Great Western Coffee Shop

Greetings all,

While I was at Plymouth on Monday 22nd April I spotted a map gaffe by Cross Country trains. I sent them a Tweet in which I pointed out the error. A PM from a member of this forum has since alerted me that - to my surprise - the Bristol Live and Somerset Live websites have run articles on my Twitter message.
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/crosscountry-moves-bath-wrong-side-2792750

Dave

"Love" the map ... interesting to see Didcot Parkway and Caldicot served by Cross Country too.   The power of sharing on the media - never know where it's going to end up.  Mind you, presumable the point of Cross Country putting the map up was to have it seen ...

"CrossCounty has been approached for a comment."

I see Muphry's Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law) strikes again in the Bristol Post story...

That is a very "interesting" map!

Good point about Didcot Parkway: they have trains through the station but they do not stop there. As for Caldicot a look on RealTimeTrains shows that, at present, 3 morning and 2 evening trains call Mondays to Saturdays.

Dave

It seems reasonable to me for XC to put stations on their map when they are only used for planned diversions and as rail replacement railheads. However, if you look at their relevant web page (https://www.crosscountrytrains.co.uk/travel-updates-information/planned-timetable-changes) you'll see that their confusion about what's where (and Castle Cary in particular) runs deeper than the map Dave spotted.

Online they use a network map without these extra stations, so presumably added them to make the poster easier to follow. But the online map for Apri (https://www.crosscountrytrains.co.uk/media/3419/changes-to-train-times_summary_april_2019-v2.pdf)l includes the same orange line marked P for 6th and 13th April, and the text beside it is:
Now I suspect you might preferred to head it Weston-super-Mare and say that train doesn't call there...

XC do on a few occasions a year (re-)start their services to the South Coast from Didcot, if they have been split because of engineering work between Didcot and Oxford/Banbury. So maybe they think they need to show this on their map just in case :)