Standing

£73 is what a peak ticket from Chippenham to London costs these days. That's roughly
£60 per hour. It's not even really peak - unless you work in Paddington station this one is going to get you to your desk not much before 10am.

So is it really too much to ask that included in one's £73 fare is a seat?

In other news, Digital Doris, the nice lady who tells you how late your train is going to be, has been replaced by High-Def Harriet who has a better bing bong but whose alliteration leaves much to be desired.

Note to self: arrange meetings further in advance to take advantage of cheap first class tickets.

Drizzle

Two things to celebrate today. First, a very temporary return to the Chippenham to Bristol service. And secondly, I appear to have a follower / stalker commenting on a lot of my blog posts but seemingly ignoring the ironic / sarcastic tone and taking it rather too seriously.

I do, of course, recognise that many commuters have it worse than I do. After all, I have a coffee and a seat. Regrettably the seat is in the waiting room as the train has, in the space of 30 seconds, gone from being on time to being 15 minutes late.

It's great to be back.

Brakes stuck on

It's probably better that the brakes are stuck on, rather than stuck off. I presume they are designed this way. Nonetheless, it's not getting us to Reading any faster and when we do manage to make it that extra 200 yards into the station no doubt we will be slung off the train. The buffet may be open but whether or not it has any lager left is debatable.

On the plus side, the train manager does sound extremely posh and domineering and not at all phased by the fact that the driver is currently smacking parts of the brakes with a rubber mallet.

Irritating people on trains

Third Rate Western have managed to get me to London on time this morning and, midway through the return journey, they seem in significant danger of getting me home on time too. So to while away the time, I shall direct my simmering annoyance at my fellow passengers. Specifically the one opposite me.

Perhaps the message she is trying to give out is "Look at me, I have an iPhone". Well big deal, love, we don't want to hear the damn thing beep every time you touch its screen. Perhaps this wouldn't be so bad, but it looks very much like she is trying to prove that, just like monkeys with typewriters, if you jab an iPhone enough times the entire works of Shakespeare will emerge.

I could move to the quiet coach, I suppose, but since all the table seats were removed, I'm quite keen to retain my legroom. I could vent my spleen, but she looks quite phsychotic to be honest and I'm not sure I want to incur her wrath. She is now doing the crossword and seems very pleased with herself for writing in the word "dog". Into a 6-letter space beginning with R, but at least she's enjoying herself. Ok I might have made up the bit about the dog.

Premature seat selection

A nice dose of chaos today to remind me why I drive to work these days. Already distraught at the thought of the last off-peak train of the week, my mood was not lifted by the prospect of severe delays heading into Didcot (is there a worse place to get delayed?) caused by some kind of signalling malady. So a mad dash to the Swansea train, with a change at Swindon giving the options of picking up another service back home, or calling the wife for a more civilised journey down the M4.

As I jogged past First Class (I'm carrying quite a bit of "Christmas" weight at the moment so to say I was running would be rather dishonest) I considered for a fleeting moment diving into a large leather seat and paying the excess fare, then trying to claim it back from a hopefully understanding boss later. But the moment was fleeting, and so I settled into Coach A along with the other 400 people trying to do the same thing. Imagine, then, my horror when moments into the journey the well-spoken train manager announced that "in the interests of safety, which is his top priority" he was declassifying First Class and we were free to relax in the thickly-padded recliners, draw the curtains and snooze safe in the knowledge that in a mere 3 hours we might make it to Didcot.

Sadly, the small matter of coaches B, C, D, and E stood between me and travel nirvana, as did about a thousand disgruntled commuters so I figured that any attempts to drag myself to the buffet and beyond would be fruitless.

On the plus side, good on the train manager for not only offering up First Class for the proletariat to sample, but also for doing his damndest to make sure that 97-year-old Maureen from Hereford knew exactly where and when to change to get safely home, albeit slightly later than she had planned.

Still, not an experience that would tempt me back into the swing of public transport. Monday brings with it the pleasure once again of Radio 4 and a smooth waft down the M4 in man's greatest triumph, the motor car.

It's (not) good to be back

Several months with not a single journey requiring the services of Third Rate Western has been most pleasant. Off to London yesterday, though, and even I am not stupid enough to attempt that journey in the car. There's only so much Radio 4 one can tolerate to be honest.

So, up early and away we go.

Suit - check
Wallet - check
Oyster card - check
Mobile - check
Check the live departure boards - check

And off to the station. I note that knackered old parking ticket machine is still proudly guarding the bottom of the steps to the platform, but there do appear to be a couple of new machines elsewhere in the car park. Whether they work or not is, of course, another matter. Never mind, I pay by text message these days - which is presumably what APCOA wanted to encourage me to do by failing to fix the machines for NEARLY TWO YEARS!

I digress. We're here for a train journey to London, not an investigation into parking facilities. So, although the live departure boards indicated all was well in the world of Third Rate Western it is, as is so often the case, not. Not at all. Bugger all trains is what it is, in fact. Something has happened, somewhere near Swindon. Not sure what, or precisely where, but chaos ensues.

In a rare moment of sympathy for the poor platform staff (even though they do have a nice warm box to skulk in), I take issue with a fellow commuter who seems to think that the staff have deliberately screwed up his journey just for shits and giggles. They clearly enjoy a crowd of irate travellers demanding to know where the train is. As it happens, they have no more idea than I do, and I even tried asking a pigeon.

So off we go to Bath, to get a train that's going to London, via Bradford-on-Avon and Newbury. An opportunity to gaze upon the beauteous vista that is Trowbridge is usually welcomed, as is a fleeting glimpse of the White Horse of Westbury, but this morning is really not the time to enjoy them, as I am late. Very late.

So, no-one, least of all the unfortunate platform staff, knew what was going on. Perhaps we should all be grateful, though, that amongst the chaos, the four revenue protection stalwarts were on guard, ensuring that nobody could get onto a train without a ticket. Not that there were any trains to get on, but if Hitler had taken that kind of view, he'd never have made it to Dusseldorf let alone Dover.

Where are the updates?

My regular readers (both of you, to borrow a phrase from Terry) will no doubt be wondering why I haven't posted anything for, ooh, several months.

Two reasons: firstly, much of my time has been taken up changing nappies and other baby-related activities. Secondly, I haven't commuted with Third Rate Western since April. Instead, I drive to work. In my old, thirsty, polluting banger. At 23mpg, it's still cheaper than taking the train, though. Let's do some sums.

The train taking the strain

Ticket to Bristol: £6.40
Parking: £4.50
Fuel to station: £0.50, perhaps

Total: £11.40

The car's the star

Ticket to Bristol: £0
Parking: £0
Fuel: £6 if I take it steady, £7 if I'm late

Not much of a decision, is it. But of course, I have to put up with spending longer commuting. Actually I don't. If I leave at the same time that I'd normally go to the station, it takes me 35 minutes to get to work, 25 if it's school holiday time. Door to door by train is 55 minutes.

So despite Mr. Brown wanting to tax us all off the roads and onto public transport, the good old car is still the relaxing, cheap, fast option.

You only have yourselves to blame

In a rare departure from ranting directly at Third Rate Western, I feel it's time to address one of the main causes of the irritating, avoidable, smaller delays to services. The kind of 3 or 4 minute delay at each calling point, that ends up being 20 minutes by the end of the journey. The kind of delay that is caused by stupid passengers who can't be arsed to close the door behind them.

You see it at every station, pretty much every time a train calls. Everyone gets on, and then the platform staff have to walk up the entire length of the train shutting all the doors. Of course, the situation is even worse on stations that aren't manned (aside of the fact that arguably the HSTs shouldn't be stopping there at all) when the train manager has to do every door. And inevitably by the time he's finished, some late arrival at the station has left another one open and so the tedious cycle begins again.

When I was a lad (before I was sent down t' pit and had to eat gravel etc.) I'd get the train to and from school, on the London to Brighton line with old fashioned slam-door trains. There were no platform staff. The guard didn't have to shut the doors. The commuters did it themselves. Why? Perhaps because they knew that no-one was going to do it for them, and if they didn't shut them then they wouldn't be on their way to work any time soon.

So perhaps a social experiment is called for. Maybe if the platform staff stop shutting doors, and train managers simply announce "we are not leaving because someone hasn't bothered to close the door behind them" people will start taking 3 seconds out of their lives to speed up the journey for everyone else.

Give up your seats

I've been roundly chastised recently for the tone of my rants implying that I am aiming my wrath directly at the Third Rate Western frontline staff, when of course I'm aware that the vast majority of problems are caused by poor management decisions of epic proportions.

However, what is not acceptable is for a train to be at standing-room-only point, with all vestibules full of people, and for 4 Third Rate Western staff to be happily occupying 4 seats and having a nice chat and a coffee on their way, one presumes, to a training course in Bristol. There doesn't need to be a management edict to ensure that staff give up their seats when customers are standing (although I believe there is already a rule governing this) - it's simple good manners and all staff should understand that the customer comes first.

I think it's akin to having a client in the office and only one teabag left. You might really want a brew, but the paying customer has to take priority, surely?

To ensure a punctual departure...

Always a pleasure to hear the dulcit tones of the automated bad-news-giver telling you "in order to ensure a punctual departure, doors are locked shut 30 seconds beforehand" when you're standing in the cold waiting for a train that's 30 minutes late.

Live departure boards my arse

The 18:30 from Temple Meads to Paddington comes from Weston-super-Mare. If it's on time, it leaves there at about 18:05. My office is 5 minutes from Temple Meads so if I'm getting the 18:30, I'll tend to leave at about 18:20 so that I can take a leisurely stroll to the station and perhaps pick up a copy of Amatuer Ranter from Smith's. Before I leave, I check the "live departure boards" which as you probably know are available from the National Rail website, and in fetching pink livery direct from Third Rate Western's site (which presumably runs slowly on a repainted ZX81 server).

At 18:15, if the train hasn't left Weston yet, there isn't a hope in hell of it getting to Temple Meads by 18:30. So why the hell does the live departure board say "On time"? Surely it's not beyond the wit of man to program it to know that if a train hasn't left it's starting point 10-15 minutes after it was meant to, it ain't going to be "on time" at the next station, even taking into account Third Rate Western's hugely padded timetables.

In fact, the 18:30 ended up pulling into Temple Meads a clear 28 minutes late due to the fun and games at Southall earlier. It didn't leave Weston until 18:40. At which time, the lovely live departure boards were still optimistically predicting that we would be on our way out of Bristol at 18:49. Unlikely, but perhaps it's nice to think the glass is half full when in fact it's got half an inch of warm lager and three fag ends in it.

Fatality at Southall

Probably best to drop my normal sarcastic tone for this one, as no-one likes a fatality (Southall does seem to attract more than its fair share curiously), but this is something that really puzzles me. Take a look at this photo - it's an aerial view of Southall station taken from Google Maps:



That looks to me like 6 tracks. Either side of the station there are 4 tracks. As I understand it, 2 fast lines and 2 slow lines, all the way from Reading to Paddington. Even as far as Swindon, maybe, but I might be wrong about that one. Anyway, I digress.

Why is it that a fatality at Southall causes all of these lines to be closed? Surely some trains can be let through? OK they have to go through slowly, as there's bound to be a lot of Police, Notwork Rail staff and so forth on the track, but is it really necessary to shut them all down totally for several hours, causing chaos for the whole afternoon and into the evening?

An occasion where even I can't blame Third Rate Western for the bedlam.

That stopping train again

It's always a good sign at Temple Meads when a Paddington train that has started at Weston, or further afield, pulls into Bristol at xx:22 when it's due out at xx:30 - even the daft sods who don't realise they can use ALL the doors on the train to get on can't take a full 8 minutes to get on board, faff around with their bags a bit, block the aisles, look for a seat, take their coat off, sit down, stand up and sit down again. So we're on track to leave on time.

Everything's going to plan today, everyone is on board, we pull out on time. Hurrah! But then we stop, just outside Temple Meads. Maybe this unscheduled stop is sponsored by Vauxhall; I've got a great view of several Vectras and a shiny Corsa. Anyway, I don't want a Vauxhall. Here's the train manager with an announcement.

We're behind a stopping train, which has pulled out of Temple Meads at 17:29, just one short minute ahead of us. It's already running late from Cardiff. So why exactly has it been let out ahead of us? We've now got to follow it and wait for it as it stops on the way to Bath. So by the time we get to Bath, despite having left Bristol on time, we're now 13 minutes late. That's a clear 26 minutes to get from Bristol to Bath.

My friends at www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop (a very interesting forum if you want some facts about how the trains operate direct from some of the poor chaps who have to work for Third Rate Western and endure the wrath of ranting commuters like me) tell me that it's nothing to do with Third Rate Western, it's the signallers who make the decision.

But surely someone in a nice office at Third Rate Western Towers (it's in Swindon, so don't assume it's hugely glamorous) can talk to someone at "Fat Controller Towers" (that's a reference to Thomas the Tank Engine, by the way, not a vicious attack on the girth of the signallers) and say:

If two of our trains are pulling out of Bristol at the same time, please put the FAST one in front of the SLOW one!

Sore feet

Spending 2 days stood on an exhibition stand devoid of punters is pretty miserable I think you'll agree. Still, not to worry, I'll duck out early and catch the 3.30 home from Paddington. I might even have time to microwave a lasagne for the wife, the old romantic that I am.

But no, Third Rate Western conspire against me once again, so instead I'm jammed in the standing-room-only 4.00. Maybe there'll be an announcement in a minute to tell me the buffet is open. Suspect the 200 people stood in the aisles between me and it might not be too pleased if I try to drag a coffee and a cheeseburger of dubious origin past them.

Never mind, at least I can look forward to the commute in the morning which, despite assurances otherwise, is still an Adelante.

Hey, did you notice I didn't slag off any frontline staff in this post? Woohoo!

There's no legal limit

This is not about drink driving, you understand; I've had another email from Third Rate Western. This one is replying to me sending them a photo of the overcrowding in the mornings, specifically challenging their previous statement that the train now stops at Keynsham because it has "available capacity".

We try and give all our customers safe and comfortable travel, but we don't turn passengers away until there's a danger that the service will become unsafe. There's no set number of passengers for this, just as there is no legal limit to the number of people we can carry on a train. We leave the decision to the professional judgment of the Train Manager and the driver.

Is this effectively saying that until someone legislates against the arguably dangerous practice of jamming us into trains until there's not a single inch of space left, it will be left to the staff on the platform to make a judgement call about safe capacities? How come there's legislation for carriage of cattle, but not people?

Is the writing on the wall?

If I were a betting man, I'd have a fiver on Third Rate Western losing their franchise next time it comes up for renewal. I reckon it would be easy money. Which is pretty much what Third Rate Western are making at the moment, as they don't seem to be investing a penny on services, staff, cleanliness, reliability, safety or anything else for that matter.

I think they know the writing is on the wall and that they are runing things in a "keeping the lights on" manner, aiming to cream out the most profit possible from their remaining tenure. A pretty cynical approach however you look at it, but the evidence does point to this being their attitude.

You can say that reliablity is down to Notwork Rail, strikes are down to the RMT, and make any number of other excuses, but for me, the utterly diabolical state of the ex-Wessex trains (I would strongly advise that if you're travelling from Cardiff to Portsmouth that you don't drink too much coffee before getting on the train because you really don't want to use the khazi) shows that they simply won't spend any time or money maintaining things in an acceptable way. The staff seem to have given up making excuses for the timekeeping, and whilst we're seeing other train companies ordering more trains, Third Rate Western are just wringing every last ounce of life out of their ancient, run-down old sheds.

They know they are out of here; why can't they be removed now and give someone competent a chance of running the show?

Come back, cameraman!

Shame the cameraman from this morning wasn't on the 18:30 Temple Meads to London train tonight as I would have been much more scathing about Third Rate Western than I was this morning when he interviewed me (did I mention I was on the telly?). Delayed by over 40 minutes by the time we got to Chippenham because of an earlier points failure at Bathampton Junction (probably happened when a stupid little stopping train was pulling out in front of hundreds of people on their way down from London).
So, no information at Bristol, until a quiet announcement that the delay was caused by "congestion". CONGESTION?! That has to go into the top 10 list of implausible excuses for late trains really, doesn't it?

Fame at last

I thought I was pretty fair on my friends at Third Rate Western this morning when I was interviewed by BBC Points West on the (not quite as overcrowded as usual) 7:44 to Temple Meads. In fact, I even admitted that so far this year, the 7:44 has been quite reliable. But the point still had to be made that it's cheaper and faster to drive from Chippenham to Bristol that to get the train, and much less crowded.
No signs of the expected chaos from the fare strike at Bristol, although I was a few minutes ahead of Dom Joly and his film crew. Plenty of Police, though, to deal with the hardened criminals dodging their fares.
Did I mention I was on the telly?

There's space available

Here's an idea of exactly how much space is available on the Adelante. This was the 7:44 from Chippenham to Bristol Temple Meads. Interestingly, no-one was surprised about someone taking photos of the overcrowding.

So, Third Rate Western, are you really telling us that there's space available for passengers from Keynsham when this is the situation 2 stops earlier?

Official - Train Crew are Blind

According to the cheerful response from Third Rate Western to my latest rantogram,

The 0744 Chippenham to Bristol Temple Meads is timetabled to call at Keynsham to pick up commuters for Bristol, in order to ease pressure on local services. It does this because it has space available, even when running as an Adelante.

3 possible reasons for this conclusion: either the train crew are blind and can't see that the trains are full, or the train crew know damn well that the trains are full but can't be arsed to tell the management, or possibly the Third Rate Western management know damn well the trains are full because their staff and customers are telling them but they don't care. I wonder which it is.
On the bright side, though,

This will only be for a short time, as within a matter of weeks it will revert to a refreshed HST.

Hurrah! So now I get to walk into poorly refurbished sliding doors again.