I make that about 2000 pounds per Londoner.    But of course it will benefit far more that Londoners - it will benefit business and tourists too.

For 3 pounds per resident of Swindon / Salisbury / Chippenham / Trowbridge / Melksham, an appropriate TransWilts train service could be run across the county for the rest of the FGW^▸ (First Great Western) franchise. But of course it would benefit far more than Wiltshire residents - it would benefit businesses and tourists and long distance passengers on their way through too.

Hmmm ... provocative video.   But then the use of the word "hate" has always worried me as being provocative too, and to some extent the people in the group must expect to get as they give.

Yes, they are.   But so are the staff at FGW who have to take the reports of train cancellations (certains, probables, posssibles) and decide when publich what news.  Imagine some repairman at Old Oak Common saying "I'm working on it but I don't knwo if it will be fixed in time" - what do the customer facing staff say?  Or imagine that a staff member is late for work - he could just be stuck in traffic or doing a "no show" and again a decision has to be made.

Personally, I suspect that the bulletins are about right (and I prefer them to be issued as soon as things become clear rather than weight a while for spell and grammar checking). But what is really needed is a dramatic improvement of teh circumstances that lead to the need for these announcements - more robust train ability, and more crew availability at the right place / right time.

At the other end of the meeting, the last train to Weymouth leaves at 21:38 and the last train to Exeter at 21:57.  Whilst this is the "West Wilts" group, I suspect we will have at least one person there who wants to get back to Somerset, Dorset or Devon.

Quoting from that report:


The refurbishment was scheduled for completion by the new timetable in December, and said to be necessary to allow 125s to stop at shorter platforms (selective door opening element).  Might this cause a problem with certain extra stops? 

Welcome to the board, Jo ... please do post up about your Thames Valley experiences, as we're a bit light on people from the east of FGW^▸ (First Great Western) territory here.  And you'll find that some of our experts are very good right across the West.

-- Graham

P.S.  Please tell your friends, local paper and travel companions about us 

Bradford-on-Avon, yes, good news.It's a town that's just half the size of Melksham and now has two services each way per hour (as opposed to two each way per DAY) .... talk of unbalanced treatment.  And, yes, Melksham and the TransWilts do need services.

You ask "Why Not?".   I'm not 100% certain - FOI^▸ (Freedom of Information) has shown us all the plans but I'm not clear as to why they were dropped.  If I had cynicalitis this morning, I might take Andrew Seedhouse from GOSW^» (Government Offices South West - about) words and describe the situation as the powers that be "managing expectitions" by waving a carrot at us and only pulling it away when it's too late for us to call "foul".   Persoanlly, I think the jury's out on that - I simply don't know.    But there is a pattern forming.   Great hopes came to nowt before the frachise was let in 2005.   Hopes that FGW^▸ (First Great Western) would do something as a result of the consultation inputs in 2006 resulted in the draft timetables being changed for the worse, and now this debacle in 2007.  "Be patient - we'll do something for December 2008" is now the story - "these things take time and you can't expect it overnight".

Mottisfornt and Dean are now servered by a (near) hourly SWT^▸ (South West Trains) service, and the draft timetables are purely for FGW.  So Salisbury - Southampton looks thin when, in fact, there's a lot more services there.  In particular, the FGW trains that terminate at Southampton are running shortly before / after SWT trains that call at Mottisfont and Dean in each case.

The drafts are Monday to Friday only, so unless there was an improvement at Pilning I would not expect to see any services shown.  IMHO^▸ ('in my humble opinion') it's a shame they don't publish / consult on weekend and Sunday services, especially as Sunday evening is the busiest time of the week for long distance travel.

Comments submitted in response tothe press article

After the drastic cuts last year, I am delighted to see any improvement back towards an appropriate service - however, I really think that we should be giving First once cheer rather that three over these changes.  Yes, there is some sensible retiming, but there are glaring omissions where major improvements had been promised.

On the Severn Beach line ... the service is already hourly. That's a non-announcement; the service has indeed risen from 15 trains a day to 18, with two of the three extra trains provided by starting some trains earlier in the day - two of the trains are accounted for by new departures from Temple Meads at 06:09 and 07:37.

Across in Wiltshire, at the edge of the Bristol Commuter Area, First have failed to deliver improvements on their services via Melksham. A huge amount of work was done on timetables, on sourcing rolling stock, and on  putting everything else into place - but the 3 extra services that Andrew Griffiths talked about to a public meeting in the Spring have disappeared into thing air, leaving just two trains a day (at 06:19 and 18:42) from Swindon.  To say that we are "disappointed" would be an understatement!

And to add

As far as I'm aware, the improvements at Bath in the morning and evening peak are effected by re-routing the 07:10 Bristol to London via Parkway through Bath and Chippenham instead - one extra train. 

Added later I don't think the newspaper likes my comments - they've not been approved onto the article.   Does the First group own any newspapers??

Getting to this meeting from Melksham:

Bus service 234 at 18:01 from the Market place to Trowbridge Town Hall, arrive 18:23.   Walk to railway Station, train to Westbury arrive 18:50. Journey time 49 minutes

Return - 21:12 train to Trowbridge, arrive 21:18. Run to Town Hall for the 21:25 bus, 21:43 in to Melksham. Journey time 31 minutes.  If the train is late or if you can't run fast enough, the next bus gets you in to Melksham at 23:29. Journey time 137 minutes.

Train from Melksham to Westbury by train - when available - 15 minutes

Hope it goes your way .... I know that the Bristol folks are disappointed that the 40 minute service which was to be provided from December on the Severn Beach line has evaporated. We're disappointed on the TransWilts line that in spite of all the hard work and draft timetables showing 3 extra trains each way daily, they won't be provided after all according to the latest information I have at the moment.

"Fingers crossed" for you on the Tarka^▸ (Branch line from Barnstaple to Exeter) line.  "Third line lucky"?

That's been thought about from Melksham, where we would be late if we came on the only available train, even if was running and on time.   However, that would trivialise it and just make a publicity point. I would much rather be there for the whole meeting, listen carefully to Andrew, and ask him some very strong  questions indeed from a position of as much current knowledge as possible

And it deserves a serious answer.  "The Old Wessex Timetable did not meet the Government's specification for the new services which is part of First's Contract". Of course, First chose to sign up to that contract and were in a very strong position at the time to say "we don't believe that x change will work, so we won't do it".

But there's always a need to move on, and a pattern which was right for the 1990s wouldn't be right for the 2000s and the 2010s.  However, it's my opinion that too much was changed too soon; the new broom was so busy sweeping in so many places that a job that wasn't very good was done all over the place.

The non-stop train makes a connection at Liskeard before it heads down to Looe with a westbound mainline train.  It has 1 minute to turn around at Looe, and I suspect it connects with an Arriva Cross Country train eastbound when it gets back to Liskeard.  Allowing stops at the halts could jeapordise such a connection.

Internal ("working") timetables that I've seen include allowances called "recovery time" within their journeys, which is not necessarily evenly spread but rather is allocated to a part of the journey where a train can be held back for a few minutes to wait for the timetable if it was alraedy running to time.  We don't see the recovery allowances in the Looe service, but if we did they would probably make things a lot clearer.

Final note on recovery allowances - is it my imagination, or do such allowances tend to congregate between the last intermediate stop of a train and its final terminus?  And if they do, would that be for operational reasons, or to help more trains show up as "arrived on time" in the statistics.  One comes to realise just how much slack/recovery is in some schedules when you see a train that started a 2 hour journey 16 minutes late but arrived at the end on time - as I saw on a Westbury to Cheltenham via Swindon the other day.

It's supposed to be a one year program, ending in September 2008.  The 142 units are here (as a matter of certainty) only until the end of that program - I may be a little out of date now, but I heard it was an open question as to what happens to them then.

And to answer "Why, o Why?!", I'll offer multiple choice

1. Because there are very few government MPS who will loose their seats if we have old trains in these parts

2. Because they're cheaper for the TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company) to hire

3. Because we're a quiet bunch here out West how will put up with anything

4. Because if they're down here they won't be on the services that the Civil Servants who make teh decision use.

5. None of the above - they're the best trains for the lines concerned.

7 p.m., Railway Inn, Westbury, on 9th October. Andrew Griffiths talks on "First Great Western, Progress and the future"

I'm posting this in several relevant board - full details and follow ups at:

http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=714

(Andrew Griffiths is responsible for serviesd from Westbury towards Weymouth, Swindon, Bristol and Southampton rather that London and West Country services. However, I have put this notice here as it's on the line and London commuters may like to pop in if they're back in time!)