Train invite for rail chief

8:27am Thursday 21st December 2006

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COMMUTERS campaigning against cuts in rush-hour services from Oxfordshire to London are to invite First Great Western's top manager to see the overcrowding on her firm's trains for herself.

Members of Ox Rail Action, which was formed at a meeting on Tuesday, say getting urgent action to tackle overcrowding on fast services from Oxford to the capital is their top priority.

And to get the point across, one commuter, who is due to meet FGW managing director Alison Forster tomorrow, will invite her to travel from Oxford into London on the 7.05am train one day early next month and then attend a meeting in Oxford that evening to discuss the effects of the timetable changes.

Under the new timetable, which began last week, the 6.45am and 7.25am fast services from Oxford were withdrawn.

The action group has set up an email address - saveourtrains@googlemail.com - for people who want to get involved with the campaign.

Action group spokesman Susan Westlake said: "We want to see longer trains, with more seats.

"We have calculated that the timetable changes last week have resulted in the loss of 80 per cent of the seats that were available for Oxford commuters, which was even worse than we thought."

The only remaining expresses which get commuters into London in time for work, at 6.38am, 7.05am and 7.44am, all start their journeys on the Cotswold Line from Worcester, so are already busy by the time they reach Oxford.

FGW's Thames Valley general manager Richard Rowland said on Tuesday that the firm was looking at ways to put "extra resources" into the rush-hour service from Oxford and Didcot in the new year.