First Great Western

I am a commuter who does the Reading to Paddington route Monday - Thursday before 8am and after 6pm and am sadly tied to using the ever infuriating First Great Western service. Although they claim to be on time for 95% of their journeys, sadly not one of these includes my trains. I am very rarely at Paddington for 8:08, nor does my train reach Reading on time either. This wouldn't ordinarily matter, I like most people can handle a 2-10 minute delay, however it's the lack of customer service response when their constant delays are pointed out to them which is infuriating. They do not admit they are unable to run a commuter route - if you complain you will ...  Read the complete review

First Great Western is a company I seem to be travelling with quite a lot these days, and I must say the travel experience with them seems to be improving. The long distance inter city routes seem to be pretty good - they are not too expensive, the trains are fairly comfortable and the service seems to be quite punctual. The only real problem is that during peak times the trains are over capacity and quite a few people have to stand - the only way around this is to book in advance, which I tend to do for cost reasons when going long distances. The shorter distance routes are a slightly different story, however. I'm not sure where they got the ...  Read the complete review

I am a regular traveller on the First Great Western service from Penzance to London Paddington. I get on at Plymouth and have been travelling this route for the past 4 years every 2 - 3 months. I usually travel on a Friday evening after 4pm and return a Sunday evening or Monday morning. So i travel at peak times which is the worst time to travel on this service. Every time i use this service there are people standing in the aisles. You must made a reservation to enjoy this service (i say enjoy lightly) as it takes 3 and a half hours. So you dont want to start the service standing i promise you. This train i usually 6 or 7 carriages long but this ...  Read the complete review

I have used First Great Western only a couple of times and have never had a bad experince, in fact its been pretty good. With that train company I have managed to find a service I no longer expected to find in this country - an overnight sleeper. In the summer I caught the Night Riveria service from Paddington to St Ives and it was great. It departed Paddington at 23.45 and I arrived in St Ives for 8.15 the next morning. I've been travelling down to St Ives for a number of years (from the North) and am used to taking a full day of my holiday travelling, but it was fabulous to travel overnight and arrive at my destination on the morning of the 1st day of my holiday. ...  Read the complete review

First Great Western Trains are operated by the First Group an Aberdeen trasport giant which not only operates a significant part of the rail network, but much of the bus one as well. As a company it has been in existence for 20 years. My experience of First Western Trains however is along what used to be one of Great Western's main routes between the South West/West and London Paddington. I've travelled many times from Taunton to Bristol and from Taunton to the capital over 8 years, and last week I had the opportunity to compare experiences. My partner (Sue) and I travelled from Plymouth to Paddington on 3rd August and returned on the ...  Read the complete review