42077 – 18:00 Tuesday 21st April

42077

Fear not faint hearts and fair maidens, I haven’t deserted you but instead am back in the saddle after a couple of weeks dodging the annual FGW Easter debacle by taking my handsome face on a tour around Europe.

Monday saw me back riding the iron horse and would you believe it, it also marked a year to the day since I started this stupid blog. And just so I can confirm my thoughts down in writing, nothing, that’s absolutely nothing has improved about my commute in that year. Nothing.

Unfortunately for the capture, both Monday and today saw just duplicates, but Tuesday saw a new carriage falling victim in the shape of 42077, a Carriage F on the 18:00 to Bristol.

Here’s to the next year!

Oh, P.S. Nothing has improved.

42060 – 18:03 Monday 30th March

42060

Carriage E on the 18:03 Penzance service.

There’s nothing more to really say. I even got both seats to myself and slept like a new born baby whilst looking like a dribbling old fart.

42287 – 18:37 Thursday 26th March

42287

Sorry I’ve been away for so long. To make up for it, here’s a selfie aboard 42287, the Carriage C on tonight’s 18:37 to Frome……

….which, amazingly…..and I’m not making this up…….

…..was on time tonight!

And the Train Manager wasn’t a scruffy slob.

44005 – 18:00 Monday 16th March

44005

Is anyone else as bored with this crap as I am?

44029 – 18:03 Monday 2nd March

44029

Remember me? The annoying tit who’s still whittling on about bleedin’ FGW carriages?

Well I’m back and amazingly enough managed to capture one of the few remaining carriage A’s left as I sat in 44029 on the 18:03 Penzance service.

It was quite possibly the noisiest Carriage A I’ve been in for a long time but as the Train Manager made his way through the babbling crowd, checking tickets it got me thinking about certain FGW ticket rules.

One of the chattering cows on one of the table seats was asked for her seat reservation as well as her ticket. Now I know that some advance fares have a mandatory seat reservation included but what I’m puzzled about is why the TM needs to see it? I mean, the train has left, so presumably she’s not taking someone else’s reservation and in what way does seeing her reservation make her ticket “more valid”, it’s not like it proves her identity or anything. And let us just for a moment imagine another possible scenario.

I board the train with my super-dooper super-saver ticket and discover that the seat that I’ve had to reserve isn’t where I want to sit.

Perhaps it’s dirty, perhaps there’s a big fatty in the seat next to it overflowing onto the arm-rest, perhaps there’s some git on a mobile blathering to their mother about their recent hysterectomy or perhaps the last occupant has left it wet and stinking (happened to me once……I mean I once sat in a wet and stinking seat by mistake, not that I left a seat wet…..honest) so I decide to sit in another vacant seat.

The TM then starts his inspection and asks for my seat reservation. I show it and explain why I’m not in the seat. What would then happen……..I guess what I’m asking is, do I “have” to sit in the reserved seat and as I’ve said before, in what way does seeing my reservation make my ticket “more valid”?

Make sense?

Nope. Me neither.

42332 – 18:03 Monday 16th February

42332

OK, let’s be totally and utterly and doubly accurate tonight.

My journey from Paddington to Reading was aboard the 17:49 to Worcester Shrub Hill and I sat in Carriage D which was numbered as 42332.

We arrived at Reading at 18:31 which made it 11 minutes late.

I then travelled from Reading to home in 42382 which is a duplicate carriage. I captured this one for the blog on the 30th of June 2014. 

We arrived home at 19:09 which made it 13 minutes late.

Both delays were the fault of First Great Western.

See, all the information you could possibly ever want or need.

42056 & 42305 – 18:03 & 18:37 Thursday 12th February

42056 & 42305

Well quite a busy old day all told.

Firstly, I spent the whole of my morning trying to decipher this tweet from Grant, who did explain that it was something about buying new spanners or something, but even now I think he was trying to get something past us.

And then in Carriage E, 42056, on the Penzance service home I was forced to share my seat with a bloke with terrible BO who spent the whole journey to Reading performing an extraordinary array of over-exaggerated yawns. I mean, I was getting the message, he’d had a hard day at work, but did he really have to share it with the whole carriage? We suffered a slight delay and as we pulled into Reading, the TM announced why we were running late which set Mr Attention Seeker off into another round of tuts, shrugs, sarcastic laughs and much head shaking. Unfortunately some women encouraged him by engaging him in conversation which gave him the ideal opportunity to launch into a bizarre anti-FGW tirade which all centred around the motto “Transforming Travel” – which, to my knowledge FGW have never used as a slogan anyway.

“Oh, Transforming Travel! Pah! Never in a million years. Transforming Travle, my left foot!” etc

Just as I was preparing to move I noticed an iPhone cable on the floor under the seat. I picked it up and asked Mr Transforming Travel if it was his.

“Oh, no it’s not mine,” he said as he took it and put it in his pocket, “I thought it was yours.”

Which means he was not only a thief but a selfish twat that wasn’t even going to ask me if I’d maybe dropped my cable. A selfish thieving twat. A selfish thieving smelly twat.

And in other news aboard the 18:37 to Frome, I read the tragic news whilst sitting in Carriage B, 42305, that FGW Twitter hero Leo is leaving the company. He was the only one who understood me!

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaah!