Thetownend.com

First Great Western turns into GWR with a swanky new livery & a new website. Check out their recommended destinations. Not a whiff of Swindon. Great for the local economy, pah!

https://www.gwr.com/explore-the-west/top-destinations

Let's have a negativity fast. What could they have promoted? STEAM, the museum of the Great Western Railway maybe?

It features in the Wiltshire bit, but like you say, no mention of Steam.

Ah yes, they've added those bits since earlier today. Even STFC gets a mention. I apologise GWR.

Why would GWR have a vendetta against Swindon?

Exactly. Let's consider the evidence:
Cutting the town in half. A kind of Berlin Wall.
Neglected station. Why not decent facilities on the North Star side. Image the strain taken off the road system on the town side if there were a taxi rank on each side.
Sticking Swindon on the border of the fares system so a trip to Reading is prohibitive.
Stopping group rail fares when STFC are at Wembley, or stopping the trains all together!
The plethora of ex-railway clerks who have not stepped up to the mark to keep this town great.

I don't live in the area so I can't really comment on some of those points but in regards to the group fare thing that happens everywhere. I'm in Wales and whenever there's a big game on at the Millenium, cheap offers to Cardiff miraculously become invalid..

They always take away the group fares for major (usually sporting events). They claim its to prevent overcrowding when it's actually to make as much money as possible but they don't make any secret about it. There was a list of dates when group fares aren't available up on a board when I was at Reading Saturday. I suspect a similar list is on the website too.

Agree that Swindon to Reading is too bloody expensive though.

There is a list available in advance of major sporting events where the group fare scheme is suspended. However, the short notice given for a P.O. Final is obviously a problem there. I wonder if FGW (GWR) would have suspended it if PNE had played Sheff Utd in the PO Final. That is of course if the trains had been running at all.

The fact we have to do the stupid split tickets business at Didcot shows that invisible barrier somewhere in South Oxfordshire penalises those starting at Swindon & travelling east by train.

If Sheff Utd had played Preston there would have been no need. No "risk of overcrowding". I don't agree with it but that's what they claim to base it on.

Couldn't agree more about the Swindon to Reading farce, especially as I live in bloody Reading.

I don't live in Swindon and never have done so so cannot comment on most of this, however would point out that the railway was here before most of the town and in fact the town would possibly not even be here without the railway and specifically Gooch and Brunel.

 Jeremy will fix it.....hopefully not like Jim.

The biggest irony is and what people don't seem to realise is that the rail infrastructure is already publicly owned, Network Rail is now funded by the tax payer and it's Network Rail and the old school Civil Service type mentality that causes most of the problems. Their staff are only on 35 hour weeks for fucks sake, lets get the train operators on that as well then shall we.... It'll be an utter shambles if it goes back into public ownership just like it was towards the end of BR days....

Tories intend to flog off Network Rail to their mates....you may favour crony capitalism, but there are many who think it stinks.  The Tories starved BR of investment, to soften it up for privatisation. Look across the Channel at a highly successful state owned operator like SNCF as an example

Fuck all wrong with a 35hr week  :pint:

 :pint:

Is SNCF really that successful?  Red Frog will know better than most, I'm sure.  Don't have figures to back this up, but fairly sure that the level of state subsidy is massive.  I know that the railways are also subsidised here...but probably not to the same degree?

They were the ones who ordered 2,000 trains too wide for the station platforms.

It's estimated that all business in the UK is subsidised to the tune of £93 billion, many of these also avoiding any tax.

To put it another way that's £3500 per household.

This tax avoidance, and the public service wage freeze and job loses, may explain why the deficit has risen by a couple of £billion as announced today.

I bought two lots of mTickets (off the phone app) for Swindon to Reading and back for £16 there and £6 back today. Admittedly it's the 07:01 train out and after 19:00 back but that's pretty bloody good. Advance yes, but for next week and three week's time.

That's cheaper than driving I think.

If you have a car, do you have to book it that far in advance and travel at those specific times?: Have long does it take you / cost to get to Swindon rail station & how far the other end?

However,  I guess most cars do not have a bar in them. What do you think of catering prices on trains? Why is there not competition on trains for catering I wonder?

My good lady drops me off and picks me up the Swindon end. That's ten minutes each at those times of the day. I get the PlusBus option on the train ticket for Reading which is £3, all day pass. Dunno if you work in Reading much but the traffic is generally shocking and the buses/routing pretty good.

I don't think that the catering prices are that bad, not much different to if you go in a Neros or a Delice or pub or whatever. £3.50 for a can of Tribute but then that's similar to what you pay in a bar for a pint?

I generally go into the office in Reading one or two days a week and I alternate between driving and train, it stops it being a slog of a commute  :)

We catch the train from Farnborough North to Reading (just under 20 miles) every now & then.  Costs about £15 return for a family of 4 (2 adults & 2 kids) on a Saturday, which I think is fairly good value.  But when I looked in to getting the train to Swindon last Saturday for the Burton game (ie two trains, with a change at Reading), it was over £50 for 3 of us (1 adult & 2 kids).  Have to agree - the Reading to Swindon leg is ridiculously expensive.

We drove on Saturday.  There's no way I'm paying those prices.

Considered one of these Ardiles?

http://www.familyandfriends-railcard.co.uk/using-your-railcard/the-benefits/ (http://www.familyandfriends-railcard.co.uk/using-your-railcard/the-benefits/)

So the sensory garden (what a joke) at Swindon railway station is being turned into holding cells for British Transport Police.

I beg your pardon, I never promised you a sensory garden.

They're really evil people those BTP, they need locking up

Not made any difference to the prices pre rebranding. Still £52 return Bournemouth to Swindon for the 10th October Peterborough game. Bollocks to that. It's bordering on driving up and booking a room for the night with a nice fried breakfast

You're sharing your bed with a sausage, bacon, baked beans and grilled tomatoes? It takes all sorts I guess. Myself I would prefer a nice hot piece of skirt but there you are

What the frig is this sensory garden thing? Where/what is/was it? How can I make this question any more confusing?

If was a small fenced off area near platform 2 (the dead end one that goes to Cheltenham & Melksham etc). It had a few dead few dead flowers, a twig & a bowl of water, presumably for an animal of some kind. It now has a plastic cell built on it for use BY BTP. It might well have been used on Friday lunchtime when a group of eggs in chasers were being rowdy on the platform while changing trains to get to Gloucester for Argentina v Georgia.

Don't be ridiculous, everyone knows rugby fans get more polite the more they drink, and never ever cause trouble. Unless you count a stand-off of "after you", "no, after you" at the exits.

Its only there for those troublesome football fans.

I hadn't, no.  Thanks for that.

Daddy's shares went up & he's sending me to a sheep farm in Austwalia to build my chawacter. Haw haw haw! I miss the shoe polish on the testicles japes at bawding school. Haw haw.

Don't you just love stereotypes?

It means you don't have to think.

 :Ride On Fatbury's Lovestick: you've really sold it to me. I can't believe I've never heard of it before.

Yeah, I was waiting for a train in Bristol about an hour before that game kicked off. That narrative of the non violent egg chaser certainly is bullshit.

Seems to be the police approach to sporting events

I wasn't thinking of bringing the wife. I realise I could have finished the sentence a bit better, however it's a shitty football forum not a seat of higher education.

It may be a shitty football forum, but it is our football forum