Week in week out programme - Tonight

[whole diary]

[r james]

Anyone going to watch the programme on BBC1 at 22:35 about Rail Travel from London to Wales??  Should be interesting! 

[Lee]

See also link below.
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=2539.msg19073#msg19073

[swlines]

Broadcast information available here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00c1djs

[tom-langley]

Unfortunatly not in the wales area, anyone know if its available on i player?

[swlines]

Will be on the iPlayer about an hour after it finishes, use the Programmes link and it'll come up when it's on there.

[tom-langley]

A good program.

I have one question though, why are the railways no longer self sustaining? Does it cost that much more to run a train service 50 years on?

[swlines]

I'd say they are self sustaining, the government and big giants (First, etc) are just gobbling all the profits.

I note that Wolmar didn't comment on the fact that a London Terminals - Cardiff Central, some of the money is thrown off to South West Trains...

[woody]

Excellent programme,says it all really.Reading between the lines its quite clear to me that the real reason for rail privatisation was purely political.As Christian Wolmar states in the programme regards FGW^▸ (First Great Western) has had to take all the flack while the real cause of its long standing problems is lack of government investment in FGW.
  Personally I still belief that had the railways not been so fragmented at privatisation FGW would have recieved a fairer share of the cake.The challenge now is to make a not ideal system perform cost effectively both for the passenger and the wider taxpayer.

[Ollie]

Well he had to buy a SOR so he could break his journey at Reading and Swindon

But then why did he sit in First Class after Reading

Overall fairly good, wasn't do badly blaming FGW^▸ (First Great Western) for everything, which is what I originally thought it would be.

[swlines]

Well he had to buy a SOR so he could break his journey at Reading and Swindon

But then why did he sit in First Class after Reading

I'm fairly certain I saw a W after that money on his ticket (albeit the brief look we got). Probably XS'd his ticket up on the train after enduring standard.