The Reading stops in the North Cotswolds trains have been a challenge as the trains are followed by the fast Bristol services and we have not been able to find a way of doing that without a massive journey time penalty and avoiding the Cross Country services. We continue to review it.

Equally, I would note that the train which probably suits the biggest number of commuters from Reading (1734 Paddington to Hereford) does call at Reading at 1759.

In addition, we have had a lot of very positive feedback from London passengers on the route with, for example, a 55 minute journey from Paddington to Hanborough and there is evidence it will help bring business back that has been lost to Chiltern Railways from Oxford Parkway.

We are working with colleagues who operate other transport links into our stations.  Where possible we are building on existing relationships and looking at opportunities to create new ones. 

For the December timetable change we are looking at running several pilot schemes in all three regions to enhance visibility of key local bus services that serve our stations and go into local communities.  This will include an online tool that will include a bus and train ticket. 

We are keen to develop intermodal solutions with our partners such as First Bus and introduce a joint smartcard.

We will make links more visible to buy one ticket for whole journey.  For example, at Didcot Parkway we are working with Thames Travel to enhance the customer experience by installing a ticket machine and additional real time information screens. 

We know that a large proportion of GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) customers use bus services to access our rail network and I am proud to see the quality of interchange we have at stations like Didcot Parkway, Oxford, Bristol TM^‡(resolve)/PW^▸ (Permanent Way) and St Austell although I recognise we have more to do and that frequency of services is also a key issue for customers. Many people talk about what has been achieved in some European countries such as Switzerland and Netherlands and I accept this provides a good model in many respects. Some of our stations have interchange arrangements as good as you would find there – such as Didcot Parkway. I recognise other GWR stations such as Maidenhead and Swindon need more work jointly with the local authority.

As the questioner suggests, it is ultimately a matter for government to determine how bus and rail will be integrated at a strategic level.

S & T Engineer - not sure I understand your question. Manage what exactly in the network code?

With regard to short formed IET^▸ (Intercity Express Train) services, clearly it is not acceptable and we are working closely with Hitachi to avoid this happening. The number of services being short formed is definitely reducing but I agree it happens too often.

We have been encouraging Hitachi to address the modifications required prior to our December timetable and ensure we have less trains stopped.

On the Class 769s, I think you have summarised the options to address late delivery. However, we very much hope the trains will be into production and further delay can be avoided. Any future service enhancements which would require additional rolling stock would need to be timed to coincide with availability after Class 769 introduction.

If we are able to retain Class 143s we would try and minimise the period of use as far as possible.

We remain in regular dialogue with Porterbrook and the supply chain to ensure the Class 769 programme risk is minimised.

Simply, I don’t think we should be choosing between the two. Many existing customers, potential new customers, local business, politicians and others have campaigned to reduce journey times across the region and, especially, to/from London. But the timetable isn’t just about journey time, it is also about frequency improvements on many routes. Connections are important and we recognise the new timetable brings some challenges but we are working to address as many, if not all, of these.

Equally, we agree punctuality is a key requirement of customers and one we need to ensure we deliver.

This timetable is the culmination of years and planning, modernisation work and a multi-billion pound investment in the railway.

New trains and the electrification of the main line allows us to operate more trains with faster journeys both improving the customer experience.

The new trains are already proving more reliable than the 40 year old trains they have replaced. In addition to that, by operating more trains we provide more journey options for customers meaning if there are delays the impact on journeys is reduced.

We are fully confident that the timetable will work well in December.  We have a robust contingency plan in place to deal with any issues that may arise.

We are anticipating and planning for a short term dip in performance as customers and colleagues adjust to the new timetable.  This is only natural given the scale of the changes.

May 2020 will see some further limited improvements, and these are still to be confirmed.

DA3 discussions are ongoing for future timetables beyond May 2020 and we look forward to being able to announce proposed future improvements when we have finished negotiations with the DfT^» (Department for Transport - about).

We recognise the recent disruption to the service between Trowbridge and Swindon has not been acceptable. We know it's been a challenging few months for customers on the Westbury to Swindon route and we apologise to customers impacted by such disruption. We've been talking with the TransWilts group all summer and delivered a number of presentations and will be doing so again on November 18 in Chippenham.

Simply, there are three main reasons;

We do have the right number of traincrew at our Westbury and Gloucester depots but have been adversely impacted by sickness, continuing route and traction training and some issues mentioned above about Sunday working. We are confident that our plans to recruit, train and address Sunday working will make a positive difference.

We've had a number of infrastructure issues with points, axle counters and track circuit failures in the Thingley junction and Westbury areas over the last few months plus a trespass incident (alcohol related). We are working closely with our NR^» (Network Rail - home page) colleagues to understand the causes of these failures and put in place measures to avoid reoccurrence.

More recently we've suffered some fleet failures. The failures we have seen have been a mix of door faults, sets requiring coolant or fuel or other technical issues preventing us from using a set in service. This is frustrating as Turbo performance had been improving.

We are going through a significant cascade and transformation of sets for the West services combined with a number of modification programmes which has reduced availability of sets and thus when one fails we don't have spare sets lying around to replace it. We are working hard to get to the end of our reliability modifications and ensure we have the right number of sets provided for service each day.

Cancelling trains on this route is unacceptable and we are determined that the recent improvements we have seen with GWR performance more generally are achieved on this specific route.

We are expecting testing to commence in early 2020 with the first set in passenger service for May 2020. Class 769s will initially operate on the Basingstoke route and then North Downs in 2020.  There is potential for further routes in the future but initial focus is on Basingstoke and North Downs.

Regarding the North Downs operation, we have a set of sectional running times for diesel and electric and the key benefit 769s will bring on this route is capacity.

Thanks Grahame! Looking forward to the discussion.

We have a good level of confidence about traincrew levels.  We have fully reviewed the numbers and they look good, coupled with the several years’ worth of preparation we have been doing in this area.

We estimate every one of our driver depots will be in surplus by the start date of the December timetable and we have made good progress in ensuring not only the drivers are in place but they have the requisite route and traction knowledge to allow them to work the train services we require them to work.

The question also asks about weekend traincrew position. Our Saturday resource position is supported in exactly the same way as weekdays and we are confident it is robust. Sunday presents more of a challenge and the timetable change in December will not change that. We have already negotiated changes to our catering and driver grades which make the provision of a Sunday service more robust over time and we have a proposed deal currently under consideration by RMT^▸ (National Union of Rail, Maritime & Transport Workers) for our Conductors and Train Managers.
 
We have dedicated a lot of time, effort and resource to ensuring we have the traincrew in place and extensive recruitment has also taken place. We have recruited a number of new team members from Thomas Cook who will help us to ensure we deliver a consistently high standard of customer service.

Regarding the length of the train we now have the rolling stock in place to deliver the timetable.  The last piece of the jigsaw is 2+4 sliding door stock, we need another set to deliver the timetable which is all on target. 

Ultimately this is about the passenger. Most passengers have no philosophical position on underfloor Diesel engines - they want a quiet, comfortable journey. I’ve travelled with many people who have struggled on an IET^▸ (Intercity Express Train) to know if the engines are running or not. It’s a completely different world to older DMUs^▸ (Diesel Multiple Unit).

In addition, if you have any form of locomotive or power unit you loose huge numbers of seats. Paddington station would require massive track layout changes and extended platforms to accommodate more than a ten car set. If we had a power car each end of, say, eight carriages we would loose about 140 standard class seats.

I don’t feel obsessed about 230s. I just don’t understand the enthusiasm to bring super-annuated LUL^▸ (London Underground Ltd) trains to GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) which would make performance more challenging but I accept the 769s have to show decent performance!

Good grief! What rubbish!

The point I made about the 2+7 HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train) back in 2009 or whenever was they had no catering capability at all pretty much. IETs^▸ (Intercity Express Train) have kitchens and full capability to support a trolley. So please don’t go scraping the barrel of previous quotes in a desperate bid to prove I said something that suits you. Fundamentally, we are selling more items from the trolley today than from the HST buffets this time last year.

As far as underfloor DMUs^▸ (Diesel Multiple Unit) are concerned. The IET is an electric train with diesel capability and the fact they spend varying proportions of time on diesel but quite significant time on electric changes the goalposts. The other thing is that the sound of an MTU^▸ (Motor Traction Unit) engine under a 800/802 is a world away from the sound, vibration and smell of a Cummins QSK19 under a 180/22x.

That said I’d prefer to see more electrification!

Goodness knows what I said in 1989 that will get dragged onto this site to make some point shortly ... !

Thanks for your suggestion, I will ask our Customer Information team to look at updating the process to ask for a contact number.  We simply do not have the capacity in our Control Centre in Swindon to manage and respond to calls received through the Help Points.