UK First Great Western

[John Ashworth]

Jane and I have just had three good trips on First Great Western on the 200 mile journey between London Paddington and Exmouth in Devon in the west of England.

On 23rd December we took the 1458 from Paddington. It was an HST with class 43 motive power on each end. These 25 year old 125 mph trains were iconic in their day and are still going strong. They have just been renovated, with new engines and refurbished coach interiors. We had a great run to Exeter, which we reached on time in about 2 hours 20 minutes. There seem to be some teething problems with the coaches and some toilets were locked out of use. The journey cost us GBP58 each, plus a tenner for weekend upgrade to first class, as there were no reservable seats left in economy class by the time we booked the previous day.

From there we had seven minutes to cross the footbridge and pick up our local train down the branch line to Exmouth. This was also an old train, a Class 142 Pacer, but these haven't weathered the passing of time as well as the HSTs. They are basically bus bodies on 4-wheel chassis, and are pretty noisy and uncomfortable. They have recently been brought back onto some rural routes to free up more modern DMUs for other services - this has been quite controversial amongst rail enthusiasts. Nevertheless it got us there on time.

On 27th December we had to get to London and back the same day to pick up Jane's Irish visa. We got a lift to Exeter St David and there got on the 0639 to London, a train which makes several booked stops. We had booked our tickets online - this time GBP59 each for the return journey, the seemingly ludicrous price of the single fare plus one pound! - and picked up our tickets from the fast ticket machine at Exeter. It wasn't too full and we got seats in economy class. We ran well as far as Reading, but there we picked up some delays due to the combination of a broken down train and engineering work at Hayes and Harlington, and we arrived in Paddington about half an hour late. These new HSTs have selective door locking, and at some of the shorter platforms the doors at the end of the train remain locked. At Westbury the train manager informed us that she wouldn't know in advance whether the doors would remain locked or not, as it depended on the starter signal. If the signal was off, the train could pull fully into the paltform and all doors would unlock. If the signal were on, then the last two coaches would remain locked.

Our business in London completed, we ran to catch the 1158, which departed about ten minutes late. It was packed, a busy train but also running with one economy class carriage missing. Eventually we got the last two unreserved seats in first class, for the cost of a ten pound weekend upgrade - for railway purposes, Christmas week apparently counts as a weekend. This is the fastest train of the day to Exeter, stopping only at Reading, and we were in Exeter in two hours and ten minutes. We again caught a Pacer from exeter to Exmouth.

I hope to be able to report on Irish railways from Boyle to Dublin in a few days.

[Nathan Berelowitz]

Hi there. Seems we are not alone in train travels! Hope your all well and enjoying the festive season. Happy new year. I am working off Tahlias computer as I am having big hassels with the other one and even Kevin rolled his eyes in his head!!

xxme

[John Ashworth]

Sitting in an internet cafe in Boyle, Co Roscommon, in the green and rainy emerald isle, I've had a chance to check my facts and I realise I've undersold the good old High Speed Train (HST). The prototype train of two power cars and seven Mk 3 coaches came out in 1972 and the first production power car in 1975, so they're over 30 years old, not the 25 that I erroneously wrote. Still a very fine train, and very popular with the travelling punters who put their bums on the seats.

I've also checked on the Pacers and they were built between 1984 and '87. If I remember rightly a number of units have been sold to Iran. Passengers would probably feel that is the best place for them and the sooner the rest get sent there, the better.