Great Western Coffee Shop

I have been doing some OJP enquires to establish the pattern of services from my local station, Yate, into Bristol and back.

The service seems acceptable to me aalthough I bet there will be some moans from passengers. The first two services are roughly at the same times as at present, 0648 as against 0641 now and 0739 against 0742 now. Then the pattern changes from XX42 now to 0815 thence hourly at 0910 until 2010 then the final service of the day at 2141. Most services will now also call at Stapleton Road and Lawrence Hill on their way into Bristol but there are exceptions.

We are privileged to be be getting through services to Weymouth (7 services), Brighton (1 service) and 1 terminating service each to Taunton, Southampton and Frome and 3 terminating services to Westbury. The remaining 2 services terminate at BTM.

Journeys TO Yate from Bristol commence their journeys at Salisbury (1), Warminster (4), Westbury (1), Weymouth (5), Brighton (2), Bath Spa (1) and Bristol Temple Meads (1). NONE of these services however call at Lawrence Hill or Stapleton Road, passengers (where there is a connecting service) have about an 18 minute connectional time at Filton Abbey Wood.

I have established that there are a few quirks in the information I have gleened from the OJP. ALL the XX10 services from Yate to Bristol are timed to arrive at Temple Meads at XX34, XX35 or XX36. There is one service, the 1210 which is the Brighton service is shown as NOT calling at Stapleton Road or Lawrence Hill  with a scheduled arrival at BTM as 1236, this is 2 minutes MORE in journey time than a number of services which do call at the two Bristol suburban stations - Why ???

I also did an enquiry on the last train of the day to Bristol for the journey to Stapleton Road only and the OJP came up with this. Travel into Bristol on the 2141 service and then get a Cardiff service BACK to Filton Abbey Wood and thence finally a Cardiff to Bristol service from Filton Abbey Wood to Stapleton Road. At the time this service would pass through Stapleton Road (approx 2200) I fail to see why this service should not stop there and Laarence Hill as any snowball effect on following trains would be minimal at that time of night.

Looking forward to seeing the draft timetable for this route online to see if my enquires line up with the FGW draft issue of the TT.

   

Mind you , according to the previous draft copies of the FGW December 2007 Timetable that I have , they had to change which services called at Stapleton Road & Lawrence Hill at least twice , plus their timings , because they were having real problems with pathing. This is illustrated by the small print at the bottom of page 11 of the link below (Andrew Griffith's 22 May 2007 analysis , which starts from page 10.) :
http://www.wellho.net/wccfoi/wccfgw3.pdf

"Pathing problems preclude the northbound service from calling at Lawrence Hill and Stapleton Road; instead these calls are included in the Cardiff service."

Also , similiar pathing problems have probably caused the radical change in Severn Beach Line timings (link below.)
http://www.firstgreatwestern.co.uk/Documents/Custom/Dec%2007%20Bristol%20to%20Severn%20Beach%20Mon%20-%20Fri.pdf

Yes indeed!  but that is at the cost of through Cardiff - Weymouth/Brighton services!  Cardiff - Brighton has always been a through journey opportunity.  In fact it used to run from Milford Haven through to Brighton with BR back in the late eighties!  I guess we get (from Cardiff) our Taunton services back thought.

I guess you cant please all the people all the time!

Why couldnt FGW have just taken on the former Wessex timetable back in December 2006?  This IS a serious question!!!!!

And it deserves a serious answer.  "The Old Wessex Timetable did not meet the Government's specification for the new services which is part of First's Contract". Of course, First chose to sign up to that contract and were in a very strong position at the time to say "we don't believe that x change will work, so we won't do it".

But there's always a need to move on, and a pattern which was right for the 1990s wouldn't be right for the 2000s and the 2010s.  However, it's my opinion that too much was changed too soon; the new broom was so busy sweeping in so many places that a job that wasn't very good was done all over the place.

Just looked at the online TT for services from Yate and there is a major error on the draft issue.

The stations listiing has Filton Abbey Wood and Bristol Parkway tranposed and thus on services TO Yate from Bristol whilst the Filton Abbey Wood time is shown no services are shown as stopping at Bristol Parkway. In the opposite direction services are shown as calling at Bristol Parkway but not shown as calling at Filton Abbey Wood.

Thats how I read the timetable, anyone confirm. I noticed this because on services which commence at Bristol Parkway and is shown in the column header as such has a time inserted alongside Filton Abbey Wood but with Bristol Parkway listed on the next line on the timetable no time is shown.

OH DEAR 

Yes I thought something was a miss there too. Surely all local trains that start/terminate and Bristol Parkway will also call at Filton as these were services that used to terminate there.

Main problem is that you are trying to squeeze too many timetables into one timetable and makes it more likely that mistakes will be made. This timetable is far too busy since combined all the cross Bristol services from start to finish of their journeys and needs splitting up in the format that Wessex produced their timetables.

No problem with the timetable format and the combination of all the services into one combined table provided FGW can get it right which by their performance over the past ten months they don't seem to be able to do. The current FGW Timetable booklet E is of a similar format. The differences to the current timetable E is to incorporate the Swindon - Gloucester services, Heart of Wessex Line / Weymouth services, services on the Severn Beach line, the Melksham services and the Brighton and intermediate stations Fareham to Brighton into this draft version although I did notice one station which is omitted whether by accident or design, that station being Tiverton Parkway. I think this may be to combine all of services under the jurisdiction of Andrew Griffiths into one table.

All of time timetables are currently as they would be in the Natioanl Rail TT which is generally more crowded. I would expect the current timetable E to stay as it is.

Not quite Liam, Cardiff-Portsmouth/Weymouth/Brighton is a seperate TT (123) and Taunton-Bristol-Gloucester is the second TT (134) in the National Rail TT that make up the current FGW timetable E book, I would prefer them to be separate but I think im in the minority on this one  :(

I'm all in all quite happy with the changes. Quite a lot has been recovered from the mess ups last year

the weekend cardiff/gloucester - taunton/pompey timetable are STILL NOT online.  even with several emails to FGW they say there is no info available!  this is five/six weeks to the start of the Dec 07 TT.  whilst they say its not available, what happens to t-12?  !!!