Picture this!

Transforming travel my bottom!

On yer bike...or not as the case may be!

Oh dear, looks like the Government's attempts to develop a more joined-up national transport infrastructure is about to get another kick in the teeth from First Great Western.

On the Friday before the bank holiday weekend, I skipped onto the platform in my usual upbeat manner to find a couple of annoyed cyclists berating a member of station staff. The reason? A poster had been put up telling the cyclists that, for peak hour London trains, they will now have to make a reservation for their bike!

Not unexpectedly, the cyclists were pretty furious - in part because they believed that First Great Western had very deliberately chosen one of the quietest travel days of the year on which to put up the poster in order to prevent a mob of angry cyclists from venting their spleen.

I suspect that many cyclists are not going to be happy about this - and I don't blame them one little bit.

Another website cock-up

Oh you're gonna love this: a wonderful example of First Great Western arse-about-face-ness at its best.

Went to the FGW website today to check out whether they were running any special offers on tickets I hadn't heard about. This often happens - they bang out an offer without actually telling anyone, probably so none of us can actually take them up on it.

Anyway, to my surprise, lurking under the special offers section of the site was a new entry: your exclusive first class ticket upgrade. Ding dong, I thought. But was this just the old up grade scheme for season ticket holders that ended on 6 July? Apparently not because when I got to the page in question, at its foot it said: closing date 29 August. A new offer!

Suitable impressed, I filled in the details and then clicked through the pages to get to my voucher. But hey, what's this? The voucher said offer valid until 6 July. Huh?

Baffled, I phone FGW's customer service and asked them which date was correct and which wasn't. The very pleasant customer call person sounded suitably puzzled then said she needed to speak to a colleague before she returned with the zen-like mystic comment: "Well, they're both wrong and right."

It then transpires that FGW is about to announce another first class upgrade scheme for August but hasn't got around to telling anyone yet, and has sort-of tweaked its website - but not properly.

"You're the first person who's spotted it," the customer lady told me.

Yes, I thought, but I bet not the last.

So folks, keep an eye on this page here because I'm told this will soon become a new offer valid during August. Chin chin.

That pregnant pause

Giving up my seat is always something I do reluctantly - particularly when I've only just got on the train and I'm facing a good hour or more standing wedged in a noisy vestibule. These days I've grown hardened to overcrowded trains so it has to be someone pretty special to make me want to stand up and say those magic words: "Here, have my seat."

Pregnant women are always a tricky group. I remember the aggro my wife went through when pregnant commuting in and out of London when we lived there so I always feel sympathetic towards any woman forced to stand who's clearly up the Hilary Duff. But on the flip side, part of me thinks: if I can just avoid making eye contact with them, maybe someone else will give up their seat...maybe someone else will do the gentlemanly thing. No chance of that today, though.

Caught the 9.25am Chippenham-Paddington, the first cheapo service of the day. The platform at Chippenham was packed with families wanting to take a leisurely rail trip up to London with the kids - more fool them! Don't they know what it's like on First Great Western? - but when we all clambered aboard, it emerged pretty quickly in the chaotic melee that FGW had pulled its increasingly regular trick of failing to put out the seat reservations. The poor old families with their two or three little kids found their seats filled and grumpy commuter types unwilling to move.

Mental note: never take the kids on the train unless you really REALLY have to. It's never fun and it's never easy. Whatever FGW's summery advertising campaign says about jolly trips around the country, it's going to be like a cattle truck to Belsen. You have been warned.

Anyway, I managed to find a seat and settled down with the old laptop to do a spot of work when, on the periphery of my vision, I spotted the pregnant woman waddling towards me hunting for a seat.

But not just any pregnant women - she was super pregnant woman. In fact, it would have been harder to design a women better able to tug at the heart strings of a hardened First Great Western commuter. Not only was she pregnant but...she was holding a small baby in one arm and...wait for it...her other arm was just a stump! Yep, she seemed to have lost one arm from the elbow down and was desperately cradling a kid in the other.

Lord oh lordie, how could I refuse?

"Have my seat," I said magnanimously, then retreated to the vestibule to complete my journey in a petulant silence. Yep, that's about as pregnant as it gets...apart from actually having the baby in the carriage.

PS I used to work with a woman who made a point of standing on the London Underground and sticking her stomach out so that she looked pregnant in order to get a seat.

I quote the words of Jimmy Carr on the subject: "I'd rather see a pregnant woman standing up than a fat woman sitting down crying."

Trapped in the reservation limbo

Following power car problems yesterday, had a reasonable trip up this morning marred only by one issue that seems to be occuring rather a lot recently: the failure to print off the seat-back reservations.

My big grievance with this is that it leaves passengers in a bit of a limbo having no idea what to do. And it's not helped by the fact that I've never heard a train manager clarify the situation. Let me give you an example.

Today's train manager, Steve, delivered a very lengthy announcement at each stop, which was full of apologies but did nothing to help passengers. He said - and I'm using his words as closely as I can remember them - that passengers with seats should be 'accommodating' if approached by a fellow passenger with a reservation for that seat; and that passengers with reservation should be 'mindful' that the person sitting in their allocated seat wasn't aware that it was reserved.

That's all fine, but the question is...WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN? Have I got a reservation or not? If I'm sitting down and some guy comes up waving a reservation at me, can I tell him to take a running jump or not?

Why, oh why don't train managers cut to the chase and simply tell us whether the reservations are valid or not? That's what everybody wants to know.

Apologising for the lack of them is fine, but it doesn't provide the specific bit of information every passenger is waiting for.

In my two and a half years of daily commuting, I've been on lots of trains on which the reservations have not been placed, and heard lots of train manager announcements - but none of them every say 'Yes, the reservations are still valid' or 'No, they're not'. Instead it's left to passengers to somehow muddle through, having to make up the rules as they go. Asking us to be 'mindful' and 'accommodating' sounds lovely but just creates utter confusion. On the flip side, it means that the train manager doesn't really have to deal with the issue - unless a couple of customers come to fisticuffs.

So train managers, please, if there are no reservations on the seats, can you make it clear whether reservations are valid or not. That would save us all a lot of aggro and, frankly, make the journey more enjoyable.

PS I was also fascinated by Steve's request this morning for all rail personnel with passes to give up their seats because of overcrowding - which he reminded them was a privilege, not a right - but this didn't apply to retired personnel or their dependents, who could keep their seats. Nice. Didn't make a jot of difference, though. No one gave up their seats to any fare paying passengers as usual. Que sera sera.

Exclusive peak at FGW remake of The Railway Children

Word reaches me that, in an attempt to improve its image and public profile, First Great Western is to back a remake of the classic 1970 film The Railway Children based on Edith Nesbit’s novel of the same name. (Ooo, that Jenny Agutter!)

Anyway, having trawled the darker reaches of the internet and been in touch with a number of sources in Hollywood, I’ve been able to snatch a glimpse of the FGW version of the script. While I’m unable to reproduce it in full for copyright reasons, I can now present to you my exclusive summary. So here goes…

The Railway Children, as retold by First Great Western

Set in contemporary England, a middle class family from London with three children – Roberta, Phyllis and Mix Master P-J of the Streatham Massive, their knife toting brother – must relocate to the bleak Yorkshire Moors following the imprisonment of their father for emailing Gardeners’ Question Time about bulk purchases of fertilizer.

Once in their new home, they discover the local train station, where they start hanging about a bit. It is an unmanned station with just a speaking ticket machine (voiced by Bernard Cribbins) which says dryly amusing Yorkshire homilies like “Will you be paying by card or cash?” By day the station is a dumping ground for overweight people and community care types; by night it is home to gangs of drunks and hoodies. P-J falls in with the wrong crowd, attempts to steal a urinal to burn on the fire at home, is arrested and given an ASBO banning him from appearing in the rest of the film.

Several whizzo adventures then befall Roberta and Phyllis. They save a boy on a school paper chase who gets stuck in a tunnel and is the cause of all peak hour services being delayed for two hours. Ye Olde Yorkshire Train Operating Company then issues a statement blaming Network Rail for late running. (Geddit?)

They witness a freak landslide which sends a tree and some earth crashing onto the track. Although the two girls are able to stop the approaching train by pretending to be school children trespassing on the rails, the track is shut for a month and commuters have to travel via donkey.

Next, a sickly foreign gentleman is found collapsed at the station. Roberta and Phyllis phone the border police and have him arrested as an illegal immigrant.

Finally, the emotional climax of the film: the Old Gentleman tells Roberta to be at the station to meet a particular train. What Roberta does not realize is that her father has been released from jail due to overcrowding and is travelling to join his family. However, things go awry. Unable to afford the extortionate fare, he travels without a ticket and is thrown off the train by revenue protection officers. When he is finally able to raise the necessary money by selling a kidney, the train fails to stop at his station due to signaling problems and strands him in Bristol where he dies after eating a mini Melton Mowbray pork pie from the station café.

In her anguish at the news of his death, Roberta loses the will to live so becomes a customer host on First Great Western. She ends the film sobbing over the tannoy as she announces happy hour prices in the buffet, then takes her own life by choking on a breakfast bap. The End.

Wow! Sounds like a classic to me, boys and girls. Popcorn anyone?

A quick update

Here's a handy aide memoire on a number of issues I'm keeping track of at the moment:

1. It's mid-July and still no new car park ticket machines at Chippenham, a full seven months after the signs went up to say we were going to have them. What on earth are they doing?

2. Still no picture of melodiously named Sheridan Flavin, FGW's HR director, on the Meet our Executive Team page of the FGW website. Why? I suspect she's a bit of a looker and am keen to find out. Does anyone have a pic of Ms Flavin or can you direct me towards one? First Great Western commuters have a right to know.

On that note, I'm considering holding a 'Who is the most unfortunate-looking member of the First Great Western executive team?' poll. My nomination will depend on finding out whether James Burt's picture has been squeezed or he really looks like that!(See picture above.)

3. The first class upgrade offer ended 6 July but I barely noticed this time, so stringent had the conditions been. I think I only managed to get an upgrade about three times. Hardly worth bothering with.