First Great Western comedy trains on the Bristol to Weymouth route

[Bahnhof Strasse]

FGW are generally crap, but this line is always in the news for being very crap. The rail regulator keeps making mewing noises, but does nothing.

SWT are generally very good, nice new trains with carpet and air conditioning and, as someone who uses them twice a day, mostly on time. Expensive though.

 

[Paul Russell]

The lines goes a long way for sure and is important to many communities in Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire. But, it doesn't have inter city services, doesn't have a lot of influential commuters and it doesn't go to London.

That's why FGW don't really care that much and why it is hard to get media interest.

I take your point. It does seem to be a case of not many people have to use this route (i.e. commuters), and the ones who would use it if it was a nice service are being put off by the unreliability and general shoddiness.

I have used train services all around the country for many years from Intercities and sprinters all over the Midlands to those slamdoor trains around Brighton that looked liked the seats hadn't been cleaned in 20 years, but this is the first time a service has been so bad that I've stopped using it.

All those posh ladies who got on a FGW train to go to Bath Christmas market and had to stand all the way (if they got on), will just go by car next time.

 

[Paul Russell]

Despite what Isambard said, I would send a copy of your complaint to FGW to the local MP for Weymouth too - he/she must get a sackload of complaints about it, and MPs like mouthing off about bad train services as it shows their constituents what 'good' local MPs they are.

Can't hurt.

Yes, the MP for Weymouth is Jim Knight. He used to be mayor of Yeovil, which is on the Weymouth to Bristol FGW route. I wonder if he has ever used the service! I see him on the nice modern Southwest trains from Weymouth to London quite a bit.

I wonder how many people are planning to visit Weymouth and Portland for the 2012 Olympics. You know, they get a plane to Bristol, then get the coach to Bristol Temple Meads to be confronted by a comedy train with two carriages and no lights. Even a couple of dozen people would overwhelm the service.

 

[ovaltina]

Yes, the MP for Weymouth is Jim Knight. He used to be mayor of Yeovil, which is on the Weymouth to Bristol FGW route. I wonder if he has ever used the service! I see him on the nice modern Southwest trains from Weymouth to London quite a bit.

I was on a badly delayed North London Line Silverlink once, squashed between somebody's armpit and a jabby elbow, when suddenly a bloke with a plummy accent piped up: "Hello! Everybody! Just to let you know I'm the MP for somewhere or other and I shall be acting on this! It's a disgrace!"

He got about halfway through this before the squashed, angry mob started groaning and heckling.

 

[teuchter]

Apart from opposing privatisation anyway, I think the new combined FGW franchise has been a disaster and should be broken up.

Interesting to see someone suggesting that things should be more fragmented than they already are! Or have I misunderstood your point?

 

[Isambard]

To a certain extent if those posh ladies don't ge the train next time, they just don't care. Indeed one of the issues facing rail transport in Britain is that the demand is "too high". I SUSPECT that to increase capacity on the Heart of Wessex line there would need to be significant investment in rolling stock and infrastructure and staffing levels.

I agree with Hackney, it is worth writing a mail or letter.
FGW don't deserve the franchise and I don't think it should exist as it does now. The proponents of rail privatisation used the historical myth of the GWR to create this expensive, unreliable, unaaceptable standards public transport monopolist.

It needs to be condemed and broken up like those clapped put trains.

Edit: In favour of integrated transport but not massive private monpolirs like First has in the West of England. Break it up!

 

[berniedicters]

Interesting to see someone suggesting that things should be more fragmented than they already are! Or have I misunderstood your point?

I think the point is that the great experiment of putting operation of the railway system into the private sector has clearly failed, and that letting one of the worst failures, FGW, effectively consolidate quite a large regional monopoly is only exacerbating the failure...or at least rewarding it.

I think that if we were going to privatise the thing at all, a way to do it should have been found which didn't leave operators in effective monopoly positions, especially on rural and less-used lines. It is inevitable in a market-driven situation that a line where little competition exists, either by other rail routes or forms of transport, is going to take second place in the operator's priorities to a line where they have to fight to keep their business...

 

[purplex]

I think the point is that the great experiment of putting operation of the railway system into the private sector has clearly failed, and that letting one of the worst failures, FGW, effectively consolidate quite a large regional monopoly is only exacerbating the failure...or at least rewarding it.

I think that if we were going to privatise the thing at all, a way to do it should have been found which didn't leave operators in effective monopoly positions, especially on rural and less-used lines. It is inevitable in a market-driven situation that a line where little competition exists, either by other rail routes or forms of transport, is going to take second place in the operator's priorities to a line where they have to fight to keep their business...

The thing is FGW are simply not accountable to their customers, complaints simply represent another statistic they have to report on. They simply dont care what they put their customers through, customers dont matter, profits do.

 

[berniedicters]

The thing is FGW are simply not accountable to their customers, complaints simply represent another statistic they have to report on. They simply dont care what they put their customers through, customers dont matter, profits do.

That's my point. The whole premise of a free market is that customers get to choose whose products or services they use: thus, competing suppliers hold each other to account by competing for business. In the UK rail market, the vast majority of customers get no such choice - there's only one provider on most routes, so there's no competition and no reason for any given company to do any more than provide the minimum level (and quality) of service that they can get away with.

 

[Isambard]

Rail passengers along this line and in the West of England generally who are sick of First GWs rail services might like to consider to the bus services that are operated in the area by a monpoly company that never ever ever gets roundly slagged off in the B&SW Forum, called.....

 

[mauvais]

And all done more than 2million miles - quite remarkable in some respects.

Ours are actually the 142, like this:

Apparently we'll be rid of em by 2011! And then get Sprinters.

 

[Zachor]

I was on a badly delayed North London Line Silverlink once, squashed between somebody's armpit and a jabby elbow, when suddenly a bloke with a plummy accent piped up: "Hello! Everybody! Just to let you know I'm the MP for somewhere or other and I shall be acting on this! It's a disgrace!"

He got about halfway through this before the squashed, angry mob started groaning and heckling.

Reminds me of another NLL passenger comment. I got on the NLL at Stratford one evening with a Jewish friend who has a bad taste in comedy the train was packed and he said in a loud voice to the carriage. 'Fuck me the last time people like me travelled on a train this bad we were all wearing yellow stars'

Cue me trying to find a convenient corner to hide so that other passengers didn't think I was with him.

 

[pogofish]

PS - those trains were called 'sprinters', weren't they? Oh, the irony. They used to serve my local line in Yorkshire - like a bus on rails, literally - until after privatisation they were got shot of, and we had some reconditioned slam-door stuff from Network South East.

No, this type (class 143/144 ? ) was used here as a stopgap between the end of the old BR rolling stock & Scotrail introducing Sprinters. They were very, very unpopular/unsuitable & Scotrail were villified for using them. By comparison, the Sprinters have actually proved quite popular & reasonably well suited to the lines.

When I first saw them, they were still in BR operation.

 

[Isambard]

Acually true Sprinters aren't "that" bad, we get a few locally operating the *cough* premium services Plymouth or Penzance to Gloucester or Cardiff.

 

[Bakunin]

Acually true Sprinters aren't "that" bad, we get a few locally operating the *cough* premium services Plymouth or Penzance to Gloucester or Cardiff.

Premium service?

From FGW?

BWAHAHAHAHA!

The only thing that's premium about FGW is how much they charge.

 

[Isambard]

I was being ironic, hence the cough.

The rolling stock is a little better on those longer routes than the ones we have that only blaze a trail literally from Bristol to Taunton.