Great Western Coffee Shop

Yesterday, I manned a booth at Melksham's Food and River Festival (there again today) - main intent to reach the public with information about the autumn program at the Assembly Hall (including next weekend's ClimateFest) and train times for the Autumn.  Modern methods let us typeset leaflets in our own home and have them delivered within a few days - is doing so any use, or should we be simply talking to people and telling them to use their app, or should we simply be telling people about these things though social media?

It is .. fascinating to talk with Joe Public and see how (s)he reacts to the booth and the information we are providing.  On rail

* Lots of people still want printed timetables. A number say "I use an app" or "I look online". And a number say "I don't use trains" in a dismissive way making it clear that they would never consider doing so.  But many, many people take the timetables.

* There is - almost - a joy at having a simple line-of-route table; we have taken a management decision in a trifold leaflet to stick to just the Swindon to Westbury line.  Questions are raised from time to time about other destinations (Bristol, Oxford, Weymouth, Cheltenham, London) but there was no way they could all have been covered an it would have diluted the readability of the leaflet.

* The "all day, every day" message - including evening trains - is a good one and well received.  Concerns expressed are reliability (strikes especially causing concern) and ticket price - in some cases perceived, and in other cases actual. Getting the right ticket is also a concern; at Melksham we don't have station staff nor was there anyone who established themselves as an informed travel help point at the cafe or other local business there.  Some people don't know where the station is, whether they can park there, and thinks it's way out of town.

* Leafletting has always been a wasteful process, but I came away with the feeling that a proportion of what we were distributing will be kept, attached with a magnet to the fridge, put in the pocket.  Statements of intent, some of which will be carried out, to that effect. 

* "Cold Calling" equivalents - walking up to those passing by and offering them leaflets - was very effective. With train timetables and Assembly Hall programs we very much had a positive re-direction of many people onto our agenda, with then carrying on better informed than they were as they walked along between stalls and funfair.  I was joined by good friend Mike on the booth - who did a fantastic job; he has previous exhibition booth experience in a more commercial environment and was very much surprised at the positive reactions we were getting once we declared what we were promoting.  We very much have the local groundswell of support.

I'm quite happy using the various travel planning and online ticketing apps when I'm travelling by train, but I realise that as a regular rail user I have a fairly good idea of how trains work.

Recently the shoe has been very much on the other foot, though...

We needed to spend a few days in Birmingham last week, and decided to go by coach. It was something like a third of the price of rail travel, even though with three of us travelling we could get a Groupsave fare. We saved something like £60. I got a bit over-excited about the savings on offer, and started looking at other opportunities for coach travel, but soon came to the conclusion that the only way to find out what goes where and when is to keep asking the website: Can I get here? Or here? Which is very time consuming.

Of course some Coach Stations have ticket offices, where you could ask an expert what was available...

(Overall, incidentally, we felt we got what we paid for - the bus up to Birmingham smelt of wee, and on the return leg the driver seemed to be close to road rage at times. Next time we'll pay the extra.)

But there's more: I now have my WECA Birthday Bus Pass, so I am intent on exploring the area by bus. This is something I used to do in the 70's, spending hours poring over maps and timetables and finding interesting connections. But how can you do this now? Yesterday I spent nearly 5 hours on buses (Bristol - X4 - Portishead - X5 - Weston-super-Mare - X1 - Bristol), but I was very much playing it by ear... a map would be really useful, and the ability to browse timetables gives you an instant take on whether your chosen route is every 20 mins (like the X4) or once a day (e.g. 918).

A second - wonderful - day of community engagement talking with people who aren't in the rail business and listening to how they see it

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Only road rage though. Apparently one of my son's friends went by coach to Coventry recently and on the return journey, the driver got into an argument with two passengers, or would-be passengers, which developed into a physical fight. Police arrived and arrested the driver. The coach was somewhat delayed...

Well you certainly had better weather than 2017.  If we weren’t trying to stop the gazebo blowing away we were attempting to stop the leaflets turning into papier-mâché!

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As for paper timetables it’s been noticeable since the demise of the GWR printed offerings the demand for the ones produced by TransWilts has increased.

Group save is not valid on Cross Country, so that woud have entailed travelling via Worcester. Split tickets?

Hmm, well Trainline claims it's giving Groupsave discount on a Cross Country train - perhaps it's splitting at Cheltenham? It is a bit odd though, as it suggests that Groupsave is cheaper than 3 adults with 2 railcards, but it's actually four quid more. Maybe I should ask at the ticket office?

Ah yes, I remember it well!

At the ultra-short notice for this weekend, we knew what the weather forecast was and did without a gazebo.  Could have done with one because of the hot sun. As usual, even the slight breeze was lifting leaflets off the stand.


Indeed.   We HAVE seen a change in uptake with a significant proportion of people saying they use the App or book online.  HOWEVER a huge keenness to take paper timetables too, and for newcomers a feeling of relief that it was a simple table.

Significantly, the paper timetables allowed us to chat with people and highlight news that was important to them - I characterise that as pushing new information to (receptive) potential customers rather than having people pulling new information just when they happen upon it.    For example, when people want to come home late of an evening, if they are familiar with trains as they were six moths ago they probably wouldn't have looked on the App / online.  With a paper timetable, we had the opportunity to tell them - and for them to go away with a sheet of paper that tells them.  Of course, them may after all book online, but the paper stimulated the conversation and they may well (or may not) look back at it.