Great Western Coffee Shop

A date for your diary.  A month from today, Mark Hopwood, Managing Director of Great Western Railway will be live here on the Coffee Shop forum answering questions from members in our occasional "Meet the Manager" series.  Put Monday, 5th August 2019 in your diary and make sure you're on line early that evening.

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From 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Monday, 5th August, Mark and our BobM will be on line from Swindon together with support, with new conversations triggered at intervals by Red Squirrel from our moderator team on our Meet the Manager (http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?board=48.0) board. We anticipate a healthy discussion will ensue on each of the chosen topics.

In order to ensure an even coverage of the topics members might wish to raise, please send your questions via personal message to Chris from Nailsea (http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?action=profile;u=170) prior to close of business on Sunday, 28th July.  Questions will then be sorted / combined to ensure that there is even coverage on 5th August, and it will also allow us to give Mark and his team at Great Western Railway a "heads up" on topics that will arise. The discussions on the 5th August, though, will be truly interactive after initial texts are posted.

Our "Meet the Manager" board is a public one, available to the world to read. However, like all other Coffee Shop forum boards, only members can post.  If you are not yet a member, please register here (http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?action=register) in good time - we can take up to 24 hours to check and confirm a registration.  So you'll need to register by Saturday 27th July if you want to ask a question, or Sunday 4th August if you want to join in discussions.  Registration is free - really just needed so that we have your GDPR approval, a way to reach you in exceptional circumstances, and your confirmation to our posting etiquette.

A big "Thank You" to GWR and to Mark Hopwood for enabling this "Meet the Managing Director" session on our "Meet the Manager" board. The idea has been bubbling along for a while, and I'm delighted that Mark and his team sought us out at the Community Rail conference last month, encouraging us to move it from an idea to reality.

Appendix

The "Meet the Manager" board - unusually on the Coffee Shop - is set to 'reply only'. That's done so that all contributions during an active session are channelled into the ongoing discussions and the whole thing doesn't take off with threads in all sorts of directions that make it unmanageable.

We know the 17:00 to 18:00 time slot is not ideal for everyone.  Tough - there is no magic time slot that would be; with a month's notice, members should be able to plan around it and be connected somewhere.  And content (bearing in mind the occasional extraordinary exception) will remain available after the event - just as you can still look back to the Ben Rule "Meet the Manager" from 4 years ago.

Should something extraordinary crop up in the days / hours before the session, we reserve the right to add in an extra question or even change plans if we (the admin / moderator team in conjunction with GWR) feel that's appropriate. For example, a session scheduled on the day the sea wall washed out at Dawlish in February 2014 would probably have been postponed, and a session scheduled a few days later would probably have had a late question on plans to help passengers travel until the trains returned.

As well as BobM in Swindon and Red Squirrel in Bristol, Chris from Nailsea and Grahame will be online during "Meet the Managing Director" to deal with any admin / moderation / server issues that may arise.  Experience suggests this availability is a safety net that won't be needed but we WILL be there.

The session will be trailed on Facebook and Twitter, but not mirrored there. In order to read, people will need to visit the appropriate pages on the forum web site. In order to participate, people will need to register for the forum at least a day ahead.

Whilst every attempt will be made to cover as many topics as practical, the forum cannot guarantee to cover everything that's raised.  We will not put questions which are inappropriate, and I'm sure you'll appreciate that answers may be very limited or unavailable on commercial matters.

Looking forward to it already!

I've cancelled my next cruise.

Although I am just something of an observer of this one, I understand that some very interesting questions are being put forward.  Please do send messages to Chris from Nailsea (http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?action=profile;u=170) to have your question considered for inclusion in the mix.  You have a week remaining.

I doubt it's going to be possible to put every question as asked and Chris from Nailsea and Red Squirrel will have an interesting time choosing those which are best.   If you're putting in a question, please do make sure it is a question and if you can that it's a question within the remit of GWR's MD to answer or comment on.   

It can, frankly, be very hard for people to know what's in the train operator's control or influence - those of us who are admins / moderators here are a little better informed than many who will be asking questions or watching on 5th August.   I do hope that this process Q&A process helps to clarify such responsibilities - be that during the process or in following up.

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For completeness of the record here on the Coffee Shop, the Facebook promotion of this event is ((here)) (https://www.facebook.com/CoffeeShopCRP/posts/2411515532428885).  But please note that we ask you to register (if you've not already done so) and ask questions via Chris - this will allow you to interact on the evening too - rather than just post there.

Thank you for your update here, grahame. ;)

Yes, I have indeed been sent a lot of questions, which our members on the Coffee Shop forum would like to ask Mark Hopwood.

They are all very valid questions, to be fair - but we also have to be fair to Mark, who can only reasonably be expected to deal with a certain number of subjects, during our one hour live session.  ;D

I am therefore drawing up a set of six questions, on a variety of topics, which my colleague Red Squirrel will feed into the live discussion at ten minute intervals.

Those other questions, though, will not be forgotten.  We will post them elsewhere on the Coffee Shop forum - for example, on the board relating to that particular branch line, where local GWR staff will probably have a much more detailed knowledge of the situation than Mark could reasonably be expected to have.  In such cases, may I encourage our GWR staff members on the Coffee Shop to reply appropriately - following the excellent example of your own Managing Director!  ;)

Thanks, Chris from Nailsea.  ;)

Do you not run into the problem that Mark is the M.D so can speak with authority, whereas GWR staff members can only give a personal opinion, which is not necessarily a FGW opinion, and they may not be able to express an opinion even though they might know the answer.

Thank you to all involved with setting this up, and in no way am I trying to be dismissive, etc

I'm sure that this event is only a precursor and much needed catalyst to a resurrected and improved culture of openness and accessibility from those at the top of GWR and that we can look forward to a comprehensive customer engagement programme of "Meet the Manager" events, both face to face at stations and digitally, following their sudden, unexplained cessation a year or two ago...………..I'm sure... ;)

Yes, but  ;D

As the MD of a company that plans over half a million services a year and a fleet of around 800 passenger carrying vehicles, operates over 200 stations and employs around 6,000 staff, you cannot expect Mark to have every answer - at least straight off - and where answers get involved in detail and individual stations / trains for him to delegate or to let us know how something is already delegated.

An example - an email last Thursday from Mark's office seeks ideas to reduce station dwell time. At Melksham, 2 carriage trains headed towards Swindon pull up at the northern end of the extended platform, whereas the station entrance, information screen, ticket machine, bicycle shelter, station name boards and waiting shelter are all at the southern end.  Net result - people wait away from where the trains stops and have to walk up to it after it passes them by as it pulls up.  And people new to Melksham take time to establish where they are ("is this Melksham" leading out of the train doors!) because there are no signs they can see to tell them.  Little things - surely to goodness fixable under delegated authority, but in the knowledge that they're in line with the desire to reduce dwell time ... and that in this instance you're looking at dwell time on a heavily used single track between congested main lines where knock-on delays want to be reduced.

See http://www.mrug.org.uk/mkm_faster_load.pdf for the full Melksham Rail User Group response that will be submitted (just awaiting one final person to feedback if she wishes by this time tomorrow).


Indeed, and changes within GWR suggest that they are strongly working on positive updates in customer engagement.  So I would be hopeful, and with evidence to back up that hope.  If / how the Coffee Shop is mainstream in that remains an open question and I suspect may be influenced by the 5th August even and how the wider "we" handle it.   To add - although we go on about the need for GWR to improve openness, that's a need with many organisations and looking at / in touch with others who are customer groups online in different parts of the UK, I thank my lucky stars that we don't have the sort of relationship they do - as different as day and night already.

Just a reminder - today is the last day to submit your question for the session on the 5th August.

See up thread for details.

May I offer all of you my thanks for submitting your proposed questions to the Managing Director of Great Western Railway.  ;)

I have been sent many questions, so I have been unable to answer or acknowledge every 'personal message' - but they have all been received, read and understood!

Realistically, only some of them can be posed to Mark Hopwood himself, in our one hour session.  Those other questions will be posted in relevant boards and topics on the Coffee Shop forum, and we will encourage GWR staff members with more detailed local knowledge to answer them.

We on the Coffee Shop forum clearly have contacts in high places.  ;) ::) :-X

I’ll certainly have a go where I can - even if I might not always like the answer I have to give!

In 36 hour, we'll be in the middle of "Meet the Managing Director".  That's from 5 p.m. on Monday, 5th August 2019 on this board.

With my Webmaster hat on, I've taken a look ahead at the sort of load that will be placed on our server, and the sort of load our server can handle ... and I can report that we should have plenty of capacity.  I still have daily stat summaries for the previous time we ran a "meet the manager"  and whilst numbers present and numbers of posts spiked that day, they didn't reach the heights we have reached on other days such as the day the sea wall got washed out at Dawlish.  That said, tomorrow evening will probably be a shorter, sharper spike; we have had similar on the server before on another site hosted there.

Basically ... all ready to go  ;D ;D ;D

Set your alarm ... and we'll see you tomorrow night!


Edit to correct start time to 5 p.m.

Another update from me:

I had to select just a few questions from a very wide range of subjects, and from many members of the Coffee Shop forum, so please do not be offended if your particular question(s) were not chosen to be put to Mark himself in our live one hour session.

The questions which I have selected were chosen to cover a variety of subjects, and from no more than one question from any one member, to be as fair as possible.

Also to be as fair as possible, I sent a copy of those six questions to Mark's team at Great Western Railway a few days ago, so that he could be prepared to answer each of them.  Mark's initial answer may therefore be rehearsed, but after that, he will be out here, live on the Coffee Shop forum, answering your own reply posts!

Whilst I can see the merit of supplying the questions in advance to Mr Hopwood, would it be possible to also publish the questions in advance in this thread ?

Good idea.

Sorry, but at this late stage changing the plans in not an option.

Questioners know what they have asked, and will already have corollary views that they'll be able to come back with quickly once they see Mark's comments.  We've been running as a forum for a dozen years and it's pretty unlikely that much unexpected/new will be asked.

I would worry that publishing the questions in advance would lead to a significant number of people preparing their own follow ups / corollaries to paste in very quickly once a thread was started, and that would change the metrics of the whole system. Rather like a dam of comment on the same issue breaking.  That is why it is set up with controlled release.

Undoubtedly, we will ask ourselves "how did that go" to learn for the future. But - for tonight - the planned metrics remain on plan.

I would like to try and answer everyone’s comments but understand the approach taken by the Coffee Shop team. If you feel you have a point that hasn’t been answered please get in touch and I shall try to respond.