And finally - our carriage on the train from Weymouth virtually emptied at Bruton (seriously!) and I suspect it we were amongst a trip out from the boarding school there.  All very posh and polite and having fun.  Can't speak for the other carriages, of course, but it does remind me not to extrapolate from a single example.

A few dozen on the Westbury to Swindon service - mostly connecting in at Westbury and waiting around from the flurry of other trains that called at around 8 p.m.   2-y-o found the wait difficult! and I have to find myself wondering if it might encourage more people to use the train if it left about 25 minutes earlier - a quick turn around of the arrival of the inbound trains from Swindon just after that flurry (now there's another story of missed connections in the opposite directions!)

Weymouth station at present is a MESS.  Front doors closed. No refreshments. Loos locked out of use. Station canopy in pieces (but being worked on), forecourt also being worked on.  The "Bristol Platform" remains off to one side, almost like the embarrassing poor relative even of the grotty station canopy on the important SWR^» (South Western Railway - about) / London trains platform.  It feels truly down to the lowest possible standard, not designed to make people feel welcome or encourage them back.  Or perhaps that is the design intent?

At least there are still trains at the moment

Well - no opportunity to pay on the way down:

* TVM^▸ (Ticket Vending Machine) at Melksham Broken
* No train manager seen on Melksham to Westbury Service
* TVM at Westbury not selling groupsaves
* Ticket office at Westbury Shut
* Train Manager on Weymouth train just rushed past twice (before Thornford and after Chetnole), no ticket check or change to stop him and buy.
* No staff at platform exit at Weymouth for us to pay

I don't feel too bad because the single tickets bought at Weymouth to get us back were just 5p each cheaper than the return

Writing on the return train - 3 car train with nearly every seat taken. Stopped at Chetnole and Thornford but not Yetminster. Now at Castle Cary. Moderate crowd on the London platform - early leavers from Glasto?

Shocker of a schedule  - 10 mins at Pen Mill, 6 at Cary (train manager announcement it's to pass another train, though only the case here at Cary; a 3 car 158 has just headed off towards Weymouth.  Seems this train has a further 6 minutes to wait at Westbury, and we have an hour.  Gonna be fun with a 2 year old in the party, who's had a long day already.

09:44 off Melksham (3 carriage) I estimate 30 to 40 passengers - around 10 joined at Melksham.  Connection at Westbury to Portsmouth Harbour - 5 carriages left with nearly every seat taken. 10:22 to Weymouth, just 3 carriages, also left with most seats taken. We are now between Frome and Bruton. Follow up reports to - err - follow 

In "National Rail Enquiries Mode" that will cost £249.10 each, Sir ... via London between Christchurch and Wrexham, then Wrexham to Norwich NOT via London.  Both off peak tickets, £102.70 and £146.40.   Outbound avoiding London and the £102.70 will cost £137.40 instead.

I've come up with £153.30 each plus cross London fares.  £54 Christchurch to London, £46.20 return Marylebone to Wrexham, £30.50 Liverpool Street to Colchester and £22.60 Colchester to Norwich.

Looks like the original is designed to work only when you navigate to it from the site indexes and not as a landing page.

Mirror for Coffee Shop members at http://www.passenger.chat/RMT-strike-salary.pdf

I have done my risk assessment ... there is an opportunity for it to go wrong, on a scale of 1 (unlikley) to 4 (huge risk) I have put it as a 2.  On a scale of "how bad is it if something goes wrong", 1 to 4.  2 x 2 is 4 - risk measure 4.  Mitigate - being there in person, knowing the language, etc - risk worth taking.

For a general season thing, huge risk (4) and the effect if it does between 2 and 3 - risk measure 10, and that's why we are not  doing general promotion for the whole of the summer season.  GW^▸ (Great Western) informed and not able to provide appropriate r-assurances.

Headed for Weymouth again tomorrow - in amongst the sea of red on our cancellation map, "our" train is still running.

https://www.facebook.com/MelkshamTUG/posts/pfbid0Kcqb6CzwZP5FZ35XiUjsxCvYejuYcvbHafUCHZQ2x3DwHHf2ZYg6eGxoxg3rivfhl


I will be on the 09:44 from Melksham - join me, say hello (or if you want to avoid me, you now know how!).

With so much control of the railways now with the Department for Transport, should there also be a link between the salaries of the civil servants concerned and customer satisfaction levels?

I'm headed for Weymouth tomorrow - 09:43 train from Melksham and meeting up with a whole bunch of friends.  Plan is for us all to come back late in the day.

Questions

- if one or two members of the group wish to return early (leaving at least three in the core group) do those one or two just have to pay the difference in fares, or do they need new tickets?  Is it OK for the core group of 3 or more to return on the group save, or would they have to pay more or again too?

- if we buy a group save for (say) seven people, can we come back as a group of three and a group of four, or do we need to make a decision when we initially buy?  How does it work if we wish to jiggle around during the day between the groups?

In spite of it "costing" a lot more in our time than any refund which may be due, I have helped the group write in as suggested. Acknowledgement received, and very clearly a personal one asking for one data element to be added, which has been done. This makes for an interesting learning case all around, showing up some systemic issues along the way in the mechanism provided for raising the matter, so I'll let members know how we get on in due course.

Database image search requests up from 111 on Tuesday to 131,050 on Wednesday at a peak rate of about 16 per second. All quiet this morning - 32 requests so far to that page out of around 16,000 requests to our server.

I am told it's to protect both the fabric of the bus and fellow passengers from sharp corners, and oil and other dirt which may be in the bike.

Well - guests went on the train, with a printout of this thread.  Came home with a magnificent long joined-up ticket with eight sections on it, charged £4.90 a head.  Train manager outbound says I got it wrong.   Train manager on way back, to whom they showed the ticket and printout, said I had it right and told them to write in for a refund of the difference.

Old thread ... sorry if you have found our server a bit slow this afternoon - we have had a Denial of Service attack.   It didn't end up denying service mind you, just slowed us down a bit. I'm watching / ongoing in case I have not managed to fully fix the thing.