Yet another very petty complaint about First Great Western

[JamieLei]

I can only imagine that the franchise arrangements are somehow to blame because First's management on Transpennine and Scotrail appears to be good (in my expirience; cue billions of horror stories no doubt).

In fact, First ScotRail is seen as such a shining example of the privatisation process that the Scottish Parliament went to ensure that the franchise got extended by 2 more years, not written into the contract. The other shining example is obviously Chiltern, and they're currently under a 20 year franchise contract, the longest on the network.

To some extent, many problems are outside of First's fault. But there are many problems that are definitely First's fault. A shortage of staff for instance (all trains are mandated to have a guard and driver, else they can't run) can be rectified by a recruitment programme: admittedly, First did take on a huge number of drivers from outside the industry a while ago but it doesn't seem to have been enough: frequencies have also increased, demanding more staff.

Staff morale at FGW is also reportedly the lowest on the entire network. I'm sure if staff were more motivated to run trains on time, it would have a big effect.

[Parkey]

A lot of it is a sort of cultural thing amongst staff and how they seem to feel things are done.

Midland Mainline were, in my experience, the very best for having the train pulling off from the station within seconds of the station clock showing their departure time, and a lot of other operators are also quite good at this.

What I often see with FGW is a train that's ready to leave, with a green signal, and yet it won't actually end up departing for another few minutes. So I think a lot of it is down to, I wouldn't say staff attitude, but more the staff culture. If the general expectation is that a train will hopefully be dispatched within a few minutes of its scheduled time then that's inevitably what will happen.

A few minutes may not be much, but on a busy line it can make quite a difference. For example, I find that if a HST leaves Reading for London a few minutes late it means that the Heathrow Express, which as far as I can tell is scheduled to follow it into Paddington, does depart Heathrow Central on time and arrives at Airport Junction first, meaning the HST has to put the brakes on and fall in behind at a slower speed.

[Ameecher]

Well National Express East Anglia did a good job today with the Lowestoft air show. An estimated 300,000 people turned up for the event and NatEx ran a number of extra trains including substituting a mainline mark3 service with a pair of 321s in order to run a nine coach special to lowestoft which was hauled by top and tailed 47s. They did suffer from unit shortages with many services being formed of 2 units but they still had to resort to buses to transport the excess. However, they did a good job at making sure everyone was informed as to what was going on and stuff actually happened. A couple of extra services magically appeared from the depot when they realised quite how popular the event would be. That's how you run a service.

[Kevo00]

Wow! A present day train company actually doing something entrepreneurial and taking account of a special event that people might want to travel to! Well done to them.

[Ameecher]

It was pretty damn busy too: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ameecher/2699793792/ (click "all sizes" for a larger image)

[Parkey]

Certainly impressive.

If only Southern had bothered to do the same for the London to Brighton bike ride, with some GUVs for the bikes of course.

[Dave]

I'd like to think that it's not just FGW but also the GWML - there are a lot of issues wrong with it. That said, certain arms of an overhea company can behave differently.

[Parkey]

I'd like to think that it's not just FGW but also the GWML - there are a lot of issues wrong with it. That said, certain arms of an overhea company can behave differently.

The main line bottleneck at Reading certainly is a problem, but most of the delayed FGW trains I've caught, certainly towards London, are running late before they even get there.

Crossrail, the remodelling of Reading station, possibly electrification from Reading to Bristol and four-tracking from Didcot to Swindon all have the potential to improve things.