How on earth do you know that? It’s frustrating when people seem to try and deflect the poor performance of their TOC onto someone else, or make out their complaints are unreasonable. I don’t know what the purpose of doing that is, perhaps for fear of a senior viewing the forum and being seen as bad-mouthing the TOC, I have no clue, but it’s not very fair.
The point is, the Welsh railway service cannot be relied on, and it’s that which needs to be addressed, not however long before
Tom125 turns up before a flight, or whether I'm a "serial offender" of complaining too much about the service. Without
doubt, many staff work really really hard to keep this disasterous TOC afloat, and I completely and fully understand and appreciate that, but any denial that there is, regardless, a serious problem somewhere that needs fixing at TfW, is just silly. Because this can’t go on. And disruption for customers aside, it can’t be pleasant to work through either, surely?
At least despite the uselessness of the 230s and MK4 sets, the 197s are settling in very well and I'm very grateful and happy to see so many serving Cardiff in the place of nasty 150s.
It's just a shame more weren't ordered so that the 230/MK4s wouldn't be needed.
Sorry but how could you know how much 'breathing space' someone has allowed for a journey to the airport? A cancelled hourly service would likely make me do the same as the service an hour later couldnt be be relied upon to be on time or turn up either.
I did not at any point in my post that you replied to, defend the poor performance of TFW.
Based on what tom125 said, they “had to drive to Manchester airport”.
There seems to be an issue where the travelling public seem to get on the train that gets them to somewhere important (such as an airport), and leave themselves almost no time to spare. At this point it has become a running joke with many in the industry. If you were to have heard “I’m going to miss my flight” because of a 20 minute delay as I have, then you too would think “well leave yourself more bloody time then” when people complain about 1 cancellation being enough to force you to drive.
Let’s not forget if going from south to Manchester airport then you can also go to Chester and get a Manchester airport service from there (so still only 1 change). Meaning there are more than 1 train per hour.
Without doubt, many staff work really really hard to keep this disasterous TOC afloat, and I completely and fully understand and appreciate that, but any denial that there is, regardless, a serious problem somewhere that needs fixing at TfW, is just silly. Because this can’t go on. And disruption for customers aside, it can’t be pleasant to work through either, surely?
There are issues, no doubt, nor do I dispute that there aren’t. Excluding 230’s and MK4’s (at least as much as I know), there are things actively being done to resolve the issues.
Some days are great, some are ****. Ultimately, I come to work, do my job as well as I can, then I go home, and hopefully I’ve not been stuck somewhere for 2 hours making me late, either way, I’ll get paid. All I can say is, it’s the best job I’ve ever had and I enjoy what I do.
I totally agree and it frustrates me also. I get that TFW staff need to be loyal to their employer and not be seen to bring the company into disrepute, but those of us that are customers are entitled to complain about a poor service. It frustrates me that TFW seem to just get away with this shocking standard of service at times and just tell us it will get better in a few months. Well here we are into 2024 and we were told early on in 2023 things would be better from the Dec 2023 timetable change. Well here we are and apart from the very welcome 197s which is an improvement in my opinion we still have far too many Sprinters on long distance services and short formations (2 cars when we were promised 4 or 5 cars by now)
I wouldn’t go on any form of social media and bring them into disrepute, I value my job far too much.
Just because TFW are **** at the moment doesn’t mean that people should blame them for their own failings either though, allocating blame appropriately and all that. I’ll just re-iterate incase it’s lost, I totally appreciate the shocking level of service that gets provided for the expensive tickets that people pay for (In my opinion).
Equally TFW don’t “get away” with it. They get fined serious sums of money for every cancellation and all of the delay they cause.
They’re undertaking huge projects to make it better, brand new trains, more coaches on those trains, more frequent trains. What more do you want them to do ? And equally, what do you want them to say (that isn’t telling a lie) ?
Unfortunately they probabaly have more 150s 'spare' than 197 at the moment so we are likely to get them on Mark 4 booked workings.
Canton was 7 150’s short this morning for their booked workings so I’m not even so sure on that at this point.
What I worry about, is how long the 67 problems will continue for
Unfortunately that is now proving to be the weak link of the plan and now DB have put up for sale most of the non-tfw 67 fleet, including one that has been used until 2 days ago it does leave it with an extremely limited pool to change. As far as I know one more loco is being modified, but after that theres not much left that can be done with 67s.
I agree it’s concerning, with DB selling up 67’s and seem to be pulling out of the UK market, I don’t think they’ve got much interest in ensuring TFW have locos when needed.
It would be nice to see TFW purchase the locos off DB and bring it in-house, although I appreciate that’s incredibly unlikely.
