If it hadn’t been for the fact that I decided to go out and about on Saturday, I would have not known it was running. The only “publicity” I have seen regarding the additional was an A4 page stuck onto the booking office doors at Frome Station Saturday morning showing the times of the additional and the other trains between Bristol and Weymouth, which certainly wasn’t there on Friday afternoon.
Hopefully the FGW publicity machine will swing into action and start publicising this extra service and soon.
Whilst on the one hand, FGW certainly deserve praise for running the train throughout the summer rather than on certain dates, they also deserve critism for the way in which they have dealt with this, but then again I'm not surprised given FGW's "love" of the ex-Wessex empire.
They do indeed deserve praise as this is going to cost a lot of money and they don't have to run this extra services as part of their franchise. It was a shame that all this wasn't sorted out over the winter so it could have been included in the printed summer timetables, but we must remember that there is a third party involved in running extra trains and thats good old Network Rail.
Although crewed by EWS, it is advertised as a First Great Western service, and should be treated equally as such. I am led to believe from the on-train staff that there are negotiations on-going to enable the train to run on weekdays (presumably during the school summer holidays).
Hopefully this will happen as its needed during the school summer holidays, Sundays too IMHO.
Perhaps if FGW used the train on an actual timetabled services between Bristol and Weymouth – like Wessex used to do – then they might get more benefit out of it.
Couldn't agree more with you. This would also free up units to boost other busy summer services in Devon and Cornwall. The only problem now with doing this is that Weymouth line trains now also run beyond Bristol to Gloucester/Worcester/Great Malvern which didn't used to happen when Wessex Trains ran the Weymouth line.
