Great Western Coffee Shop

James Gray, MP, on prospects for a Bristol to Cambridge service.

https://play.buto.tv/2Q29G

Very little I suspect until more capacity appears between Didcot & Swindon

So Corsham is to become the fourth corner of the triangle quadrilateral of science?  :D

Nice to see an MP in a rural English seat lobbying for rail, and to hear that a East/West rail is still being lobbied for.

As he says, who cares what services are proposed for the stations, just get the things built ASAP and figure out the details later.

Rather than wait for east-west rail though, I would have thought a good option would be to include Wiltshire in Metro West and extend services east to Swindon? Presumably there should be enough Turbos around to run it if there's enough capacity on the line? 

Answering the second point first ... this is the "back" of a promotion in which the Wantage / Grove case is lead, pressed by the Oxfordshire MPs, and on that basis extending MetroWest to Swindon doesn't meet their need.

"Who cares what services" ... hhhmmm ... there's little point in building a station if nothing will call. "London to Bath and Bristol expresses cannot stop at a wayside station like Corsham" we are told "so you need a service before you can have a station".   Currently there is a train passing through at 08:38 on its way to Swindon that's a 150 + 153 combo, but that one service isn't regarded as enough to serve the station.   Metro West with the "what do we do with it at Bath?" hourly train extended to Swindon would serve Corsham and be really useful there; the main Corsham flow would actually (according to studies) be to Bath and west thereof, secondary flow to Swindon and change for London, so that would work well.

Swindon (and west thereof) to Oxford (and north and east thereof) is also a significant flow opportunity, and would provide a train of regional rather than intercity nature through the Grove and Wantage site.   I'm not personally convinced that the major flows from Grove and Wantage are actually to either Swindon or Oxford - I suspect there's a very strong desire to travel to Reading and London, and that "for London change at Appleford" would soon  be regarded as a poor second best to a through service, especially with Appleford likely to be on a diesel link to Didcot.

P.S. We haven't mentioned Royal Wootton Bassett, Saltford or St. Anne's in this discussion ... yet.

It's hard to imagine "change at Appleford" being a decent answer to anything. Change at Didcot, with trains reversing there between Swindon and Oxford, would surely serve far more people. Didcot's a lot more of a "centre" than Appleford.

Depends on who's running the service / whether it's part of the franchise.   As Franchise, reversal at Didcot would be practical.  As open access, it would be regarded as potentially abstractional and the trains couldn't call.

It has almost certainly changed in the last 40+ years since I lived there, but then the major commutes from Wantage/Grove were definitely to Oxford and Harwell (Harwell Science and Innovation Campus).  There were also a few who commuted to Swindon.

I would say Oxford and Harwell certainly would still be major commuter destinations from Wantage and Grove. 

Interesting - thank you.

The railhead for the Harwell Campus is Didcot ... with frequent (but quite slow) buses from the station to the campus - around half of which carry on to Wantage. I can't imagine people fro Wantage catching the train to Didcot to connect to the bus.  But the station would be at Grove (Wantage Road) and I'm not sure of the metrics between Wantage and Wantage Road.

I admit the Harwell traffic will not transfer to rail.

However, with good bus links I see no reason why Oxford should not be a strong market for rail. Parking is difficult and traffic bad.

Wantage road once had excellent public transport links to the station (the tramway, but it closed to passengers in 1928). However, the station is very near Grove and the internal Wantage/Grove bus services could easily serve the station.

Until the extra housing is built around Wantage/Grove, I would suggest that there is no untapped pax wanting to travel, as they all currently travel via Didcot - see the car park usage there!

So building that station will wait until a) the houses are being built, and b) capacity between Swindon/Didcot is capable of carrying stopping trains. The 387s to Didcot extended through to Swindon would be the obvious carrier towards London, with EWR being the cross-country carrier you are discussing above.

Stations are trains are chicken and egg aren't they? But arguably if you agree to build the station first (which will take a fair few years to go through the GRIP process anyway), then in the meantime a suitable service way of serving it can be found, assuming that there are enough paths for a stopping service.

I take your point on the journeys though, it seems to me that throughout much of the country we desperately need a wholesale restoration of intermediate stations and stopping services, but of course the problem is that many of our main lines are already overtaxed, whilst the complexity of our geography means that stopping services are harder to squeeze in.

The rail system was thinned out over the past 70 years to a point where many stopping services are not viable, without doubling track or adding sidings.

Current mainlines have high speed traffic every 15/30 minutes normally, so the timeframe for a stopping service to use the mainline is not great.

Worcestershire Parkway is an example of where there is sufficient political pressure, the station will get built even though no TOC really wants to stop, and the pathing is such that it is likely to need other stops removed to ensure that the path is big enough to be able to stop.

cf Pershore/Honeybourne on the North Cotswolds, where the proposed IEP once-an-hour timetable is likely to have to drop stops in order to fit WParkway in....b*ll*cks really. A town the size of Worcester does not need 3 stations

Oxfordshire CC has considered a station for Wantage/Grove a 'priority' for some years, but it has gone nowhere because of the problem of identifying any trains that could form a reasonable service. They pin their hopes eventually on an hourly East-West service and a peak service from Swindon on to London some time in the next decade - or possibly now beyond (2025-2030). They also want four trains an hour between Didcot and Oxford and on to Bicester, of which the former would be one.

If those 4 are to be stopping trains, then additional track capacity will be needed. Of course, the council has no funds for this, so it'll stay on the wants list for some considerable time.

Worcestershire Parkway will work because Cross Country will drop Ashcurch and Bromsgrove, and there is a parallel route along Bristol-Birmingham  through Malvern and Worcester.

The chronic traffic on the M5/M42 near by is driving up train use in the area, which is already beyond capacity, so an extra fast route to Birmingham will work.

Wasn't there some kind of scheme to close Shrub Hill once W. Pkway was up and running?

Also, which XCs stop at Ashford?

He doesn't mean Ashford - he means Ashchurch.

And Ashchurch want to keep their XC calls naturally as they have few enough services already.

Thanks for the note, I did mean Ashchurch.

Currently, the Caridff-Nottingham XC service has a randon stopping patter for small stations, Lydnew, Ashchurch, Bromsgrove, etc.

There is talk that CrossCountry want to drop Ashchurch, and also Bromsgrove, especially when the extra rolling stock arrives and there may be an hourly service from Bristol to Worcester.

I don't believe there is any plan to shut either Worcester station, as they are both small and serve local communities.

I'm guessing you mean extra rolling stock for GWR, not XC as indicated?

No talk from GWR about an hourly stopping service Bristol-Worcester (yet) - I was discussing this only last week with their Head of Timetables. Of course, XC don't run Bristol-Worcester, so you must again be referring to GWR?

You are obviously not local to Worcester? Shrub Hill is the junction station for Malverns/Hereford, Birmingham, Cotswolds & the South, so it makes sense to stop there. Foregate Street is bang in the centre of Worcester, so it makes sense to stop there as well for commuters & shoppers. There is *less* reason for stopping in Parkway currently, frankly.....

Wantage and Grove had a combined population of 18,000 in 2011 how big do you think a place needs to get to support a station?  Melksham had 14,000 in 2011. Didcot had a population of 25,000 in 2011, but kept a station when it was far smaller than Wantage and Grove are now.

If you took that argument solely, they'd be queue several pages long for a new station! :-)

I was saying that the commuters from that area all currently drive tro Didcot - hence why Didcot has reached the capacity it is now, not just based on their 25,000 population. Thus constructing it now would simply extract from Didcot mainly with a few from Swindon & thus very few new journeys towards London would be created.

Thus, it'll need those new houses proposed but unstarted to generate *further* demand before the new station will get its funding. And it'll need the track capacity too....

That is more or less the 2011 Census population for Didcot but it predates the start of Great Western Park. The estimated figure now is somewhere between 29-30k, plus those that live in contiguous development outside of the current Didcot boundary (at least another 1k).

Cross country BR services started calling at Didcot in the early 1970s when the population was 14k. They stopped when there were about 10k more people ...

Reducing people driving to Didcot would be one of the rationales for a Grove station, particularly to take pressure away from the Milton Interchange and/or Harwell

presumably, the site of Didcot power station will eventually be housing and/or a business park??

One, the other or both possibly. As well as a road that will go over the railway. Maybe. The are currently trying to attract a university to put an outpost in the town. Somewhere there is probably a map showing a potential site for a Cathedral.

I disagree. If I were commuting to Reading or London, yes I would. However the drive from Wantage to Didcot is not a good journey and I would suggest the most of those commuting to Oxford will either drive to the Botley Park & Ride or perhaps take the bus to Oxford.  The Wantage Oxford traffic is untapped demand and a significant proportion of the working population of Wantage and Grove work there!

Hmmm, I'd debate the 'significant', but yes, I'd agree there's an Oxford commuter base in that area. Possibly no more than would fit in a single peak train each way, but wouldn't sustain a station.

What it would do is open up employment opportunities for those reliant on decent public transport & obviously needed once they start building x,000 houses there.

Melksham is comprised of two parishes - Melksham (Town) and Melksham Without.  Melksham Town parish indeed had a population of a little over 14,000 in 2011, with a further 6,000+ in Melksham Without, which virtually surrounds Melksham Town; the total urban area of the township being over 20,000 at that point which has risen to about 25,000 today.  Much of the rise has been in Melksham Without, though come the next financial year some 700 homes (so that's around 1,900 in population) will be transferred to Melksham Town, as they're in an area of housing that's only accessible by road through the town.  Melksham Station is about 9 minutes walk from the town centre bridge.  A further few minutes walk (200 yards according to a map I just looked at) and you're still in the built up area but no longer in "Melksham Town" - you're in Melksham Without.  The new housing that's being built on the old school site (which served the whole of Melksham), just five minutes walk from the station, actually has the boundary going through the middle of the development and some houses are in Melksham Town and others in Melksham Without!

How is the population of Melksham Town Parish (that was the 14k in 2011) rather than the Melksham urban catchment area relevant to railhead and passenger justification comparisons?  (You are in good company looking to make this comparison - The SRA and successor DfT department did the same thing and I failed to understand their logic either!)

On Shrub Hill vs Parkway, I thought the reasoning was meant to be that Parkway would serve as the junction station, with trains between Bristol and Birmingham (and further south and north) on one line and Worcester to Oxford on the other. Basically the same function as Shrub Hill but a parkway. Leaving Foregate St as the city centre station, with services to Bhm via Droitwich, Bristol and Cotswolds – so pretty much all the current ones. I'm not really keen on the parkway station concept, they don't seem greatly useful except for car commuters from rural areas (with a few exceptions like BPW where the nearby city has expanded to effectively make them an urban station). However, they seem popular, probably for those very reasons.

All a bit of a tangent in a thread supposedly about Corsham.  :-[

Yep you are right - but note the Cotswold services listed in both descriptions. So Cotswold Line services to WOF and beyond will call at all 3.....

I cannot speak for now, but when I was at primary school there in the 1960's I would say more than 30% of my fellow pupils had a parent working in Oxford and another 30% worked at Harwell.  In addition Oxford was the shopping centre of choice for those items that could not be bought in Wantage. 

Which does seem rather unnecessary. I don't know how usage of Shrub Hill vs Foregate St compares but I'd imagine proposals to close either would meet a lot of opposition.

I'll be interested to see how busy Shrub Hill is after Parkway opens.  It can be a bit of a ghost station at times now, considering its size.

The dynamic between Foregate, Shrub Hill and Parkway will be very interesting.

The Worcester traffic is horrendous, and depending on bus services, and parking, many people will continue to both existiing stations, but some of those from outside of Worcester commuting in will find the new station and parking very useful.

The later addition of CrossCountry services to Parkway will be the game charger.   

Surely it's not just about the gross population living next to a station though - it's about how many of those people use the train on a regular basis, and the 'hinterland' that drive/cycle/take the bus to the station. Plenty of people in places like Devizes and Marlborough who drive a fair distance to a station on a fairly regular basis. There must be plenty of relatively small towns and villages in the South East of England where a significant proportion of the town uses the train to get to work/school/shop and thus the station is economically viable.

Also, we shouldn't forget that better services will attract new residents and businesses, and also that even if rail users just drive to a town's station to park, in the long-run they will tend to help the local economy as they will be more inclined use local shops/restaurants/cafes/childcare/garages etc.