A campaign to cut over-crowding has been launched by frustrated rail commuters in the west of England (link below.)
http://www.rmtbristol.org.uk/2007/01/rail_commuters_want_more_train.html#more

The More Train , Less Strain group wants First Great Western to provide more trains on its routes.

I think I saw that petition and I signed it. On the 8.05 train from Weymouth to Cardiff Central.

Didn't see a name on it - and it was, surprise surprise, too crowded for me to find out.

If I do manage to find out, I will let you know.

Hi lee,
Yes this campaign was started by Simon Carpenter of Frome, and has taken off as I have used it's name to start a similar campaign based in Bath. I commute regularly from Bath to Bristol
Basically the gropup is jsut three or four of us, but with judicious use of press releases, mostly by email, we have achieved publicity for the cause out of proportion to our size.
We are seeing Andrew Griffiths on Wed at 11:30 at Temple Meads and will be feeding back to the bbc, GWR Bath Chronicle and Rail manager on Line as requested and any one else who asks.8I don't expect he will tell us much knew, but I will go with an open mind.
This risks becoming a full time job, but as I already have one I hope that we will have a date fixed for a public meeting in Bath next week where we will focus on building the campaign and broadening it out, so more people can take action. We are likely to plan leafletting of passengers and a demonstration. I would like to make the jump from the locals to the nationals because that is when the politcians at Westminster begin to take more notice.
Tony Ambrose

Hi Tony

I also travel daily into Bristol by train if there is a meeting in Bath I would love to come along, let me know

Sion

This campaign seems to have worked as it was on the local BBC news last night that some more carriages were going to be provided as from 15th January, see also

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/6248061.stm

Can't just revert to the previous timetable because FGW aren't the only train operator in the area. Off the top of my head there's Arriva Wales, South West Trains, Virgin Cross Country, Southern, Chiltern, Central Trains, EWS, Freightliner, DRS and GBRf that use some of the same lines as FGW. If FGW reverted to the previous timetable you'd get a situation where FGW trains would clash (in the timetable) with trains run by the companies I've just mentioned. So these companies would have to alter their timetables as well to make it all work. Then you'd get a snowball effect across the country, e.g. if a Plymouth to Edinburgh Virgin train had to be altered to run 10 mins later between Plymouth and Bristol to fit in with FGW's reinstated old timetable the Virgin train would get to Birmingham 10 mins later where it would probably then clash with Central Trains services. Then north of Derby it might clash with Midland Main Line. At Sheffield there's Northern Rail to consider and north of York you've got GNER and Transpennine Express plus Scotrail at Edinburgh. So you've now affected about half the country's train companies.

The only way you'd get a previous timetable reinstated is if FGW was a totally self contained network that didn't interact with any other train operators. That's why c2c just managed to revert to their old timetable - they're self contained.

You might also be interested in my post here where First's director - that's 2 levels above Andrew - has refused to be drawn into making any efforts to provide a service that meets the needs of the traffic flows they took over from Wessex.  He does however make a promise to make efforts to get the current reliability issues resolved.

As well as a mixture of commuter and leisure traffic on the c2c routes , are there not also substantial freight movements to and from North Thameside operated by EWS , Freightliner & GB Railfreight?

Did you mean that the act of c2c reverting to the old timetable was merely the following , Steve?

"Morning and evening peak schedules to return to previous patterns" (link below.)
http://www.c2c-online.co.uk/templates/Timetables.aspx?id=19

Quote from the Rail Freight Group (link below.)
http://www.railfreightgroup.com/download.asp?file=fot7.pdf

"Rail freight exists comfortably on the rail network alongside ESSENTIAL passenger services. Many freight trains can run in the evenings, during the middle of the day and at night when passenger demand is lower. Most freight trains run at average speeds which are similar to a semi-fast passenger service so their impact on network capacity is less than fast intercity or slow all-stations trains. Freight trains don’t use congested commuter lines during the peak periods."