Great Western Coffee Shop

Hi,

Just found this forum (via Google) and thought that as I regularly use FGW to commute between Exeter and  Trowbridge I should register and share my mostly positive experiences.

I really enjoy rail travel, especially on the FGW  services between Paddington and Exeter.  I can change at either Bath Spa or Westbury for trains to/from Trowbridge so giving me a little variety in travel plans and I have only once had an issue with a train being cancelled (taxi provided) or running more than a few mnutes late. 

My main criticism is of the new style coaches - I dont like the airline style  seats or colour scheme...I prefer to sit at a table and liked the fealing of space that I enjoyed in the older style of coach. The new, taller seats create a more private travel space but I tend to feel a little hemmed in..

As regards staff. I've always found the FGW staff to be reasonable and helpful and often to have a sense of humour. I guess we dont have "guards" any more but some staff still exhibit a passion for the railway - and that has a real impact on their attitude to work and us customers.

regards

Phil Vossler

I think the problem is, people only post about journies when they are not satisfied!

Hi, Phil ... and welcome to the board.

I'm going to start by echoing your comment on the staff - indeed, I'm going to go further and say that the majority of those we come into contact with on a day to day basis have a positive passion which is infectious!

You may not have even been aware, but the initial proposals for the current timetables (from last December) were for a very limited service indeed from the west to be calling at Westbury, with the "semifast" trains no longer running.  Various customer inputs / contructive criticisms helped to recover the service to its present level, and indeed there's an extra service from the west stopping at Westbury from this coming December to plug the remaining big gap.

Although I would much rather be positive all the time, there is also an appropriate spot for constructive criticism; it's hard to quantify which inputs actually caused the change of heart on the semi-fasts, and in any case there were probably a lot of contributary factors.

I am going to add one other comment here. Two years ago, the people of Melksham in Wiltshire were reasonably happy with their train service.   They're quiet - didn't say much about it, but were voting with their feet and the ticket sales and traffic level statistics all showed very healthy percentage point growths. But because they were quiet, certain parties felt that they didn't care and they could pull most of the service.  Result?   You now have a town of 24,000 people which has just four train services a day - that's one per SIX THOUSAND inhabitants.   And that's compared to a ratio one one train per FIVE HUNDRED inhabitants for the other West Wilts towns, where (Bradford-on-Avon especially!) people are a bit more vocal.  It really does help to share both positive and negative experiences - glad you've joined us to do so!