Great Western Coffee Shop

High Speed Services

Most changes relatively small:

17:00 Plymouth to London - extra Westbury stop to fill a gap
07:10 Bristol to London now runs at 06:40 via Bath and Chippenham
Extra stops at Didcot in HSTs feom Swansea and Cheltenham
Extra stops at Worle and Keynsham by HSTs

Local Services

Changes to remove "bunching" of trains on somw routes, to improve
connections, and to improve robustness.

Westbury / Weymouth locals now carry on to Cheltenham area
Taunton to Cheltenham area diverted to Cardiff
Abbey Wood terminators extend to Parkway
3 extra (early morning and evening) Avonmouth trains
Cardiff to Portsmouth trains stop at Bradford-on-Avon as standard

As the presentation was made at Westbury, Anrew Griffiths gave us a rundown of daily services from that station as from December.

12 a day toLondon (Paddington)
2 an hour to Bristol
Hourly to Portsmouth
8 extra a day "via Warminster" - some just to Warminster and others to Southampton and Brighton
8 a day to Weymouth
2 a day to Swindon

He mentions that although they have managed to make a lot of other improvements, the service to Swindon "has to stay the same".  And they will "try again later" on that one. {{Where have I heard that story before}}

Either I failed to note the number of services to Taunton and beyond, or Andrew wasn't specific on it ...

I think that we should also mention Andrew's words on the enhanced Severn Beach Line service , due to come into effect from May 2008 :

- The extra train will be one of the 12 Class 142 units.

- The extra services will be classed as a commercial venture , part - funded by Bristol City Council. This means that they fall outside of the franchise remit , and thus do not require permission from the DfT (except the lease of the extra train itself , which the DfT have underwritten.)

Extra train sources by FGW is a 142, but this extra trains will be operated with its brothers and sisters out of Exeter and will displace something else northwards to Bristol ... most likely a 143.   Not sure how much difference there is, except that the 143s are being refurbished and the 142s are probably not.

Not possible. All FGW's Class 143 units are based at St Phillips Marsh. See list below.

143603
143611
143612
143617
143618
143619
143620
143621

What Andrew actually said was that the extra unit in service on the Severn Beach Line wont always be the Class 142 unit. Perfectly reasonable , given that most (if not all) TOC's rotate the units used on a given service each day.