Great Western Coffee Shop

With the complete breakdown in services provided by other TOCs following the timetable change and the lack of available drivers will GWR suffer the same fate when they finally get all the new trains into service. I can only assume that a new timetable will be implemented once the new trains are available and all the ‘improvements’ to signalling equipment and infrastructure is completed. I think I remember seeing that a new timetable is planned for Dec/Jan 18/19 inline with the introduction of Crossrail services. What’s everyone’s thoughts?

As far as the breakdown of GWRs services are concerned it can't get much worse, irrespective of timetable changes. We'll no doubt (as always) be promised the world, and no doubt (as always) it'll collapse in a mess.

Huge Thameslink and Northern changes last weekend.   Huge GWR changes on first days of January 2019.  One hopes that lessons will have been learned and that the almost-inevitable teething troubles will be baby ones.

See http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=19771.msg238302#msg238302

Are we suffering now with the driver shortages so that the Jan timetable transition is less painful?

Attempting to polish a turd is laudable, but inevitably futile.

Do these timetable changes include the west side of Crossrail? From a purely selfish point of view I'd still like to find out what 'fast' services we're going to get from Twyford. The hints seem to be not a lot so I wonder how much of a timetable change there would be for Thames Valley?

Regardless I'm expecting a disaster whoever operates the trains as the infrastructure doesn't seem able to cope now let alone with more trains.

We were told last year that driver and conductor shortages at he Westbury hub and other depots working regional services there were largely the effect of compressed training for new trains (well - new to the area).   That at a very senior level, and with supporting data to back up the words.   And it has proven largely correct; regrettably, the failure to provide consistent services this year to the published annual timetable is for other reasons.   The supporting data showed, as I recall, a continued much higher level of training that normal this year across the GWR network - though down on 2017. It didn't go into the future far enough to tell us about 2019.  I would hazard an educated guess that the majority of the crew training pain will be passed on to passengers this year.

Severe concern remain on the structure of the timetables though.  They are being rewritten to allow for the performance envelopes of the IET, for through services eastwards beyond Paddington for the first time in (?) the best part of a hundred years, and to meet modified DfT specifications (SLC 3).  And evidence suggests that timetabling resources at the companies / organisations involved are thinly spread; as well as these permanent timetable changes, they are struggling to cope with the volume of timetabling work for all the various engineering works this year.

Here are the aspect which probably come in to play

1. What is specified in the SLC
2. What works operationally
3. What will make best business sense ( highest possible number on income - expenditure )
4. What will provide services that even out passengers across the services as a whole
5. What is practical to plan within the planning resources available
6. What the existing passengers want
7. What will generate best passenger numbers for the future

There are bound to be winners and losers; those passengers making unusual journeys which are made practical because of a happenstance connection, but aren't (as a connection) used by many are likely to be the most unhappy.  Past work by community groups to tweak trains by a few minutes to meet local needs - be they connections or college start and finish times - are likely to be drowned in the storm of changes.  Services additional to the SLC which run because an extra train's around between runs are likely to disappear.  And the time for community / passenger consultation on this is limited.   I note that SWR held a "December 2019 timetable public consultation" at the tail end of last year, and have published reports and made changes to their plans based on inputs, but see no GWR parallel; some inputs have been made via stakeholders, but that's only a trickle of consultation and this is one that I worry may be no more that a "tick that we consulted" box.  I hope I am proven wrong.

It would have been good if GWR had followed its sister company and launched a public consultation on the new timetable but it’s almost certainly too late. It would imagine by now the timetables that GWR plan to run starting in Jan 19 would now be near to being finalised as they have to be submitted to Network quite a few months in advance for approval/adjustments.

Whilst the GWR timetable change in 2019 will be big it will be no where as complex as the recent GTR change.

GTR effected on 4 major routes into London which impacted not only on the 4 GTR brands but also SE Trains, London Overground, East Coast, London Midlands, and the Anglia area TOCs and FOCs

GTR in its own is a meld of 3 1/2 former TOCs.  The 1/2 TOC being the former First Capital Connect the Thameslink and GN staff never being integrated under that franchise.


GWR has been having a bit more of a progressive change, that's not to say 2019 changes will not have its challanges

IETs eastwards beyond Paddington  ??? Have I missed something?

Yes, you have missed the comma separating the three things that change at the change of the year.

The Metropolitain District Railway used to run through services ... looking at my 1902 timetable, from New Cross, Mension House via King's Cross and Aldgate to Windsor, Richmond and Uxbridge (via West Drayton).  Services from GWR lines on which Bishop's Road Paddington was an intermediate station.

A hundred sixteen years latter we call it Crossrail errrrrrrrrrrrrr Elizabeth Line …………………… perhaps in 1903 they should have called it the Victoria Line wonder what we now know as the Victoria Line would have been called  ;D

As a recent poster on the subject of timetables, it is disappointing that there is so little information available and no sign of any consultation.

It is becoming clear that the current timetable for stopping trains between Didcot and London is a stopgap. It seems to result in quite a mismatch between the number of carriages arriving at Reading and demand on the various parts of the routes served and little resilience when things go wrong. For example, last week two westbound and one eastbound stopping trains between Reading and Didcot were cancelled in the late rush hour/mid evening period (19-30 to 21-00). During my prolonged wait at Reading, an empty Electrostar moved off station to the depot at Reading, two more almost empty eight coach trains arrived at Reading to terminate. One divided, the front 4 coaches going to the depot, the rear 4 returning empty out of service towards London. The second, after a wait, departed back almost empty as a stopping service to London while over 80 passengers gathered on platform 12 with nothing going to Didcot to get us home.

There are a number of concerns. Firstly, how will the Crossrail/Elizabeth Line services dovetail with GWR services east of Reading? Secondly, what will be the pattern of stopping services between Reading and Didcot - will we end up with more random trains filling gaps in a crowded timetable with varying stopping patterns east of Reading with widely varying gaps between trains as at present? Will any attempt be made to facilitate connections at Reading?

Does the Coffee Shop have any inside track to Mark Hopwood to seek some information? 

Is it even Mark Hopwood that will make the decision? Looking at the recent up rage over the timetable there is no way that GTR brought this in themselves. It must have been thrust upon them!

A lot of the issues on GTR have been caused by Network Rail.

From earlier - the factors


Who has primary control?  ...

No. 1 - the Government / Dft based
No. 2 - based in what Network Rail can and do provide and allow
No. 3 - the TOC

But having left the TOC until No. 3, it is a partnership with the TOC very much able to make inputs / suggestions / requests to and of the DfT and Network Rail.   The TOC is doing what it's told, given the track resources it's allowed, though with tuning ability and indeed the ability to say "that may not really work very well" to the prime movers and suppliers.