Great Western Coffee Shop

From this mornings journeycheck.


06:48 Weston-Super-Mare to London Paddington due 09:12

06:48 Weston-super-Mare to London Paddington due 09:12 will be started from Bristol Temple Meads.

It will no longer call at Weston-super-Mare, Weston Milton, Worle, Yatton and Nailsea & Backwell.

This is due to a shortage of train crew.

Will be formed of 5 coaches instead of 10.


Additional Facilities Information

Customers will need to join the FRONT 5 coaches only this morning.

 ???

I saw this service at Didcot and it was formed of 10 carriages although only the first 5 were in use. It is also the first day that it has been an IET rather than an HST. This service is often 'full and standing' at Didcot but fortunately that wasn't the case today even though it was short-formed.
 

That was lucky for me - travelled up to Paddington from Weston on this service last Friday

When the fact that 5 car trains were being ordered was first discovered, I seem to remember the FGW apologists claiming that all would be well because services that needed 10 vehicles would get them!

But you need the crew to operate them. Gosh GWR are struggling to crew one train net alone two. I also seem to remember those saying that you would end up with services down as 10 car but only operating as 5. Gosh they've hardly been in service and this is already happening.

edit to add missing word

Seems to me that the railway industry (or at least the Dft) has a case of its 'Left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing'.
On the one hand they are trying to introduce DOO across more trains, so reducing staff, and on the other they are introducing trains that require more staff.

Maybe we should start up a train crew swap agency where any unemployed or underemployed guards on other TOC's could be signed up to operate GWR IET's; that way GWR can have fully manned trains and the other TOC's can go DOO and everyone ends up happy :)

Roy McNulty's report into value for money (ie why are costs so expensive in the UK rail industry) turned out to be a bit of a damp squib, but one factor he did identify though international comparisons was that UK costs were often higher than other countries because of the British disease of favouring short trains.  Now I know that the trade off for longer trains would be to make them less frequent which would be a backward step, but against a background of rising passenger numbers, no one should be ordering 5 car trains for an intercity route. 

To add to the above comments, I travelled from Swindon to London, and back today. It happened to be the first time I've been on the new supa-dupa electric (hybrid?) trains. All very excellent, but I can't understand why a fixed formation train needs to be in two halves. Apart from the comment re double staffing (I suspect that means it usually won't be fully staffed with a conductor in both sections), there is a serious issue for passengers when the trains are heavily loaded. Boarding at Paddington on the 16:30 to Taunton (I was changing at Swindon to the TransWilts) seemed to start quite close to the departure time. Crowds gathered at the gate awaiting for permission to board, and when it did, everyone rushed together to get seats. I suspect that most went into the first section of 5 coaches, and as they couldn't pass through to the other 5 coaches, were standing when probably there were seats in the front section. Well-done to the conductor who made annoucements to move to the other section. Given the cost of the new trains, to introduce operational difficulties that weren't there before seems surprising.
As an aside, I was also impressed by teh conductor removing unused seat reservation tickets when the train started, to open up the seats to passengers who didn't have reservations, that conductor definitely gets a tick in the box, praise where it's due.

So the electronic seat reservations weren't working again?  I have been on a few IETs recently where they had resorted to the paper slips again.  Good they go to plan B but I wonder what the underlying problem is with the electronic version?

I assumed that feature hadn't been implemented yet, from your comment that's not the case. Was manual card reservations in both directions (maybe it was the same unit, I don't know -9:11  SWI to PAD & 16:30  PAD to Taunton.)

There's an old (2011) DfT presentation to the IMechE (https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/3736/intercity-rail-travel-presentation.pdf) about the IEP programme, which does tell you what they were trying to achieve. Warning, if you don't make allowances for what's happened since, some bits may make you choke on your G&T - plans never do survive intact after contact with all that reality.

The only bullet point that relates to the choice of 5-car bi-mode units (but 9-car electrics), to run as 10-car trains in whatever counts as the peak, was this:

Reduced off peak waste by use of 5 car trains

I take that to mean they were worried about the ungreenness of operating long empty diesel trains, and that drove the decision to shorten them instead. Most London suburban operators happily run 8 or 10-car trains all day, and never feel the need to split them, so for electric traction it wasn't felt to be an issue.

Any other ways of exploiting those short trains came later, and in the case of "to run them as extra off-peak services" never was convincing. While it's not impossible for a service to need more trains per hour out of the work travel peak, it's pretty unlikely.

The other thing that having shorter trains has encouraged is their use outside the long-distance high-speed category they were designed for, for regional or commuter services where they just won't work well. That's also true of HSTs, of course, so you'd think they knew...

Apparently there are going to be some notice boards put up primarily to direct those with seat reservations to board the correct portion at Paddington. The limited boarding time for many services doesn't help though with getting others up to the front.

They knew about the seating back then, it's obvious from this quote

  Increasing customer expectations –  hard and soft issues

 ;D

And Dawlish figured too


Change in risk transfer from “hell or high water”  lease to “no train, no pay”, with performance regime attached

;D ;D

With HSTs, platform access at Paddington has "had to" wait until the train had been "prepared".  But people are allowed on the platform while preparations are under way at the other end such as as Bristol Temple Meads. The idea of holding people outside the gates if they're headed for the Paddington train until it's ready seems impractical and time has proven it un-necessary.    And that same thing applies at so many end-of-route stations for other types of trains too.  Passengers get off and when they have done so the next lot get straight on at Looe, at Newquay, at Falmouth Dock,  and at places like Reading on trains arriving in from Bedwyn, even where such trains when they reverse at Paddington have a "make 'em wait" operation technique.

With the electronification of seat reservations and destination notices, is it now time to be efficient and customer friendly at Paddington too, and let people be on the platform to join the incoming train once the incoming passengers have left it?   Has anyone asks a sample of customers "if you arrive in good time for your train, would you prefer to sit in it early and wait there rather than on the station concourse and in the shops" ... of course there would be nothing stopping people shopping and whatever until a few minutes before the train was due to leave - and isn't giving customers a choice a great idea?

Quite.

Also, the narrowness of some of the Paddington platforms also makes it very difficult for large numbers of passengers to board at once. Where there are steps up to the footbridge or other mid platform constrictions, it can be difficult to even pass people coming the other way, especially if they have luggage.

The last train I caught at Paddington to Bath didn't allow passengers to access the platform until five minutes before it was due to go. When the platform was announced it became mayhem, as a huge mass swarmed through the barriers and onto the platform.

The problem with arrivals and departures at Paddington is the planned next working for a set can change at almost the last minute - a "set swap".   This can be to cover for late running or the need to get a set to a particular depot for engineering purposes.  So sometimes it is better to wait rather than advertise a train and then have to tell everyone it has changed.   There are tales on here of people who have gone to their "usual" platform and boarded a train only to discover just before departure (or in some cases just after) that the train was going to a different destination.

Once the electronic seat reservations are working reliably that should cut the preparation time but there will always need to be some turn round allowance while cleaners go through and remove the empty cups, cans and sandwich wrappings which passengers seem incapable of putting in the bins.  In any event the bins will need emptying and the toilets cleaned.

The interesting thing will be whether once everything is IET whether layover times will stay the same as they are now or be tightened up in the knowledge train preparation can be quicker.

It is not the same at places like Bristol Temple Meads, Swansea or Penzance where it isn't difficult to work out which is the next train out as there are usually only one or two trains of the correct type in the platforms at any one time.  Even then at places like Plymouth the doors on the 12:55 to London are routinely locked shortly after the set comes in at 12:19 to allow time for staff to prepare the train.

I've been on a train where the destination has changed after boarding which was 'fun'! Everyone had boarded a full buffet HST to Great Malvern and up until about 3 minutes before departure everything was fine. Then the Train Manager comes on the tannoy and tells us that there is a problem with the catering, sadly we didn't have any food loaded we were missing the crew member for 1st. Then at departure she appears again and says we may have to change trains please listen for further announcements. Then she came back on and told us to get off the train, cross the platform and get on the HST on the other side. Not ideal as some people had settled in but off we went, people who had been standing in the vestibules got off and then on first and now got seats. This HST had a stocked mini/micro buffet and a full 1st trolley and crew member serving from it. Much better from my point of view but a bit of a faff. We made up the lost time by Reading so no real damage done.

I suspect that this has become an aspiration, that they are "working towards" rather than a promise.
All very Voyager like, but at least they do not smell as bad.

They are certainly "working towards" the day when all the IET fleet is available, and some of us would say that any judgement before that is premature. Of course the planning and execution of the transition period is another matter, and criticism of that is in no way premature.

Jam tomorrow.
Was is not implied that we would start to see the benefits of the new trains from the beginning of THIS year ?

What has actually happened is regular 5 car DMUs replacing 8 car HSTs. Advocates of the new units now say "don't judge them on these interim problems, wait until the whole fleet is in service.

Likewise with the downgrade from a buffet to a trolley. It was certainly stated on these forums that the new DMUs would have "improved catering trolleys that keep hot food hot and cold food cold" and also that 5+5 trains would have a trolley in each portion. And that hot food would be offered in standard class.

Of course the new trolleys are much like the old ones, a single trolley in a 5+5 train is a regular feature.
The alleged hot food offer also seems to have become a future aspiration instead of a promise.
I pointed these downgrades out elsewhere on these forums, and advocates of the new DMUs suggested that such criticisms are unwarranted until the whole fleet is in service.

Why ? If DECENT  trolley catering was planned, why not do this from day one ?
I suspect that a year or two after all the new units are in use, that a survey will be done to show that no one wants a trolley any more.

Looking back, the project was due for completion in 2017, so we should have been seeing all the benefits this year.

When I made my first and only trip on the IET the I spoke to a staff member onboard.They said that they'd heard nothing about the trolley they use being changed. Indeed as it was owned by Hitachi they  thought it was unlikely they'll be changed. There was also no news on hot food  :-[ It is possible that GWR are waiting untill more of the IET fleet are deployed. But it's a shame that given we were promised better trolleys on this site, nothing has been forthcoming.

Is it possible the trolley confusion comes from the early days of IET operation, the first class trolley was then used but now is a galley cart is used so has the change already come but is only relevant to first class?

The issue for me is that Ben Rule said on this site in response to a question from broadgage that


that to provide a trolley service that replaces the buffet new more advanced trolleys will be needed. These have not been forthcoming, hence my post.

Apologists for the new trains USED to tell me not to be so critical until they entered service.
Now that they HAVE entered service, and my predictions about much downgraded catering, and regular short formations have been proved correct, apologists for the new trains feel that I am being premature in judging them until the whole fleet is in service.

Time to admit that short DMUs are not proper inter city trains. One can hardly scrap something so new and expensive.

But time to turn them into better trains.
1) Lengthen all the 9 car sets to 10 car by adding a buffet.
2) Lengthen some of the half trains to full 10 car, again incorporating a buffet.
3) Reduce seats from 88 to 84 and provide more table seats.

We would have to live with the high floors and underfloor engines, regrettably.

Won't happen sadly. This whole project is massively over budget so Dft are going to want to get every penny's worth of value out what's been ordered.

I don't think they were ever meant to be. It's about mass transit of people to where they want to go. Bit like budget airlines and now British Airways. What do you get for your money now when you fly short haul and even long haul on some airlines? A seat and nothing more.

Sorry, but I beg to differ. I have been on these trains enough now to make a judgement and I do not have a problem with them.

The engine noise is fine - I am not sure I can tell when the engines are switched on or off.

The seats are fine - I have a back problem. I think I might find them a bit hard if I was going all the way to Penzance - but I haven't done that yet so I will reserve judgement.   

I am think (can others comment) that there are a few more tables than on the HSTs, but for me the wider seat spacing is the main benefit as I have very long legs and insufficient leg room on the HSTs exacerbates my back problems. 

The main problem seems to be running 5 car units and cancellation of trains due to lack of staff.  We have had it reported here that DfT have told GWR to run more trains as 5 car units and and to cancel trains to make both trains and staff available to accelerate staff training. Once the staff have been trained we can expect capacity to be increased where necessary. If it does not happen then - we can complain then.

There are some issues with the reliability which (despite assurance) is regrettably always the case with a new class of train, but in the past in almost all cases (180's excepted) this is sorted after a few months. Hitachi have invested a lot in making these trains a success - they have built a factory and have another factory in Italy - they want to sell more trains so I am sure they will make them work.   

As for buffet cars - I really don't care - I usually travel with luggage including a computer and I do not want to lug it all the way up the train to go to a buffet car and have to carry my luggage and food and drink back.  A trolley coming round is far more convenient for me and when travelling in the peak I usually buy something before I get on the train. It's cheaper that way anyway.  If you want to add another carriage then to my mind it should be filled with seats, not a buffet.

There are more tables on an IET than on an HST that has been down graded to a high density commuter train.
A lot less tables though than a proper HST with a true inter city/long distance layout. These had 16 tables per coach thereby seating 64 passengers at tables, and another 8 seats without tables for a total capacity of 72.

88 seats on an IET does not look spacious if compared to 72 seats on an old style HST, even allowing for the longer vehicles.

Four out of five days this week the 8:17 Chippenham to Bristol has been 5 cars which is worrying for reliability. On a positive note the train is now arriving several minutes early to match HST performance which was never the case until the last month. As far as buffets go, who ever used them? In over 30 years of using gwr I can count on one hand the number of times I've bought something. Give the space to seats! As soon as the 9 cars are in widespread use hopefully all these gripes will go away, I wanted to hate these trains but they are actually pretty good.

If table seats are so popular, how come I so often end up in one when I have requested a reservation for an airline seat?

Is the reservation system deliberately bad or vindictive, or are table seats amongst the last to be reserved - especially the fourth one?

I may be in a minority but I use the buffet. They haven't given "the space to seats" as you put it because a comparable sized space is used by the kitchen in 1st.

I think my comment was supposed to suggest that the space should be used for seats rather than a kitchen or buffet or whatever. When your journeys are all during peak commuter time and you end up standing for the very high price you've paid for a ticket you begin to resent large wasted spaces. Peak trains should not be compromised so a relatively few people can have the occasional hot meal.

I suspect the algorithm was cloned from a restaurateur in a tourist trap - you know the kind; won't let you have a table with any more seats than your party numbers in case two coach parties come in at once at 3 o'clock on a damp Tuesday afternoon out of season.

If that 'relatively high price' is a Season Ticket then you are paying some of the cheapest per-journey costs.

I agree, season tickets are very much cheaper than most other peak time fares, less than half fare in many cases.
Most commuters are making relatively short journeys such as London to Reading, and in my view should use the local trains such as the new Crossrail services. These have been designed for optimum passenger carrying capacity with no space "wasted" on such things as catering, and will therefore surely meet with great approval from season ticket holders.

This has been done to death.

Any business will offer a discount to a client or customer who is prepared to pay up front for a bulk supply and commit themselves to that businesses goods or services for a finite period. It is not a railway thing. The business accepts a smaller margin in exchange for the money in the account upfront and the certainty of custom - this is the same principle whether you purchase a football club season ticket rather than paying match by match, or a pallet load of widgets rather than half a dozen.

If the less frequent traveller/enthusiast can get their head around this concept it may assuage the apparent misplaced resentment which quite often seems to rise to the surface as a means of hitting commuters over the head.


On train catering is increasingly looking like an anachronism, particularly on busy commuter routes given the desperate need for passenger capacity and the general availability of sandwiches, coffee etc elsewhere and at stations of far better value and far higher quality.

The novelty factor of the Pullman will continue I guess but this is very much a niche market.

Firstly can't be done as crossrail doesn't run to Reading yet.

Secondly, when it is up and running, are you suggesting all Reading commuters, or those who change at Reading for local stations westwards, should catch a train taking 52 (ish) minutes instead of one taking 22 ? It'd be quicker to commute to Swindon than Reading!

Thirdly, 'slower' trains out of London are extremely busy as they are. You would not be able to add all Reading passengers on to current slower services.

I am aware that Crossrail is not yet running.
However it should open fairly soon, and the long trains should provide a welcome increase in capacity.
If Reading commuters choose to use the faster long distance trains, then they need to accept that these trains are allegedly designed for longer distance travel and that they will contain a restaurant and first class, if the presence of these facilities offends, then use the local Crossrail services.

Reading passengers should not be allowed on the busiest long distance services, this is already the case in theory but enforcement is almost unknown.

When the 18-03 departure is advertised as "pick up only" at Reading, it annoys me when Reading commuters not only board, but then complain that it is crowded.
Penalty fare them to Taunton !

Agree with your last point, shame GWR don't bother

I was neither complaining or resenting. Merely pointing out the fact that season ticket commuters pay the least to someone who was complaining about the 'high' price they pay and resenting having to stand.

Agreed, another one done to death. This will continue until GWR enforce their own rules. A mob handed ticket check before boarding would do the track

Yes it might cause a bit of conflict to start with but the message will soon get through.

Talking about penalty fares is a bit daft. Stop the problem proactively at Paddington before it starts. Can you imagine Johnny ticket checker standing on the platform at Reading trying to write out all the penalty fares? Or trying to stop people getting off the train whilst he does?

It isn't helped when the Train Manager on pick up only services often announces at Paddington that the train will call at Reading - even though it isn't (in the case of HSTs) mentioned on the window labels.

To be fair philipgreg doesn't mention season tickets, just that travel is expensive, and many do it during peak hours

This could be the high price for a season ticket over a year, or for an expensive anytime ticket during peak hours

Which is why I used the word 'If' in my original response to him.

And some, like me, take the view that full fare open tickets are expensive.
For all that money  I think that a buffet should be provided on all longer routes, and a Pullman restaurant on selected services.

I wonder how many people actually pay for full fare open tickets? They are eye wateringly expensive in most cases

If it made commercial sense to do so, you can be pretty sure that buffets would have been provided on all longer services, Travelling Chef was stopped because hardly anyone was using it, buffets are heading the same way. People's habits change and whimsy or nostalgia is not a reason to maintain a lossmaking service.

The fact is that there are far more options for customers now, M & S food stores at many stations for example, where food is better value, better quality and there's far more choice. If I want to have a coffee and a sandwich, I'll visit Costa and M & S before I board.

Pullman is provided on selected services so that ticks your box, it's priced and designed for what a niche market wants and is prepared to pay for but it's unlikely that its appeal will expand it much beyond where it is now.


People want a reliable reasonably priced service which transports them from A to B as quickly as possible. GWR are not currently achieving this and are nowhere near meeting the high expectations that they created.

I would suggest that catering is some way down the list of priorities for most, especially when crammed onto a 5 car train that should be 10, or left on the platform for want of a driver.

I used to regularly pay the full first open fare from Paddington to Taunton, during the years that I did this the first open single fare increased from about £50 to about £170, cant remember the exact price.

The 18-03 train was my favourite, being fast, having a restaurant, and the earliest that I could catch after work. Availability of discounted fares was of course limited on this popular service.

I did not begrudge the rather high fare provided that all went reasonably well, booking honoured, restaurant available and train reasonably punctual.
I was disgusted however if I paid that much, and the advertised restaurant did not appear, or if I had to stand. Delays worried me less unless extreme.
I was also somewhat disgusted with Reading commuters who should not even have been on the train, invading first class with standard  tickets. Or standing in First and obstructing the Pullman crew.

I used to make the return trip about 12 times a year, more like twice a year now.

……………………...you really ARE Jacob Rees-Mogg aren't you! (I'm still waiting for my fiver from last time!!!)  ;D

I don't know if it is still the case but I can remember passengers at Exmouth not being allowed onto the platform until the train was ready (even though it was just a 150), I understand the staff were quite strict about it also.

Yesterday, two friends who had travelled on different trains down to the West Country from Paddington both said the same thing to me: "They didn't show which platform it was on until less than 5 minutes before it was due to leave. It was utter madness, trying to all get onto the platform and down to the far end." (both had bike reservations)

Has this got worse? It has always been bad, often showing the platform with just 7 or 8 minutes for a whole train load of people to get through the barriers and then squeeze down narrow platforms, especially if taking a bike. But less than 5 minutes. That is indeed madness.

If it has got worse it’s only due to the poorer punctuality of late leading to more late arrivals cutting down on the train preparation time for departures.