Following the disastrous December timetable changes which resulted in all bar one Sunday service off the Cotswold Line having a connecting time of 55 minutes to a Reading/Gatwick line train (when it used to be 7 or 8 minutes), I have tried to avoid travelling from the Worcester area to Dorking on a Sunday.

However, being a sunny summer Sunday, I felt that I could live with a long connection at Reading, so I travelled. And regretted it. OK, I can put up with engineering work, and so caught the bus from Worcester to Evesham, but then of course, what happened? Yes, First cancelled the 1642 from Evesham to Paddington. No reason was forthcoming; however it shouldn't have been due to a lack of stock, as they weren't running any through trains to Hereford and there were plenty of units at Oxford sidings, so who knows?. Needless to say there were many cheesed off passengers as we all had to wait an hour for the next train.

You then start to look at all the little faults that manifest themselves on a daily and journey basis:

- Evesham station was unmanned, so no guidance was forthcoming there:
- One page on the station TV monitors advised "services running on Friday 3rd August" (This was on Sunday 12th!!)
- The unit doesn't get cleaned during its layover, so welcome aboard to newpapers, buffet items on your table or seat pocket (OK - that's our fellow passengers leaving the mess)
- The on-train dot matrix (?) indicators not working
- And then of course the overcrowding and Conductor's attitude

By the time Oxford was reached, the train was full (we're talking a 5 car Adelante), and then the Oxford day-trippers got on returning to London. The train resembled a peak-hour commuter service, standing all down the train. To add insult to injury, the conductor's main announcements were to tell people that the carriage with the tables and lamps was 1st class, and the £10 Weekend First supplement would apply.

It made me very angry that when First had cancelled the service which had then lead to the gross overcrowding, that all the conductor could talk about was charging people MORE for basically a crap service. Common sense or Customer Bullying?

Anyway, I'll write to First and get my compensation (do the conductors advise passengers about this procedure), but they are still a shambles.

Incidentally, on Saturday - was there disruption at Didcot? I noticed the 1141 from Gt Malvern to Paddington was cancelled, and the 1525 from Hereford to Paddington was also cancelled.

With the current inconsistencies in punctuality, I would at a certain level agree about connecting times.  Having said this, it is clear that connecting times are not clearly thought through on inter-regional journeys and I would say more work could be done to identify key crossing stations, e.g. those that serve airport stations.  If 7-8 minutes is considered to risky and 55 minutes is clearly ridiculous, 15-25 minutes seems to me the most reasonable.

At the moment timetables seem to be designed to optimise punctuality records as opposed getting passengers moving.  I can add my own current bug-bear of travelling from Salisbury to Chippenham, no longer possible on the direct line that connects the two (50-55 minutes), but via Bath with a wait of usually 45 or more minutes.

Before the December 2006 timetable changes, I would plan my Sunday afternoon journey so that (in theory), I would catch the 1912 from Reading to Dorking/Gatwick. More often than not, the train from Worcester would be late, but at least I had the fall-back of a stopping train at 1935hrs. Therefore my wait would only be around 20 minutes.

Alas, the stopping service was cancelled in December and replaced by an hourly semi-fast 'skip-and stop' service.

Also, I speak from past experience about being in 1st class (albeit using a complimentary 1st class ticket given to me by FGW owing to previous poor journeys), where at Oxford, the carriage was totally filled by day trippers because the standard carriages were full.

Still, I'm not shedding any tears today for First not getting the ECML route!

Having 'good' connections is always a hot topic of course, but I don't think that many people fully appreciate just how hard it is to have good quality connections. Let's take a typical Sunday afternoon service from Great Malvern to London Paddington as an example.

In an ideal world it would have the following connections where you could argue that a 'reasonable' number of punters might be expected:

1) A connection from Hereford/Colwall/Ledbury into it at Great Malvern.
2) A connection from Birmingham/Stourbridge/Kidderminster/Bromsgrove into it at Worcester SH or FS.
3) It would connect at Oxford with Virgin services to the North and the South coast.
4) It would connect at Didcot Parkway with either a Bristol or Cardiff service.
5) It would connect at Reading with all sorts of places including Gatwick.
6) And lastly it would connect at Slough with a Windsor service.

Now, you try and work out a timetable that achieves good connections for those above, and, at the same time works with pathing, stock and crew, and of course includes the fact that all the connecting services mentioned also have their own connections.

In a word; impossible.

So, the end result is that you find that instances where you used to have a good connection off the Cotswolds at Reading for Gatwick cease when there is a major timetable change. But I bet some of the other connections mentioned above have improved as a result.

I would agree.  It is not possible to please all or serve all in the way they would wish.  However, look at the improvements made by South West Trains when they did a major over-haul of their timetables.  Much better though I will always lament the loss of stopping services to London serving local stations - that is another matter.

My frustration is when short to medium length journeys like those between Salisbury and Chippenham have long changes of up to 45 minutes - even more so when you know a direct service would solve the issue!

I have heard it said that FGW knew that the December 2006 timetable was going to be a major upheaval with a lot of old-established and well-loved services and connections going by the wayside.  And that's why they went into such a major consultation excercise - allowing them (amongth other things) to point at all the customer input they had listened to, and to gain some positive publicity from those areas where adjustments lead to improvements.

But if you destroy an old (and used) pattern and create a new pattern based on POTENTIAL and FORECAST use rather than present use, it's bound to be a step backward - at least at first - even though it might - just might - be a gain in the long term.   It is notable that - although there are said to be some quite big changes in some areas again - there is no big consultation for next December.

Lee mentions Melksham.  Now there you have a service that had been established for five years, was well loved and rapidly growing.   A great deal of feedback was provided to First concerning the truely dreadful new service, with most of the trains no longer running on what is a mojor growth corridor, and to and from a town of some 24000.  Many of us were careful to be constructive in our criticism, pointing out to First, with our local knowledge, how they could broadly amend the new train timings to make the remaining few services as useful as possible, as well as suggesting that they provide a more appropriate service as laid down by Jacobs and (earlier) Parkman.  And what did they do? They did the exact OPPOSITE of what we suggested between the draft and final timetables! Where we asked for the only remaining morning train to run about 30 minutes later, they moved it even earlier.  And where we asked for the only remaining afternoon / evening train to run about 30 minutes earlier, they moved it even later..

Now - Industry Insider may come up with a very good operational reason for these late changes - but as far as First's customers in this area are concerned, the late changes appeared to show a disregard for what the passenger needs, and could very easily have been interpretted as a kick in the teeth.  And I have yet to see any justification for a new market of passengers wanting to leave Swindon at 06:19 in the morning .... or to travel up there from Westbury / Trowbridge / Melksham to arrive at around 20:20 in the evening.

Responding to Industry Insider, I had a look at the Passenger Timetable for the connections on Sundays and there appear to be more "misses" than hits.

1 & 2. First and Central have in recent timetables "banged their heads" together and quite often have agreed good connections.

3. At Oxford, the Worcester/Paddington service generally arrives at xx34 to 36; a Virgin northbound service generally departs at xx36 & 06 (so that's a miss in my book); Virgin's Southbound service generally departs at xx43 - but more often than not, that's the service which terminates at Reading, so no benefit there.

4. At Didcot, the service from Worcester arrives at xx49 and connects WELL with the xx58 from Didcot to Bristol

5. At Reading, as we know, the Worcester trains miss the HOURLY Gatwick services by a couple of minutes 

6. At Slough, the Worcester service generally arrives at xx23, just in time to see the xx22 departure to Windsor disappear (next one is at xx52)

As I said before it just annoys me that at Reading pre-December, there was a perfectly good connection Worcester/Reading/Gatwick, but now there ain't!

This thread started with my troubled journey from Worcester to Dorking.

I've now received my reply from FGW Customer Services, and they are not prepared to compensate me, because my delay was not over an hour. Now I appreciate they have to draw the line at a set time limit (in their case 1 hour) for these payments to kick-in, but I can't help feeling that they are trying to wriggle out of this.

I should have arrived at Dorking WEST (which is closer to my home and the reason why I chose those particular trains), at 2003.

The next train does not stop at Dorking West, but stops at Dorking DEEPDENE (scheduled arrival 2102). So for all intents and purposes, I was delayed by an hour, even though technically, it was 59 minutes (I didn't check the exact arrival time).

Needless, to say I was not impressed by their reply, and will continue my correspondence to FGW on this journey, which occurred due to THEIR as-yet, unexplained cancellation of the 1642 from Evesham to Paddington.