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1  All across the Great Western territory / Across the West / Re: IETs into passenger service from 16 Oct 2017 and subsequent performance issues on: January 23, 2019, 11:50:37
I saw the comments about 5 car sets on here yesterday. Trotted down to Swindon station to go home and lo and behold a 5 car set turns up for the 16:39 from Swindon to Bristol Parkway, that was cosy!

Usual battles with people dumping all their crap on the window seat and then sitting in the aisle seat in the hope that no-one will ask them to move.
2  Journey by Journey / London to the West / Re: Taunton station to be upgraded on: November 07, 2018, 15:24:27
I would've thought that any path to the Cricket Ground from the station would go through the Firepool/the old livestock market - don't hold your breath!

.....
One point to pick up from that article. Whilst GWR (Great Western Railway) may have staged the exhibtion last Friday, it is not they who will be funding and building the car park, north side ticket office and other works. The car park will most likely be funded jointly by Network Rail and the local authorities - Somerset County Council and Taunton Deane Borough Council (TDBC). The station building works will be wholly Network Rail's remit. The hotel is being funded jointly by Somerset Coast YMCA and TDBC. The 'boulevard' plans linking the station with Firepool, Coal Orchard and ultimately the town centre are a long standing part of TDBC's 'Taunton Town Centre Area Action Plan', first drawn up in 2008. Funding for that is presumably from developers and TDBC. ....

Will be interesting to see if the car park is jointly funded by TDBC/SCC(resolve)/Network Rail whether it will then be handed over to GWR/APCOA (Car parking company used at GWR - controlled stations in the area) Connect to let them pocket the parking charges! I hope not.

Like everyone else living in Taunton, I've watched the whole sorry saga for Firepool and - more recently - the station improvements talked about for a very long time. I'll believe it when I see it happening.

3  All across the Great Western territory / Fare's Fair / Re: Can I/should I claim compensation? on: November 02, 2018, 10:02:34
:-) Another typo, typing has never been my strong point! Yes, my ticket was to London Zones 1 - 3.

I've submitted a claim, let's see what happens.

Thanks all for the advice.
4  All across the Great Western territory / Fare's Fair / Re: Can I/should I claim compensation? on: November 01, 2018, 15:19:39
Off-peak (flexible) return - comp would be due on the actual train caught's delay....and the purchase of the the rail-air & tube tickets would be outside-the-scope of the comp scheme (but in cases like these, best to ask, as refunds are given on case-by-case basis)

You don't say whether your ticket was to London, I assume so.

Sorry, yes it was an ticket to London zone 3. The train I travelled on got cancelled at Reading so I think I will chuck a claim in.

I don't know about compensation, but have you ever considered a career in Public Transport Rescue, given your undoubted skills in that regard? I'm sure plenty of passengers would welcome a quick-thinking Wilf19 guarantee - Not so much "We're Getting There" but "Wilf'll Get You There!"

I've done a job that has involved an amount of travel by trains and planes for 20+ years - I do it because I like travel, the variety that the jobs brings and Somerset being a bit of an IT free zone I don't think there's much choice! Although there have been times - like on Sunday -  when I wonder why I do it. Over the years there have been more than few 'what the heck do I do now' moments. Being 'held prisoner' on the Heathrow Express coming back into Paddington one night some years ago because they couldn't get the doors open and watching the last train to Taunton leave is a good example, back to Heathrow I went, rented a car and drove home. Of course, working for a company that has always paid up to dig me of out a hole helps a lot.
5  All across the Great Western territory / Fare's Fair / Can I/should I claim compensation? on: November 01, 2018, 12:17:27
I related the sorry tale of my lengthy jouney to London last Sunday (when the powerlines came down) in the infrastructure topic. I got to London and made my flight from London City - it took 5 hours to get there but I made it (for a 55 minute flight!).

Now the question is can I claim compensation for this? As soon as I saw that there were problems I hot-footed to Taunton station and caught a train two hours earlier than I had orginally planned thinking that if I at least got to Reading there would be some options from there. I had a off-peak return ticket. When I got to Reading it was apparent that the Waterloo Trains were rammed and the queues to get to the platforms were huge, so I bought a ticket to Heathrow on the RailAir Bus and then an Underground ticket to London from Heathrow. Can I claim for those?

As it turns out my orginal train (the 15:17 from Taunton) did make it through and got to Paddington 35 minutes late but at the time I became aware of the problems and all the way to Reading the advice was that the problems would continue until 18:00, it looks like they fixed it sooner, but I couldn't take that risk.

Where do you think I stand with this? In the end it was a work trip so the costs don't come back to me, but the extra couple of hours that I lost on Sunday afternoon did affect me!

Thanks in advance!

6  All across the Great Western territory / Across the West / Re: Infrastructure problems in Thames Valley causing disruption elsewhere - ongoing, since Oct 2014 on: October 28, 2018, 16:59:23
I got to Reading from Taunton, no announcements made on the train at all, unless of course the system was broken in my carriage. Decided to get off the train along with everyone else and head to the Waterloo platforms. That turned to be a mistake it was a zoo, no GWR (Great Western Railway) staff in-sight and only the occasional - muffled - announcement as to what was going on.

In the end I legged it to the Heathrow bus, thinking that if I could at least get to Heathrow I could ask the work travel agent to rebook me on a Heathrow flight rather than my original one from London City. Fortunately for me this is a work trip so I won’t lose out of it all goes wrong, apart from the waisted time of course.

In the end got to Heathrow at 4pm, my flight from City is at 8pm am on the Underground into London.

Not a good advert for the railways today. What really gets my goat is how the platform staff at Reading had all disappeared and basically left passengers to it. I realise that there’s Not much they they can do and they don’t want to get yelled at by angry passengers, but somebody (management?) should have been down there with a loud hailer explaining that no-one was going anywhere.

Feel sorry for folks that had leisure plans trashed by this.
7  All across the Great Western territory / Across the West / Re: Infrastructure problems in Thames Valley causing disruption elsewhere - ongoing, since Oct 2014 on: October 28, 2018, 14:29:09
Thanks for the info,  I'm ready to be quick off the mark at Reading.  When I saw the issue I caught a train 2 hours earlier than I originally planned and - me being me - I had already allowed a lot of slack in case of problems. My flight isn't until 8pm so I should make it one way or another but that could be tempting fate!
8  All across the Great Western territory / Across the West / Re: Infrastructure problems in Thames Valley causing disruption elsewhere - ongoing, since Oct 2014 on: October 28, 2018, 14:05:18
I'm supposed to be flying from London City this evening. I saw the disruption warning on the National Rail app and decided to catch a much earlier Taunton - Paddington train. Currently on the 13:15 Taunton to Paddington train and - so far - no announcement has been made about the disruption beyond Reading.

Just left Westbury, next stop Reading. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Of this would be the one trip I take from City rather than Bristol or Heathrow.  :-(

Fingers crossed!

9  All across the Great Western territory / Fare's Fair / Re: GWR mobile tickets on: May 01, 2018, 10:48:07
I started using mobile tickets on my trips to Swindon from Taunton, but I've gone back to paper/card tickets because:

1) There doesn't seem to be a way to add the GWR (Great Western Railway) mobile ticket to the iPhone wallet (please correct me if I'm wrong), so I have to faff about unlocking the phone, starting the GWR app, loading the ticket etc etc. Much quicker to hand over a card ticket.

2) Several times the ticket readers used by the GWR on-train staff have failed to read the ticket on my phone, do they need a connection? Result more faffing and delays while they try to scan the ticket,

3) Between Temple Meads and Taunton there is patchy mobile phone signal, the GWR app seems to need a connection to even start let alone show a mobile ticket. I had a bit of a run-in with a CrossCountry ticket checking person because I couldn't load the ticket. This would be fixed by being able to add the mobile ticket to the wallet.

4) At Taunton, the platform 2 wide barrier doesn't have a mobile ticket reader that I can see. if I have my bike on the platform then I have to faff about using the intercom system to get someone to let me out or in.

Way too  much faffing involved with mobile tickets which (in my opinion!) which is not offset by the faff of having to collect card tickets. A good idea not very well implemented, hopefully this wilkl chanhe.

I've also noticed that the GWR app crashes - on an iPhone - if I ask it for a card ticket to collect at the station.

I noticed that the T&Cs say 'no break of journey' in either direction. I thought any Anytime card ticket did allow a break of journey on the return?

rant over




10  All across the Great Western territory / Your rights and redress / Re: Compensation for delays between Bridgwater & Taunton 07/11/17 on: November 10, 2017, 11:29:14
I like that idea, I think I will do that. If only I can find ticket, I've put it somewhere and now can't find it!

Thanks for everyone's help with this.
11  All across the Great Western territory / Your rights and redress / Re: Compensation for delays between Bridgwater & Taunton 07/11/17 on: November 09, 2017, 10:28:22
Thanks for the responses. Interestingly the CrossCountry DelayRepay page implies that they will pay compensation whatever the circumstances.

However, having thought about this, I really am not comfortable about claiming in the circumstances, so I won't.

Thanks

12  All across the Great Western territory / Your rights and redress / Compensation for delays between Bridgwater & Taunton 07/11/17 on: November 09, 2017, 09:54:17
I hope this is the right place for this.

Back to using the trains regularly, doing a 4 day week commute from Taunton to Swindon.

I got caught up in the delays on Tuesday evening caused by a person being hit by a train between Bridgwater and Taunton, got home over two hours late.

Firstly, can I claim compensation for this? The incident was very much outside the railway’s control, I know the airlines don’t pay up when bad weather affects their operations. Seems in bad taste to be claiming in this situation but I may as well if I can.

Secondly, I bought the ticket through gwr.com, half the journey was on GWR (Great Western Railway) but the train I was on that was affected by the delays was CrossCountry, who do I claim from? I had an anytime return ticket.

Thanks in advance
13  All across the Great Western territory / Across the West / Re: Travelling to London Sunday 26th March? on: March 21, 2017, 15:27:07
Damn, blast and curse.  I have a advance ticket for what was the 08:00 from Paddington to Taunton on Sunday which is now the 07:30 bus from Paddington according to the timetable. Think I might catch a later bus/train making sure I have a screen-shot of the web-page that says tickets will be valid for trains later in the day in case I get grief.

More worryingly, I only found out about the Sunday fun because I came on here after I heard about the derailment at East Somerset Junction.

Presumably (I hope!) there will  be announcements made and big signs at Taunton and Paddington about the Sunday Paddington - Reading closure on the way up to Paddington on Friday.

More cursing, muttering and grumbling.
14  All across the Great Western territory / Across the West / Re: Your choice of places to visit - 2016. on: January 06, 2016, 14:01:26
As I stopped traveling for work back in the summer, I now get to choose when and where I go (mostly!). Here are mine:

St Ives.
Barnstaple - been to Barnstaple lots of times but never by train.
Portishead
Thurso
Pwllheli

Three of which are not too far from Taunton, I suspect that has something to do with me having to fund my rail travel myself now!

As an aside, I bought a book listing some closed railways that are now cycle and/or footpaths around the country so I've started doing some of those. I dragged the kids out on the "Stop line trail" between Ilminster and Chard last week - cue much teenage muttering and "I can't be away from the Xbox for more than two minutes" grumbles.
15  All across the Great Western territory / Buses and other ways to travel / Re: New Roads Programme on: December 04, 2014, 10:20:00
Printed version of the Taunton local paper today (not in the on-line version) reports that the latest version of the Henlade by-pass will  end in a roundabout 'near' the M5 which sounds pretty much like BNM suggested above. I'll believe it when I see it, I suspect I might be long retired by the time they get around to sorting out the A303 and A358.

The same article reports that they will be improving junction 25 of the M5. I suspect that the dualing of the A303 and A358 will result in a lot of the traffic (particularity lorries) using the A358 rather than the A303 through the Blackdown Hills to get to the M5 heading south west. I hope the improved junction can cope!

I suspect that any green arguments against expanding the road network will get shouted down or overruled by the economic arguments at the moment.  But then a bit like sorting out the over crowded mess that is Heathrow, the A303 should have been sorted out years ago.

Completely agree about the safety case for these roads, although not as extreme as the example quoted by paul7755 people come belting off the end of the M3, onto A303 with right turns and then hit the two-lanes-into-one queues at Stonehenge and beyond. At least they sorted out the 'suicide lane' arrangement on the Ilminster by-pass with some double white lines, the reports in the local press of high speed collisions along there have thankfully reduced since they did that.
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