Great Western Coffee Shop

From GWR - customer panel.


See also (other thread to be added) for our own Meet the Manager session on 5th November and a series of "Meet the team" meetings at stations across the GWR area.

Are these open to all GWR customers or just members of each Panel?

The old customer panels were comprised of passengers representing a cluster of stations - but that has now moved on panels formed a while back of a far wider range of people who expressed an interest - the circulation list of the email from which I have quoted is a wide one, and now just the few dozen it would have been for the old panels.

I am pretty sure (can check next week) that newcomers would be welcome - and if any members here send me a personal message I can certainly make an introduction.

This evening's Bristol meeting POSTPONED to 14th November (same day number, new month). Sorry about the late forum notice - just going through emails from late last week.

The  rescheduled meeting took place at Bristol last night ,and was a small gathering compared to previous events, however it afforded the opportunity for a good number of questions and mostly the answers were favourable,lots of talk of the new timetable ,as was expected,and lots of engineering work and possessions to come.
Some new faces and some all ready known Good to see BobM.

Off to the Plymouth one, a week tonight.

Looking forward to a mooch around the shops in the afternoon beforehand.

See you there!

It is unfortunate that the forthcoming Plymouth meeting has been moved even further away from Plymouth Railway Station, to beyond the previous meeting location of the University.
The new location at Jury's Inn is nearly a mile from the station.
Surely a room at Plymouth Station or in the adjacent Inter City Houes tower block could have  have been found and at a considerable cost reduction to First GW / its unhappy shareholders.

However some might say the further the meeting is from a railway station the less chance there is of rail passengers expressing their views on the poor recent performance,
of in particular, branch line services in Cornwall.

Anyone seen any meeting arranged in the Thames Valley / East of Bristol yet?

No, but GWR tweeting that some places still available in Plymouth


Thank you to the member who alerted me of this

I'll try and make it as the Plymouth meeting is on my doorstep (as they say).

It would be good to hear a report of numbers attending and highlights of this Plymouth meeting; not least (hopefully) some reassurances from the GW TOC that the current all too often unreliable and unpunctual rail service in the South West, in particular on the several branch lines, is receiving the Senior Management attention it deserves.

My apologies - I was there but have been beset by domestic issues (disobedient boiler) and work problems today. 

Will try to post in the morning. 

I didn't make it the end so too await Bobm's report.

The Plymouth meeting was better attended than Bristol with around a dozen on hand to hear from Mark Hopwood and other senior managers.

An outline of the new timetable was given along with notes of things which have come out of feedback and will be looked at in the May timetable.   Among them more early morning trains stopping at Totnes and a better service for Saltash at weekends.

The reliability of the fleet was raised.  IETs are to get a software upgrade starting this weekend to improve seat reservations and other issues.  The standard of internal and external cleaning of IETs has been raised with Hitachi and improvements sought.

Another Castle class 2+4 is due before Christmas with the final two due in the new year.

The Pacers will stay until May but will be coupled to 150s in service so that disabled toilets and other requirements are met.

The arrangements for the trolley service in 9 car IETs is being looked at.  Either extra staff will be used or make better use of the first class host to speed up the service which can take a while with only one trolley for the whole train.  The reliability of urns has been raised with Hitachi.    Thought is also being given to hot food provision but the priority is to get the basic service right first. 

Apparently there was one at Paddington earlier in the year.  I missed it too.

The plan is to hold another three in the same venues in the early part of next year after the timetable change. 

Plymouth was very worthwhile, I found most of the content familiar yet some nuggets emerged. The dispensation of work across the maintenance depots led me to wonder whether GWR needs to hold at least one spare branchline set, if available, in Cornwall especially in the Summer period. The catering argument disappointed. At least surfboards didn't get mentioned.

I was happy to raise the issue of overzealous passenger marshalling at St. Erth, which needs addressing before next Summer's peak.

I shall if invited be pleased to attend a subsequent event. As for the venue, it was fine. Holding it on Railway property has been mentioned, I feel that this would be counter productive. A neutral venue really is best for this kind of thing, it discourages complacency by the organiser and puts the invited audience at ease.

Maybe too much information was jammed in, the operational performance section could have been condensed. The published prime intention of the event, the December timetable change could have benefitted with some of the time transferred across.