FarceLogo

 

To avoid any doubt - we are not in any way related to First Great Western, whose website can be found here.

 

Farce Great Western

We do not pretend to be experts in the field of national rail privatisation but this link shows that on 1 April 1994 the Railway Act 1993 came into force as a consequence of the British Government deciding to privatize British Rail. British rail was broken up into approximately 100 different companies. In 2006 after various restructurings the situation in the South West of England is that Network Rail maintains the infrastructure and a number of train companies have been granted franchise rights by the British Government to run services over their lines. Up to 1 April 2004, two companies operated services from London Paddington to the west of England:

  • Thames Trains
  • First Great Western

On 1 April 2004, Thames Trains lost its franchise and these rights were obtained by the First Group (First Great Western) and on 10 December 2006, First Great Western introduced a new timetable which in the words of Alison Forster, its Managing Director:

 

Is the first timetable for the new Greater Western franchise, covering the 1,500 daily train services we run across the region.

Earlier this year, First Great Western carried out a a major consultation on the timetable with stakeholders, customers and interested groups. We studied the comments and suggestions in every single one of the thousands of e-mails and letters we received and we were able to make extensive alternations to the timetable as a result of this feedback.

However, it has not been possible to incorporate every suggestion and we realize that some customers will be disappointed.

Over the course of the next few months we will continually monitor the new timetable and, if necessary, we will make further modifications in the future.

Most of the people behind Farce Great Western live in and around Newbury a town in Berkshire served by two stations:

  • Newbury and
  • Newbury Racecourse

But we are not the only customers suffering from effects of recent changes to the First Great Western time tables. More protest groups / links to related sites can be found here.

Industrially Newbury is flourishing with more and more large companies setting up base in or around it. To name but a few:

Besides the large number of employees traveling to these companies, a significant number of commuters rely on First Great Western to get to London. With a fast train this can be done within 45 minutes. With a slow one it can take about 2 hours.

The timetable introduced on 10 December doesn't recognize the importance of public transport to the West of England and we at Farce Great Western want to do something about it!