Great Western Coffee Shop

Urghh the discontent from spending just 45 minutes at Exeter St Davids!
After getting off the service from Barnstaple, I had to wait for 45 minutes to get my train home. There was a late XC train available but it was overcrowded. And XC didn't care about the safety of passangers and FGW didn't care about the punctality. So the doors were closing and some old geezer decides to get off the train and gets trapped in the door. (Bearing in mind the train was 5 minutes late and had been at EXD for a long time) So then attempt 2. But some poor woman stops attempt 2, her boyfreind was still inside the carriage. Surely they could have gone with him on board? Then 'Full and Standing' Royal Duchy service. People from what I could see from platform 4 crammed into the aisles and gangways. Not Safe! And just to top things off, FGW blind to the fact somebody was smoking on the platform.
What has gone wrong?!

Ok I'm taking slight offence at this, you want to see overcrowding, try being on a commuter train into London in the morning or on the tube at rush hour.
FGW not caring about punctuality? Well they attempted to dispatch the train didn't they? How are they not caring about punctuality? If it's a case of letting passengers spread out along the length of the train to make use of any free space then I'd rather that than them all cram in one space.
As for the person smoking on the platform, I'd imagine with two aborted dispatches on this one train that they had slightly more important things on their mind.
Slight apologies for ranty tone.

1206 pad - pnz will have been overcrowded as there was an obstruction on the line near Bedwyn which caused delay to the 1106 pad - ply. These passengers were they shipped onto the (normal very busy) 1206 from Paddington.

As for smoking, how can the dispatch worry about Punctuality, Safety and Smoking at the same time? Which is more important to you? Its not like smoking on the platform is a major problem.

Far more sensible policy in Scotland.......

From Scotrail.co.uk (http://www.scotrail.co.uk/travelinfo/station-info.html)
In line with legislation, smoking is not permitted in enclosed areas at ScotRail stations (ie areas with at least three walls and a roof). All ScotRail trains are also non-smoking.

Tbh they have more than enough staff at EXD and why didn't they dispatch the train without worrying about the guy who was left on board? He had about 6 minutes to get off. Its just silly with the overcrowding in the aisles that if there was an emergency, things would get alot worse.  >:(

Hmmm. Don't get me started about smoking on platforms.  At Temple Meads last week  a couple of youths were smoking on platform 6, where a lot of people were waiting for a train. On platform 8 (adjacent), a train despatcher was loitering around with absolutely nothing to do.

When his attention was drawn to the youths, he phoned through and an announcement was immediately made over the station tannoy reminding people not to smoke. But did he follow it up and check that they had stopped. No, he carried on standing around about 20 feet away doing nothing at all.

5 minutes later when the train arrived on 6, they were still smoking and he stepped over to despatch it. Sort of makes a mockery of the legislation doesn't it.

The staff were more worried about people being a couple centimetres over the yellow line. They should let them stay past the yellow line, watch them get sucked up the engine and the overcrowding problem is sorted!

Also, the 12:44 XC from Bristol to Plymouth was cancelled, so the 13:44 from Bristol was packed the rafters and as the 1206 PAD-PNZ ran behind the XC from Taunton, all the FGW pax naturally crammed onto the 4 car Voyager.  XC TM managed to get the passengers travelling west of Plymouth to leave the train at Exeter and wait for the 1206 behind (which was also in reverse formation), so whether or not there are enough staff at Exeter, I am pretty sure that a lecture for someone smoking was not at the top of the priorities.


Something called customer service maybe?


I am sure (well I hope) that was tongue in cheek, but trust me your rants about punctuality and overcrowding would have got a lot worse if that scenario had happened.

The guy had 6 whole minutes! Surely the train not being any later than it already is > than one passanger.

The delay team will agree with you... You see why a dispatchers job is not easy at times when you have someone begging to let their loved one off.

Well, tell you what, people with reservations can stay on, the rest first come, first served, noone standing. Same for the HST behind. Anyone in the toilets and their seat gets taken, well they're off at the next stop. I think if that were the case you'dve had a lot longer wait than 45 minutes. Sometimes the train in front of the one you want to catch is cancelled, you either get on the next train or wait for a quiet one. Unless you live in Melksham.

Well, it looked like survival of the fittest. The XC (1729? to Leeds) Got some backlog of passangers from that. Poor little kid having his face against the door, thats how busy it was. But that is XC. Overcrowding.

Well until either cascaded or new trains are made available to the XC franchise its only ever going to be that way thanks to some very strange decision making by SRA and Virgin a few years back that replacing 7 carriage HSTs with 4/5 car voyagers was a good idea.

Well that's not strictly the case, on the core XC route bordered by Manchester, Bristol, Newcastle and Reading the service frequency was doubled and also made clockface. Also inside the core XC is the only operator with a direct service from Birmingham to the four points I have mentioned above. The hourly extensions to Edinburgh, Plymouth and Bournemouth provide a handy through journey for those travelling longer distances and supplement other operators on the line, wheras excess demand in the North East is taken care of by East Coast and that in the South by SWT, there seems to be  a lot of overcrowding in the West Country, which, in my opinion, should be taken care of by FGW and not XC.

Though remember the original Operation Princess service had a standard half hourly service as far south as Plymouth. It's no wonder trains are overcrowded south of Bristol when you consider that an hourly HST has been replaced by a 4/5 coach set with relatively few seats per train.

Talking of HST's, wonder how many XC had running today, on what was always going to be a very busy day given the start of half term. An astute operator would have had all 5 running and soaked up the advance tickets on the HSTs, leaving the 220/221s free for non-advance pax. Bet they only had 2 though.   

Why should FGW have to deal with XC's overcrowding? FGW have done a good enough job in my opinion and XC haven't.

3 sets, and possible one on hire to East Coast.

On Fridays the 1944 Bristol - Plymouth is an HST.

Not strictly true, normally 3 trains every two hours for Plymouth, the alternate 42 past the hour went to Cardiff according to my Operation Princess guide, but I submit to my mistake!
Unfortunately loading figures have led to some HST diagrams being stood down and the West Country has several route restrictions ruling out double Voyager set operation west of Plymouth. (No more than 7 car west of Plymouth, no more than 8 car south of Exeter).
Stock issues are always frustrating and there is generally no short term solution, FGW and my alma mater (operationally wise) FSR have in my opinion done well in using otherwise redundant loco hauled stock to be able to redeploy DMUs elsewhere.
My personal bright idea would be to trade XC's HSTs for East Coast's Adelantes and then keep them pretty much on self-contained diagrams such as Manchester - Bristols (Alstom at Longsight would hopefully be able to maintain their own built trains) and Birmingham crews would be able to staff them if they went off route to Bournemouth or Newcastle.
I'll leave it at that for now, need to calm myself with some more wine and not think about my 4 car trip to Birmingham and back tomorrow!

just a typical friday at end of school term,you have got to expect crowded trains.

as for the smoking the platform staff have got more to deal with than someone smoking i.e dispatching trains and dealing with passengers who keep interupting door closing.






in my opinion the whole smoking on platform rule is nonsense as most platforms are technically outside,it is the same if you are under canopy or at far end of platfrom at places like westbury,i for one would not challenge youths about smoking unless it was offending others these days they could turn round and punch you

SWT did things without fuss  ;D but I think that last day of term for most and it being a friday, probably made things Hectic. Though the trip to Barnstaple and back was a great ride and great service.

Whilst most of your rant is getting on my tit's as you obviously need to grasp reality, the overcrowding on that service is made even more painful by the fact that it was an HST until last December but is now one of those inadequate heaps of plastic sh1t called a voyager!