Moderator: Moderators
If you work for a railway company its easier on themAlistairW wrote: I'd love to see a railway when booking in advance was in the past and you could easily catch a train to any major destination and pay a fair price, not to mention get a seat and have it run to time, even if this is boring.
enotayokel wrote:Oh you may be interested to know - there are no more Valentas on FGW - the last 2 are at Brush now
They were also in service for a few days after that as well. Shortage of units or hst sets.XPTE wrote:I thought the Valenta's had long gone now anyway. Untill I read that there was a farewell working of them on Saturday December 1st. On that day 43002 and 43003 worked:
0640 Exeter St David's - London Paddington
1005 London Paddington - Exeter St David's
1352 Exeter St David's - London Paddington
1700 London Paddington - Bristol Temple Meads
1930 Bristol Temple Meads - London Paddington
Hardly surprising really. I had a meeting to attend in London last Friday so made sure I left the house in good time, with the intention of catching the 06.44 FGW service from my local station just outside Bristol to Paddington. At precisely 06.44, the platform monitor screen changed to show my train was 10 minutes late. At 06.55, all details of my intended train disappeared from the monitor, and two minutes later, the train sped through the station without stopping. The next London service should have been 25 minutes later but this was late, so I missed the start of my meeting. When I asked the train manager in charge of that service what had happened to the 06.44, he openly admitted that it is FGW policy these days, when a train is late, for operational managers to make the decision that it will run non-stop, missing out stations in an attempt to make up the lost time. The interests of those passengers who are left stranded on stations, as I was, appear to be unimportant to FGW.6rdfar90 wrote:Today FGW have been annouced to be bottom of the Customer Satisfaction Tables for the UK Railway. Ouch
That is just silly!! GW at one point were quite a good company, but i think the mistake came when it was made FGW. All you hear about is their late running and cancelled trains, a few years ago you rarely heard of this happening.ashgray wrote:Hardly surprising really. I had a meeting to attend in London last Friday so made sure I left the house in good time, with the intention of catching the 06.44 FGW service from my local station just outside Bristol to Paddington. At precisely 06.44, the platform monitor screen changed to show my train was 10 minutes late. At 06.55, al details of my intended train disappeeared from the monitor, and two minutes later, the train sped through the station without stopping. The next London services should have been 25 minutes later but this was late, so I missed the start of my meeting. When I asked the train manager in charge of that service what had happened to the 06.44, he openly admitted that it is FGW policy these days, when a train is late, for operational managers to make the decision that it will run non-stop, missing out stations in an attempyt to make up the lost time. The interests of those passengers who are left starnded on stations, as I was, appear to be unimprtant to FGW.6rdfar90 wrote:Today FGW have been annouced to be bottom of the Customer Satisfaction Tables for the UK Railway. Ouch
Outrageous? You bet it is. I think they've forgotten who pays their wages and why they run a railway in the first instance.
Ashley
But getting back to what to what we were talking about earlier, unless the service was amended before leaving Bristol, it might have had passengers for your station on aswell. Otherwise, they couldn't be bothered amending the displays to show it as cancelled either.ashgray wrote:When I asked the train manager in charge of that service what had happened to the 06.44, he openly admitted that it is FGW policy these days, when a train is late, for operational managers to make the decision that it will run non-stop, missing out stations in an attempt to make up the lost time. The interests of those passengers who are left stranded on stations, as I was, appear to be unimportant to FGW.
