Making sense of December. Dean 7 or 9, Melksham 1.

[whole diary]

[grahame]

(((Posting this one in a general area as I'm comparing two lines which have separate boards)))

I'm trying to make some sense of the timetables / diagrams that are shown up by the latest FOI^▸ (Freedom of Information) disclosure and the On Line Journey planner - making sure I get my facts right before I shoot my mouth off.

Melksham to Swindon in the morning.

Now: 07:17
From December: 07:17

Dean to Southampton Central in the morning.

Now: 07:19, 07:50, 08:54, 11:55
From December: 05:46, 07:02, 07:50, 08:00, 09:00, 10:00, 11:02, 11:50, 12:00
(Problem - the 07:50 and the 11:50 FGW^▸ (First Great Western) trains don't come up on the journey planner, ever though they seem to be a part of the 05:29 off Gloucester diagram ... can anyone enligheten me.

And I read the May propsals being as follows:
Melksham to Swindon: 07:17, 08:20, 11:20
Dean to Southampton: 05:46, 07:02, 08:00, 09:00, 10:00, 11:02, 12:02

For simplicity in working this our, I've chosen just half the day and one direction. It looks to me as if there may be what is pretty close to a duplicated service provided at the minor Hampshire stations where the services are greatly enhanced even without those duplicates. And that the expense of two useful services from Salisbury, Warminster, Westbury, Trowbridge and Melksham to Chippenham and Swindon.

[grahame]

I have received an email that goes a way towards answering my question.

Services from Dean to Southampton increase from 4 to 7 (05:46, 07:02, 08:00, 09:00, 10:00, 11:02, 12:00) rather than to 9 ... the two First Great Western services leave Salisbury a few minutes ahead of two of these trains and altough we have historically referred to them as "stoppers" they now call only at Romsey between Salisbury and Southampton.

For a service that runs twice an hour, with multiple coach trains, I'm scratching my head a little at what extra traffic will be generated by a one-coach 153 running literally a few minutes ahead.  It could be that there's an issue with revenue division, and by running these extra trains FGW^▸ (First Great Western) will get a bigger slice of the cake. I don't think it can be problems in changing the SLC^▸ (Service Level Commitment), as it have to have been changed anyway to allow FGW to zoom straight through Dean and Mottisfont.