Great Western Coffee Shop

John Curley (Rail Director (West) spoke at the AGM. A summary of what he said appears below.

Disclaimer I was sat at the back and may not have heard everything: any mistakes are therefore my fault, but not my responsibility!

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"We have clearly failed to deliver"

He apologised for their poor customer service, and the poor punctuality and reliability of their services.

Senior managers were now trying to turn things around. In the past they had acted as arrogant managers of HST services who thought that running rural lines would be easy. The centralisation of management was not helping, and that more decision making would be devolved back to local management.

They were now going to focus on their customers and stakeholders. This started with the management reshuffle which brought in Andrew Haines as COO, and the three route directors who would focus on the core elements of their business, namely London commuter, High speed, and rural services.

They are trying to align staff terms and conditions to increase flexibility (for example, Wessex train crew are still on different t&cs to HST crew; in an ideal world the ex-Wessex staff should be able to undertake HST duties and vice-versa, although he said this wouldn't happen overnight.)

There has been too much directing from Swindon, and not enough listening to local staff and customers: he acknowledged that local staff understood the service patterns and loadings of their services much better than Swindon, and he wanted to tap into this knowledge in future.

He also said that they made a mess of moving their maintenance from Cardiff to Bristol, and made mistakes predicting the amount of rolling stock they would need, and failed to acquire replacements when they realised the mistake.

He thought they had four key challenges for the future.

1) Need to engage stakeholders: they intend to talk to communities and understand local issues. JCs appointment meant that Julian Crow now had a director-level sponsor/supporter.

2) Delivery - "a decent railway, well-run": The Fleet Director is now a DMU man, reflecting that FGW now realise that DMUs are important. Money is going into the Bristol DMU depot, and there is to be a carriage washer installed at Exeter. Staffing levels may need adjusting; the distribution of train crews is right for the old service pattern, but has not been changed with the new timetables. May also introduce mobile cleaners on some local routes; trains are cleaned before entering service (hmmm...), but full of litter by mid-afternoon.

3) Produce proper plans: up to now FGW had just been ticking the boxes of their franchise commitments. With little or no thought to managing growth or responding to customer needs and desires. They had to stop whinging and start moving forward.

4) Sort out the rolling stock: they want to keep five 158s, but by the time they realised this either DfT or FGW had taken their eyes off the ball and other TOCs grabbed them (this was the only time he mentioned DfT). He did say that they had acquired the 'most reliable' of the 142s available.

Tarka Line Timetable:
December 2007 would be virtually unchanged. From May 2008 there will be an additional Mon-Sat train - 0940 from Barnstaple - and they are looking at the possibility of an 1140 as well, although that's by no means certain. They will also look again at providing a standard-hour timetable around Exeter with a Devon Metro (which is exactly what Wessex called it in 2003...)

Other Rolling Stock Issues:
The 180s are to be phased out, as they are simply too expensive to run. They expect more 150s to become available in a couple of years, plus other units should become available once the 1300 new carriages start to be introduced at other TOCs. At the moments FGW are trying to procude a coherent view of what's needed in the South West so they can presents a robust case once the cascades start. The Pacers will be centered on Exmouth, Barnstaple and Paignton, although some peak services will be operated by 150/153/158s when they are available. Most Exmouth services will be doubled up.

There were a couple of questions at the end about the new high-density seating on HSTs (which took up an inordinate amount of time, especially considering they have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the Tarka line...)

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John Curley was, at least, honest about FGWs failings. The bit about about 'arrogant HST managers' was a bit odd though, since they haven't exactly covered themselves with glory on that part of their business, either...

The most disappointing bit was the delay in introducing the additional service until May: we had been getting regular hints that it would be appearing - on Saturdays at least - from this December.