Great Western Coffee Shop

The usual pre-Easter crush is almost upon us and the following alterations will occur, seems similar to previous years:

• Additional 14:33 from Paddington to Plymouth calling at Reading (pick up only), Castle Cary, Taunton, Tiverton, Exeter & Newton Abbot
  
• The 17:07 from Paddington to Frome terminates at Newbury which then returns to form the....
• Additional 19:32 from Paddington to Penzance calling at Reading (pick up only), Newbury (pick up only), Taunton, Exeter, Newton Abbot and Plymouth before then departing at 22:56 calling at stations to Penzance (replacing the usual 22:42 from Plymouth)
• Additional 19:12 from Paddington to Swansea calling at Didcot, Swindon and usual stations to Swansea

Available drivers pending of course!

With Bristol TM being closed over the Easter weekend, I’d expect Bristol services may be busier than usual as well on Maundy Thursday.

Your final point is of course moot judging by current performance!

How is the Reading/Newbury pick up only going to be enforced on the 1932?

Not shown as stopping at those points on the PAD departure boards?

An additional unusual train that ony those researching properly will tealise that those stops are being made

Simple solution is to advertise at Reading for those pax waiting for the 1932 ex-PAD to get the next train to Reading West, where the 1932 will stop having passed through Reading station. An army of RPI will be waiting at Reading West to penalise any person from PAD stupid enough to assume the Reading stop.

I can’t see how we’ll be able to muster up enough staff for Maundy Thursday and Easter Monday based on recent crew availability levels, so I would get ready for several cancellations again!

I may have to travel on Easter Sunday and I'm not too confident about staffing levels that day either....

Surely it's imperative for GWR to assess this in advance & construct a firm timetable of trains which they know they can operate, rather than a repeat of last Sundays chaos & risking ruining people's Easter breaks?

I appreciate that this may involve being customer focused, which is against the organisations culture, but we can live in hope I guess?

A very slim hope based on recent events I would suggest?  Perhaps I'll be wrong and everything will be fine.

It is somewhat of a paradox that in terms of the company being customer focussed, significant money was spent on the GEM's (Great Experience Makers) courses which nearly all front line staff have been on, and after which, in my opinion, the customer service now offered on the front line has never been better.  Yet on the flip side having the infrastructure and processes in place to provide the service in the first place, and the ability to acknowledge how bad it is, has been so incredibly poor recently.

Managing expectations in advance and giving people options would be a far, far better customer experience than passengers turning up at stations to find row upon row of "cancelled" showing on the display boards and being left, literally & figuratively out in the cold.

Same goes for Sundays. Work out what can be achieved with the available driver resource and run an "emergency" timetable on that basis. Hopes managed are always better than hopes dashed.

All of this to be accompanied by a full and Frank explanation from Hopwood as to what the problems are, what is being done to mitigate them, and when they will be resolved.

Surely not beyond the "Rail Business of the year "? 🙈

No posts this year, regarding the big Maundy Thursday getaway and usual overcrowding issues?  I assume it went reasonably well?  Certainly very few shortforms listed on HSS services despite the air leak in the Cotswolds this morning reducing the fleet availability. 

I made a trip from South Wales this afternoon and there was plenty of room on our 9-car IET throughout - though staff shortages led to the all too common 'static trolley' situation.  The IET was also on diesel throughout but easily kept to time.

I was in the West Country, largely travelling against the flow admittedly, but the trains did not seem unusually busy.

I did have some concerns catching the 10:00 from Penzance to London Paddington when I learned the XC Country service half an hour earlier had been cancelled, but it didn't seem to cause any issues.

Similarly when I learned my train from Newton Abbot to Paignton was only going to be two coaches and offering a connection out of two trains (one from London and the other from the North) but again there was plenty of room.

If the trains were not busy, it might explain the empty beach too!

(http://www.mbob.co.uk/rforum/hstswal.jpg)

Given the experience of previous years, I suspect a lot more people went by road.

Also  remember that this year Easter falls at the end of the school holidays and people are probably already away.  Last year the reverse was the case.

Problems look like they have migrated to LNER ... Chronicle Live (https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/lner-bank-holiday-travel-passengers-16154515)

No it hasn’t been a good day on the ECML with Euston being closed for Engineering work. More on this:
https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/uk-travel-news-train-delays-railway-hs2-virgin-london-underground-a8878546.html

TG may be right that many people have decided to go by road (though, to be fair, I saw no real horror stories there either, despite plenty of doom and gloom predictions), but I think 'rogerw' might have provided a more likely reason in how the Easter school holidays have fallen for most of the UK.  So that, in conjunction with extra capacity, probably provides much of the answer.

I guess we'll know more at the end of the weekend, but let's hope it's a sign that GWR have turned a bit of a corner capacity wise.  Certainly when the HSS fleet is being provided as planned there has been quite a seating uplift on previous years when the HST fleet was providing the predominant traction.

Yep. Pretty much given up trying to go to Carmarthen by train. The M4 was very busy late Thursday evening so people are heading away.

So, it’s Easter, prime BBQ weather, and the majority of drivers can still opt out of Sunday’s if they so wish.  Tomorrow will be a good test of driver availability and the likelihood of another summer of regular Sunday shortages.

Have the pay incentives for Sunday working been improved since last year?

No change to incentives on Sundays since last year.

Very few cancellations today then.  Positive signs that the high summer will be much better than the last few years for crew availability.  Mind you, that might not last into next year when many more Sunday services are planned to run with 'Sunday's in the working week' not expected for drivers until the following December.

It has to be said ... it depends where you're looking from.   4 out of 13 services at my local station cancelled - that's 30.7% of the service.   Unlucky, or setting the pattern here for another year?

I would agree that - averaged out - it did look much, much, much better than a typical Sunday last year.  Perhaps we should send someone a postcard from Melksham to remind them that cancelling successive services that only runs every 2 hours anyway may be operationally convenient, but it totally kills the day out and gets the train service a really bad name ... pulling one service every 2 hours our of a half hourly service would be far less damaging as people would have alternatives!

II as someone who has a good inside track, what do you put this down to? This time last year and throughout the summer it was chaos on Sundays - if there's no additional incentive for the drivers to work Sundays this year, it'd be interesting to know why so many more of them appear willing to work?

(…..could it be that GWR have stopped subsidising burgers and sausages for their staff, or has there been an outbreak of vegetarianism in the ranks, with a consequent reduction in BBQs?)  :)

I think in the main that it’s due to two things.  Firstly the bulk of the driver traction training for new and cascaded trains is now complete.  More drivers are able to drive more types of train than last year.  Secondly more drivers are generally available as the company has recruited more to be able to cover all the extra trains due to come into being at the end of the year - and with one eye on the extra drivers that will be needed the following December when Sunday shifts should come in to the working week.  Also of course there’s no World Cup.  ;)

Hopefully that’s enough to tip the balance this year, though we should be careful not to think it’ll be plain sailing over the summer, even though today has been most encouraging.

So does this mean that the TransWilts is at the very top of the can list, if its one of very few service groups to still have a significant part of its service yanked out?

Well it depends on which depots are short, but I guess it probably is, just like Greenford, Worcester to Malvern, Severn Beach and others are also more likely to be sacrificed. 

There are arguments for, and against, in that TransWilts services have overlaps at both ends of the route where other services are provided, yet the crucial bit in the middle has none and typically large gaps until the next TransWilts service.

Occasionally, things will go wrong ... and I think people understand that.   It's when the map at the top of these pages comes up with a single blue sponge on the TransWilts and it's not "oh dear what's happened" but rather "on no - not again!" that lead me to post quite strongly this morning.   

We've had years of this ... to the extent that the GWR MD last summer promised to take steps - not to put thing right - but simply to bring the TransWilts (and three other poor performers) up to the general level.

For Sundays ... not sure I "buy" the comparisons, but if I do, let's extend them on passenger effect ...
* Greenford does not run on a Sunday.  No problems.
* Worcester to Malvern - different crews for each service (?) (so not total loss) and there are other operators.
* Severn Beach - two trains on the line cut to 1 - maximum delay 1 hour.
* TransWilts - first train due Melksham 08:26. First train called 12:52 for Swindon - 4 hours and 26 minutes after due.
   - first train due Melksham 09:51. First train called 14:04 for Westbury - 4 hours and 13 minutes after due.
So pulling TransWilts is in a different league in its effect on passengers.

On the normal (5 station) service, there are 10 possible journeys.  True that 2 of them have other direct trains, and more frequent, and we have never counted those in our justification cases.  And half of the other are possible via a Bath Spa dogleg which (sometimes) connects.

Please forgive me finding this a little depressing.  The service was the fastest growing in GWR land, but last year dropped slightly - and that was because service was decimated or totally lost on an extra 55 days over the previous year.  Plenty of growth still to be had - won't put the full case here - but to grow it needs a reliable train service and, yet again, we start seeing what looks like the start again of a repeating pattern.  I really hope it's not.