First Great Western - Could be worse! (First Great Western)

Member Name: nehpets81

Product:	First Great Western
Date:	09/11/09 (7 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Intercity trains comfortable, affordable and relatively punctual

Disadvantages: Regional services are not so good.

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 I'm not sure where they got the trains they use in for the local Devon routes but they were probably out of date 30 years ago! They really are an experience! I also experienced problems when travelling from Oxford to London where they replaced full sized trains with ones with only one or two carriages - I couldn't physically get on the first two that went through (this was several months ago now though)

I am due to travel with them again this weekend so I will update this with any new info from that trip..

So, First Great Western are not too bad when compared to some other UK train companies but there is a lot of room for improvement.

Summary: Fine for intercity, not so good for local services