I have been careful - very careful - to ask people about their sources on posts such as these, and you'll  find further detail earlier in this thread.  I would agree that if the only information source mentioned was a three-way step via another company, it would not be viable evidence.

Welcome to the forum, "Second Home". I understand that the draft timetables were prepared, but had a number of errors in the printing - to the extent that it would have "created more problems than it would have solved to circulate them". 

There have been a number of shifts in the last couple of years .... and one of those shifts is that customers are now far more vociferous in making comments to the Train Operating Company and others involved in the operations.   

Take the "TransWilts" service that runs from Swindon through to Trowbridge - the county town of Wiltshire - and beyond. In the spring on 2005, there were just 8 responses to  a consultation arranged by the Strategic Rail Authority concerning the proposed removal of all Southampton <-> Swindon trains.  When the services were all consulted over in Spring and summer of 2005, an order of magnitude more people responded to FGW's request for inputs with comments about that service.  And in the Spring of 2007, my petition on the p.m.'s web site caused over 1700 voices to be raised.

With this increased customer awareness, a draft timetable that was missing a key service (for purely printing reasons) would generate a great deal of negative comment and a lot of input when ... all along ... the service wasn't going to be cut.

Not quite in that way, but there are targets to be met which distort customer service. It's more financially advantageous in the short term to leave out a few stops and arrive at destination on time than to stop at all places scheduled.  So witness things like the odd none-stop Paddington to Bristol service.  In the medium term, of course, this puts the passengers inconvenienced off using the train next time, but I do recall listening to FGW^▸ (First Great Western)'s Managing Director talking in person at about the time they had just won the franchise, where she was telling us that there are plenty more fish in the sea.   

Big subject is customer loss / gain based on experiences ... I know there's a technical term for it but I've forgotten it!

I'm not in the picture on 125s, but I do know that FGW found they have far more maintaiance issues with the 15x units and 14x units than they had anticipated at bid time. And that the are looking to deal with them in the current refurb program.  A lot of the issues / delays can be traced back to this, a lot to crewing issues, and a lot to external issues too.


As someone who regularly meet customers off the 19:08 arrival (the ONLY train on Mondays to Fridays with a connection from London), I now always have a mobile phone with me and ensure the customers have the number. It's proven oh-so-useful on too many occasions.    By the way - the theory goes that the 18:42 off Swindon should be HELD awaiting the London train that it's supposed to connect with, as it's the last train of the day ... the issue is more of a problem when
a) The 18:42 is cancelled
b) The connecting train is cancelled
c) The customer misses the train (due to tube problems)
d) The customer falls asleep and ends up headed for Parkway

(a), (b) and (c) - and the London connection being delayed - would be nothing like as serious were there additional trains off Swindon to Westbury.  And in the case of (d) Parkway to Melksham is - well - and interesting journey that offers lots more opportunities for the customer to fall asleep and overshoot; "Stay there and we'll come and get you!" ...

It's not my area of knowledge either, but I understand that there is a bottleneck and delay caused by too much design work for upgrades and modifications at times.   That comment came to me w.r.t. the "West" fleet (14x, 15x) upgrades rather than the HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train (Inter City class 43 125 units)), but is indicative I suspect.

Hi, John, and welcome to the forum.   You have an excellent point here and I have been concerned at times with delay / cancellation postings ... and as a moderator I do have the ability to say "enough" if I so choose.  However, they form something of a pattern; one swallow doesn't make a summer, nor one cancellation an unreliable service. But put together they do, and you can't go back to other sites (such as FGW) and put them together to my knowledge.   


I don't personally think that correct grammar and English is going to make a huge difference.  But confusing stories (and I'm confused as to exactly what is being said about Cardiff and Parkway) can confuse the passenger. 

There is a certainly a valuable discussion to be had as to what depth passenger information should be provided. The weather forecasters aren't certain whether it will be wet or dry - they get a percentage change out of their forecasts but rarely start quoting those statistics.  And in the same vein I have yet to see "We are having trouble with one of the 125s in Bristol and there's only a 45% chance that the 07:10 will run" appear in the daily email.


I'm almost agreeing with you ... but it's the day to day blips that make a pattern, and from some of the day to day blips new trends and phemomena can first be spotted.   You'll notice, John, that I largely try and post on more substantive stuff ... you can help make a difference by doing the same.  I suspect we are indeed read in some quite important places - or at least summarised to them.  Call that a guess made with a little evidence 
 

It's my pleasure, Timmer. We're really starting to provide the sort of informed discussion that I had hoped for ... and there's plenty more room on the server / forum for others.   I see references to activities on this server crop up in various unexpected places too - so I suspect that constructive suggestions and thoughts are picked up much more widely than just our postership (is that the right word for a forum's contributors?)

I undertand that the second half of Sunday isn't now "just like" but it has actually become the busiest half day of the week for long distance travel - 15% of journeys, whereas the average half day by definition would have about 7.142% of journeys.   

On their own, they're not a solution.   But then, like most passengers, I tend to be on the trains and around stations at the same time as everyone else (i.e. when they're busy) so I see the problems of actually getting a ticket in a far higher proportion of cases that you would as a member of the operations team, who sees it at all times.  An understanddable system, an easy way for even the thickest of us to buy the tickets that we need when we need them (and in a form that work the barriers) and then, yes, they're an answer to unticketed travel.

Thanks, Gents ... I hadn't realised it was special rate tickets only ... and I was wondering why I wasn't hearing of "Commuter Clubs" using the tickets to reduce their daily costs by travelling together.

Yes and no .  I am talking of a differerent measurement which is an "intent to abuse the system by someone who should reasonably know better".   The problem is that I don't know how to make that measurement.


No, people don't walk out without paying. But people do just abandon their shopping carts in some supermarkets without paying (or taking the goods) at time - I know; I have spoken with a lot of people who work in shops.

What I have seen done, often, in supermarkets is for the folks runniing the tobacco kiosk to call people over to pay there, stepping past the normal queue. I guess in train terms that's the equivalent of putting your head into the booking hall, seeing a queue and announcing that folks can jump on the train and you'll sell them the cheap tickets rather than penalise them.  Is it something you do? Its not something I've seen done often ...

People are going to get more fraught with a train ticket queue.  A ten minute unexpected delay in a Tesco queue costs 10 minutes. A ten minute unexpected delay at 18:35 at Swindon travelling to the county town of Trowbridge will delay your arrival there by eighty six minutes - remember that it's a 35 minute journey on the 18:42 direct train (19:17 arrival) , but the next train with a connection is at 19:30, with 21 minutes more to wait in Bath for the train that arrives at 20:43 in Trowbridge.  Bit late for a 19:30 meeting at Bridge House.


And to penalise someone who arrives in good time not only seems unfair, but IS unfair.  The problem is that there's no easy way to tell them apart, and there is (demonstrably at times) an assumption that the passenger was late;  if it's the same people every day, then would you give the benefit of the doubt to someone who was new to you, but not to the regulars?


Easement requests for Melksham have been refused  within the last year on the basis that "others will take advantage".  When the popular 09:12 was killed last December, the return buy-at-time-of-travel ticket for a day trip to London if you didn't need to get to town too early rose overnight from under fifty pounds to double that, and it went up again in January to 105 pounds, or 126 including a London travelcard.   That has certainly  priced me off the train for direct travel, ... but that's yet another story.

The issue with the Saver was that Trainline sold it (and I checked, and it would have sold me that ticket FOR THAT TRAIN).  The departure boards at Paddington said NO SAVERs, so my customer asked a member of staff who told him it was not valid.  My customer queued up for (long time) at the ticket office to be told that his ticket WAS valid .... and a follow up to Customer Enquiries, as there were two "votes" each way, asked for full details of the journey which were already included in the follow up.  I sent the details again and asked if anything else was needed, but have not received a reply.

Really - I don't necessarily mind which was the answer goes now- I would just prefer a system where (at least) the staff, web sites, notice boards etc all understand the rules and can uniformly advise people. Which I guess brings us back to where we started!

I'm expressing a view on the whole subject .. not just this one paragraph.

I am all in favour of a system which places a degree of penalty on someone who intentionally and avoidably flouts the system, certainly if it's as an attempt to reduce (perhaps to nill) what they pay. Whatever it may be called technically, the issuing of a full price single where a cheap single is available for the same journey on the same train is a penalty.

However ... the system is highly complex and has holes in it, and it seems all too easy for it to catch people who are unintentionally on its wrong side - those who don't understand the system who make a mistake, or who fall through some sort of gap.   I'm sure that, as a conductor, you've "seen it all before"  ; you are telling us (as I read it) that you believe that the majority of people who buy tickets on the train are trying to cheat, quoting the way that on-train sales drop when the "full fare only" rule is knowingly enforced as evidence - well I won't disagree, but how can you be sure that the person in front of you really was trying to cheat the system - that their reason that "only one ticket desk open - I got there 15 minutes ahead but was still in the queue as the train puled in" isn't correct this time? You can so easily penalise the innocent, and an innocent person wrongly penalised is a very bad long term ambassador indeed.

I wish I had a solution.  An easy system that we could all understand that wasn't so complex that even the more knowledgable ones amongst the travelling public simply don't knwo what to do in certain circumstances.   A system that sells (online) a ticket for a specific train / date and then (3 times) at Paddington he's told he CANNOT use it ... and (3 times) that he CAN ... well - I was lost for words!  Would it have been / was it fair to then penalise the traveller, if he still dared to board, by requiring him to buy a full fare single if you (as the conductor) were sure that he should not travel on that ticket? The case in point is a Peterborough to Melksham Saver return, and the question is whether or not it was valid on the 17:30 from Paddington which is the only train of the day, Monday to Firday, with a connection to Melksham.

Another thread triggered me to start a separate thread on the subject of Group Save tickets, as they might not be something everyone knows about.


With Group Save, you basically have a "buy 2, get 2 free" deal.  So in other words, four adults can travel for the price of two.   I'm not terribly sure which tickets it applies to (but I'm sure someone will answer that for me!) and I think there's also a "one pound per child" add on deal.

Basically - a very good deal if you happen to be travelling in a group .....

Jim, you should see it as an honour.   You're clearly behaving very responsibly - mature beyond your years 

They do, but I suspect "best current and future information to hand" is the case most of the time.   There are odd times I have suspected that certain cancellations/changes have been known/expected but not admitted, but they're the exception.

Oh - I note this morning No reported problems which I prefer to  First Great Western expect to operate the full advertised service on all routes this morning.  Call me pedantic if you like but, let's face it, with such a large area and as many trains as they have - some of which are unreliable and awaiting refurb -  it's reasonable to expect one or two incidents each morning and a bit head-in-the-sand to ever expect the full advertised service.   Just needs a Pacer door to jam ... again ...