Great Western Coffee Shop

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news Graham!

Cancellations to services between Swindon and Melksham
Due to a shortage of train crew between Swindon and Melksham fewer trains are able to run.
Train services running through these stations may be cancelled. Disruption is expected until 11:00 24/06.
Customer Advice
several journeys between Westbury and Swindon have been cancelled due to staff shortages, Customers are to circulate via Bath Spa for stations except Melksham where road replacement transport will be in operation in both directions. Customers can use Local bus X34 Faresaver bus between Trowbridge and Chippenham via Melksham. During this disruption, if you wish to use local buses as an alternative means of transport and the local bus is not accepting First Great Western tickets, please keep the bus ticket and send it, together with your rail ticket, to us for a refund.

And no other services affected from Westbury as far as I can tell.  >:(

Alas ... you are not the bearer of bad news (at least not the first bearer of it!).   I am just back from Melksham Station where I have added a notice to the community rail board to encourage passengers (or wannabe passengers) to call from the information point to alert staff they need transport.

Pretty depressing, quite frankly.  Third day in a row with cancellations ... reasons differ, but it makes it hard to stand up and say "isn't this a sensible way to travel?".   Help point at station is at least telling people why the train is cancelled, but still not going the extra mile to tell them what to do / what the alternative provided will be.  GWRHelp when asked what to do answers different questions - someone practising to be a politician there ...


Tells you which service is regarded as lowest of the low, doesn't it?   I hate to pick on others - but it's an interesting decision to run nothing for 4 hours from Swindon to Westbury, when taking a diagram off a certain other line would add no more than a half hour wait ...

I see there is agreement with Faresaver buses.  Has that happened before?  It's usually been First or Stagecoach.

The relationship between Faresaver and First isn't as hostile as it used to be, but I suspect there is no agreement in place.  Yes, you can use the x34 - pay and First will refund your fare.  It does NOT say that the x34 is accepting rail tickets - it stops short of that!

There are now ...


Oh - silly me ...that's a TransWilts train too!

Provided that a Cardiff - Portsmouth makes a stop if required at Dilton Marsh, that's the sort of sensible change that doesn't kill people's whole journeys!

Personal preference is to advise people what to do (i.e. if you're at the station, use the help point to ensure road transport is coming) - more important than telling them the reason (staff sickness). 

We've asked GWR several times of late to ask their team to tell people what to do if a train is cancelled as well as why it is cancelled, but that message doesn't seem to have reached everyone on their team yet!

Not defending it but I can see a set of reasons why the TransWilts service gets chopped first when there is a staff shortage at Westbury.

Let us assume it is a driver missing.  If you were to pull in a driver who was due to work say a incoming southbound Cardiff-Portsmouth service from Westbury so they can go to Swindon and back you then have a unit stuck at the platform at Westbury unless the incoming driver has time/knowledge to put it away in the sidings.

Moving on, assume that driver was due to work the train to Portsmouth Harbour and then back as far as Fratton.  So at Fratton you have a driver, who may be a Westbury driver working home, or a Fratton one starting their shift.  He/she has no train to work and is therefore either stuck away from home or left marking time which isn't a good use of resources.

Finally assuming the northbound working to Cardiff resumes at Westbury with the unit which has been sitting there for a few hours.  You now need the driver due to work it north to be in place in time to pull it off the sidings.

Saying all that, none of this will be comfort to passengers waiting at Melksham nor ease my frustration at the damage it does to the reputation of the TW service.

Presumably the RRS is running to a timetable? Or is it totally taxis ordered after call at any time to the helppoint?

Yes - I can understand that.

We ran overnight accommodation for ten years ... occasional staff sickness, shortage, etc, but never once did we fail to have breakfast provided on time.  It didn't call for having extra people sitting around "just in case" - rather, a spirit in which we all worked together to ensure cover in the event of a crisis.  On one - yes, just one - occasion did we have someone who was not trained "hotel sitting".  I ask "where's the difference"; clearly the jobs are different.  We were a much smaller team, so close knit and would help each other out.   And our policy was to be doing a 37.5 or 40 (if you include breaks) hour week which meant that people could / would step in for a bit of overtime to help out.  Perhaps too much reliance on rest day working thins out the goodwill and availability on mornings like today?

The original notice is confusing as well. It talks about road replacement transport being available for Melksham, but then also goes on to say you can use the local bus instead. So which is it?  And if you use the local bus, will your ticket still be refunded on the grounds that a proper rail replacement service was laid on?

If you use the local bus, is it clear that you still have to have first bought a rail ticket? Obvious to us, no doubt, but I can imagine some people will just go off to find the bus first without realising that. Also because of intermediate stops a local bus takes much longer than a point to point rail replacement service will, so connections are much more likely to be missed.

Finally, the hassle of having to claim a refund will put most people off applying I would suggest.  And then from other posts on the forum it could take months for it to come through.

Why doesn't GWR just have an arrangement with a local taxi and/or coach company in the area?  After all, they've had at least a couple of hours to make such arrangements.

Goodness knows.  If there is a timetable, it's not exactly publicised.  See attached image for what the help point is saying

So the 0837 ran? - its not showing 'cancelked' as the others are.

Agree, all sorts of info missing. That help point screen could be so more useful if control could put messages on it - but it looks as though a one-liner may be possible against each service....

Suggest asking for a meeting with GWR about this type if distuption

Yes - that's a 2 car train that carries on to Cheltenham.  Saturday service (Melksham times) before 12.2013 were
* 08:37 and 15:21 northbound
* 15:48 and 21:34 southbound
Here's an old campaign picture at Melksham Station - Posters held up for the local press and "we want a proper train service".   Did it on a Saturday afternoon, and had (twice) to pull people back from the platform edge when a train called!

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/duncanhamesatstation.jpg)


An overall two big lines of text at the top in addition to the trains is also possible.


We lost 8 hours worth of services on 28th May 2017 and as a result had a meeting with GWR on 5th June 2017.  Whilst we to ensure that they're aware of the effect of the loss of multiple service have on our ability to cherish and grow the service, we don't want to waste our time or theirs by answering problems with a meeting.

Effect was very clear to see at 11:30 when I went down to the station.  A normally half full car park (on a Saturday morning) didn't have a single car in it.   Passengers waiting for the 11:48 both needed help with information and the TVM / both first time users; Saturday and Sunday mornings are typically the time that new users first try the train.

Re GWR telling people what they should do, I noticed last night on Journey Check that the 2330 Paddington to Cardiff was terminating at Bristol TM due to urgent Engineering work in Patchway Tunnel but no advice as to what passengers should do.     I tweeted them and the reply came back saying it should run through as normal so I then had to refer the Twitter team to their own Journey Check once again.   .They came back then apologising and stated that the Control team had been consulted and that there would be a bus.   

I'd be extremely wary of advising anyone to email GWR if they wish to complain taking into account that their Customer Service is in such a mess that they are no longer even prepared to give a timescale for a reply to be sent - that's likely to infuriate people even more.

The more complaints, the bigger the backlog, the more chance it gets sorted.  After all: See it. Say it. Sorted.

GWR CS needs to be sorted by greater capacity, rather than a firebreak.

I'm feeling mixed threads here  ;D - about a three way mix.

There would be logic to add capacity, and to use an element of that capacity (unfair though it would feel) to deal with new requests in a timeous manner, before each of those grows from a baby enquiry into an awkward teenager that requires even more resource.

As the parent of 2- and 4-year old daughters, that last bit fills me with dread...

Not overly difficult. Firstly you work out how much of a backlog you have - clearly it's pretty horrific as the ETA for a reply has gone from two months to indefinite - then you work out how many complaints an individual can process in one day. You decide what is an acceptable timeframe to clear the backlog, do some maths, and come up with a required number of people to do the work within this timeframe.

Based on this calculation, you hire in temp staff and clear the backlog, leaving the permanent staff (ensuring there are enough in place) to concentrate on the "incoming" and in that way you regain control of the situation, keep on top of the work, and maintain the necessary timescales going forward.

All this needs to succeed is a shift from GWR to becoming a Business which cares about its customers and their satisfaction with its services, and basic management skills. I fear these two aspects may present the biggest challenge judging by current performance.

Before the "ooooooos gunna pay for it then?" brigade start piping up, this problem has been created by and sits squarely with GWR, so any OPEX incurred needs to come off their bottom line - a painful, but potentially an enlightening opportunity for improvement and efficiency.

Exactly ... we can be so much more helpful here to anyone who reads these forums if we make such constructive suggestions.  You never know who may be reading - especially as you started this thread on a public board  ;)

GWR have a number of issues to deal with which are out of their control but for which they have to take the flack.  However, there are a number of things which the can/could do things about - ranging from this backlog to using the train that sits idle at Swindon from twenty five past four to ten to six each evening to run an extra trip to abstract from the 17:36 - which might cost them a little in the short term but would certainly bring far more sentiment onto their side.  I suspect that such sentiment would / will be useful for management contract and franchise stuff over coming years - so it really should be in their interest!

A CS which cannot answer in a timely manner to its customers is a disgrace to any organisation.

There have been plenty of reasons advanced as to how and why this situation arose (such as change of contractors, number of incidents all at one time) but if the capacity can barely cope with the regular demand the slug will never get cleared. Indeed if anything the evidence is that the queue is growing.

Triage the correspondence up front, concentrate the more experienced and knowledgeable staff (I guess these exist) on the complex issues, hire in others to deal with the more routine. Most of all keep people informed on a regular basis rather than giving the impression you don't care at all. All basic stuff really.

Our former letter team where I used to work, had a target of 1 hour per letter. Every letter was bespoke, with no templates available to them.

This, and information during disruption, are the two areas GWR really needs to work on, but seem totally unconcerned about either.

I've been labelling up some old images - came across this one from the start of the rebranding exercise; some talk of what customers expect and what should be provided in here:

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/wl004.jpg)

Because they know these two issues are low down on Dft's list of priorities from a franchise?

This gets depressing ...

"I know - let's cancel the last train of the day ...


So why not use one of those trains that's just been released from the Severn Beach line?