Great Western Coffee Shop

It seems that First Great Western are running some of their services with insufficient capacity to cope with the traffic offered this weekend; I have no yardstick with which to measure just what proportion of service are effected, but I am aware of:

* Road coaches used to carry passengers who wanted to catch the 17:21 out of Wesymouth on Friday, but couldn't get on.

http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/info/218_Strengthening_of_Weymouth_Trains.html

* Also on Friday , chaos on the FGW main line to the West of England.  "The 10:05 Paddington to Penzance was about 25 late away from Paddington after removing 200 or so passengers due to 'severe overcrowding'.  The train was some 40 late by Par and missed its Newquay connection leaving around 140 passengers to use alternative road transport"

My correspondent suggests that the number of passengers offered were no higher than a normal Good Friday, and wonders how the 153 running on the Newquay branch would have coped if the connection HAD made.

* Severe Overcrowding from West Wiltshire in to Bath on Saturday morning - passengers being denied access from sucessive trains in some cases.

http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/overcrowded.html

* Passengers from Bath denied access to Porsmouth bound services on Saturday evening due to severe overcrowding.

http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/overcrowdedtoo.html


I ask the question "Worse than before" in my title.  I was a traveller on two of the services reported, and I believe that 3 rather that 2 car trains would have sorted out the situation enough so that everyone who wanted to travel could have done so. With 2 x 2 car trains on each service, the journey would have been tolerably comfortable.

I understand that the above are not exactly isolated incidents - the operation hasn't been as smooth over the FGW territory as it might this weekend so far.   But it's hard - so hard - for me to judge whether that's a change from previous years, or simply the fact that with forums like this, and the internet, you and I can read a lot more news of when things don't work perfectly.

An interesting comment from the FGW representative at the RailFuture meeting in Bristol yesterday. "It gets harder and harder each year to find extra trains to cover the summer peak, and this year we'll be delaying the refurbishement program we had planned until after the summer to make stock available".    He also confirmed 51 sets needed to run all diagrams, 69 currently on the fleet, and 12 of those to go to Northern Rail later in the year.   A higher proportion of units than should be are currently out of service - but with the loss of 12 things would be tight even if the out-of-service issue was fixed.  "4 or 5 of the units being lost will need to be replaced".

[Jim - I've "quarantined" your comment while I check something with you via p.m. / email - Graham]