At the end of the day I accept there will be a small set of customers who prefer a buffet but the current options allows us to offer more seats and provide customers a service of refreshments to their seat. That is one of the reasons we are now seeing growth in catering sales year on year after years of decline and a 3% increase in customer satisfaction with on board services in last NRPS^▸ (Numerical Rating Pain Score (patient discomfort scale)) survey by Transport Focus.

Our sister company Scotrail when it was part of FirstGroup worked on this to electrify the Paisley Canal line in Glasgow.

We have looked at what could be done but the costs are huge and the problem with branch lines is there is little opportunity to deliver journey time improvements.

We remain open to working on this but we would need funding from DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) for such schemes.

We're sorry that things didn't move in the way we wanted, we now have a dedicated Customer Engagement Manager who is looking at a variety of ways to engage with the Customer Panel.  This will include an online forum as well as continuing face to face meetings.

Please get in touch with our office through the usual channels if you have not had any more recent updates on this.

I just don’t accept the premise of this question. We are now selling more food and drink than we were when we had HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train) with buffets. I accept the transition has been tougher than we would have liked but progress is being made to solve the issues we face and our new terms and conditions for catering staff is making it easier to cover shifts, especially at weekends. Removing hard won seats for an old fashioned buffet in an environment where fewer and fewer customers wish to leave their seats is not sensible and the cost would £Ms which would never be recovered - and that’s before we even think of how long each train would be out of service for. The numbers don’t add up!

Our move to an all at seat service is not and never was an 'experiment' It was a well planned and thought through change which despite being logistically challenging is starting to prove beyond doubt that it is the right strategy on these very long trains and will prove to be highly successful. We do understand that it is not perfect. We recognise that with a trolley service the customers are not in control of when the trolley arrives at their seat. We are working very hard to deliver the service.

Regarding hot food, we continue research into ways to improve our catering offer and that includes hot food. We are developing a trolley that can deliver hot food products.

Noted but you do reach a point where refurbishing older trains doesn’t pass the test with our customers. I am hoping the new government will help us set a strategy to make further progress in this area.

The recent electrification of large chunks of the GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) network has helped us make significant progress in this area.

Yes I agree. Whether people like it or not we don’t see particularly overwhelmingly large numbers of people joining MtM sessions. Quite frankly I’ll try anything to engage with customers. Glad to see some support for these sessions.

The M.D. can always resort to Real Time Trains website if necessary at such events.

Simply, yes. I am not sure that giving our passengers retired old Underground trains from the early 1980s would be the step change they are looking forward to, particularly as they are older than the 150s and 143s.  However, we are working with suppliers to achieve solutions which will mean our trains have less emissions. The Class 769 will be the next visible step on that journey to electric mode on the 41% of the track mileage that is already electrified on the North Downs line.

What an absolute pleasure it is to be joining the users of the Great Western Coffee Shop Forum for this Meet the Manager event.  I look forward to answering your questions and discussing key topics of interest with you. In the event we can’t answer all your questions we will provide some responses in the next few days.

Meet the Manager events were not especially well attended with many customers keen just to catch their train and get home. In simple terms, I am happy to work with any approach to engaging with customers that is successful. The development of technology and the fact we are having this conversation online shows many people have moved on. Sometimes we find such events are attended by some of the GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) community of professional meeting attendees but what we really want is to engage with real customers and many of these people have busy lives. We need to keep thinking of the way to engage most effectively.

Having said this, we are planning a programme of Meet the Manager events specifically in preparation for the timetable change and details of these sessions will be available on our website shortly.

Good Evening - good to be here! I haven’t invented a silly name so apologies for the lack of imagination in using Mark Hopwood

I would like to try and answer everyone’s comments but understand the approach taken by the Coffee Shop team. If you feel you have a point that hasn’t been answered please get in touch and I shall try to respond.

Looking forward to it already!

Thank you for positive comments about GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) colleagues on board the train who seem to have managed a challenging situation well.

We have some lessons to learn about provision of buses and how that works jointly with TfW.

Overwhelmingly, a sad day and I very much hope we can learn lessons quickly. My thoughts are with the families of the deceased and their Network Rail colleagues.

Thanks to all who came and to Bob for kind words at the end. The work done by members of community rail partnerships is hugely valuable.

“A genuine rail enthusiast” ..... and I thought I was still firmly in the closet?!

In reality I have hundreds of people in GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) who felt strongly they wanted to see off the HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train) in style. My only small contribution was empowering them to get on with making it happen.

I always regret the end of LHCS^▸ (Locomotive Hauled Coaching Stock) in/out of Paddington on regular service trains in the day was never seen off properly.

Now to think of the 143 farewell ...

I absolutely accept you do praise. Poor old Dan’s life insurance premiums doubled when his insurance company googled his name and came up against your comment!

I have nothing against your posts apart from the fact that they are accompanied by a photograph of an overweight underpowered item of Sulzer traction. I shall have to arrange suitable re-education !!