive back at Paddington will vary by 1-2 hours depending on whether they get beaten in normal time or win in a penalty shootout.

Let's hope they can find a few extra paths and fill them with maximum length trains.

Playoffs between teams that can be from anywhere in the country that don't actually become predictable until a few weeks before the season ends are impossible to plan round.   Unless you declare certain weekends maintenance free across the entire main line network this is nearly always going to result in moans from somewhere.

Paul

Don't think so, RTT seems to show all 4 tracks running normally throughout. 4 stoppers per hour and the Heathrow and Hayes services running as normal in addition to the fasts posted above.

The main engineering works being in the Swindon area.

That's a relief.  If you'll excuse the pun.

Apologies for not checking and as a result misleading everyone, but I can't remember the last bank holiday when there wasn't a two track timetable in operation and given the amount of platform extensions underway I'm surprised.

Exeter City have now booked their place at Wembley.  They'll face Blackpool on Sunday 28th May.

Exeter's away following is pretty small (unless they're playing Plymouth!) there will undoubtedly be a boost from the bandwagon brigade but I doubt it'll be vast numbers.

Even to Wembley?...I think otherwise.

And Mods - update to subject to include the 28th May?

With Chiltern's Class 121's now surplus to requirement, one should be enough for a footex from St James Park

The Grecians' other two visits to Wembley in 2007 and 2008 resulted in 35,000 'followers' in 2007 (admittedly only the second ever game at the 'new' Wembley) and 30,000 the following year. An allocation of 20,000 this year has already seen 8,000 tickets sold since midday today - or so I have been led to believe  ;D

According to most of Blackpool's supporters forums they're expecting fewer than 10,000 to make the trip - can't see Exeter managing more than 15,000 - 20,000 max.

28,217 from Reading as of 5pm today, also GWR have added the following extra HSTs:

09:29, 10:25, 11:24 & 12:23 from Reading to Paddington calling at Twyford.

Return workings yet to be added

Also on the Sunday, an additional 09:19 from Exeter calling at Tiverton only has been scheduled along with a 19:28 return, calling at Newbury* and Tiverton

* Due to operational reasons I believe

If you're right, and if only 5% of those 20000 decide to travel by train, then that's still two full HST loads of people on top of the usual bank holiday traffic, though being on the Sunday that will fortunately be the quietest day of the weekend by far.

0839 EXD-PAD and 1903 PAD-PLY apparently already fully booked with the 1857 PAD-EXD getting that way!

Huge London weekend for Exeter now!!! Chiefs at Twickenham on Saturday too!  :)

* Apparently the operational reason is to allow the 1937 PAD-SWA which is running via the B&H and Avon Valley to overtake the 1928 relief. Seems a little odd as the relief is being held at NBY for 12 minutes before the SWA train passes and I would have expected similar timings for both over the B&H given that both should have been non-stop over that route.

Reason being, is if it ran straight through Newbury, it would be held up by the preceding Bedwyn, which in turn would delay the Swansea.

I have therefore updated this topic's heading accordingly, and added links to the respective events in the Coffee Shop forum's calendar.  :)

Now they have, additional HSTs from Paddington calling at Twyford and Reading depart at 18:44, 19:15, 20:06 & 20:44

Reading Buses are now running services from outside Reading Station to Wembley Stadium.

http://www.reading-buses.co.uk/articles/buses-to-wembley/ (http://www.reading-buses.co.uk/articles/buses-to-wembley/)

Good educated guess by TG - 17000 or so Exeter City fans and 6000 Blackpool fans.  Would be interesting to see what percentage travelled by train, and how that percentage compares with Reading's tomorrow.