Great Western Coffee Shop

Going through loads of old papers, I found some timetables that are about 30 years old.

Before you click on the link, ask yourself how many Paddington services you think Bedwyn, Pewsey and Westbury had each day.   Then take a look at the timetable ...

http://atrebatia.info/bandh1983to4.pdf

A great example of how steady incremental increases over the years have massively improved frequencies.

Agreed.

But back in the early 1980s, was there perhaps less of an expectation that anyone working in London would also choose to live in Pewsey - just for example?

 :-\

It's often the Sunday services that show best how travelling habits have driver service frequency improvements, such as the 8-fold increase in trains serving Hungerford in this example.

The service was certainly "London facing" in those days - trains left (all to Paddington) at 07:04, 08:29, 09:59 and 19:14, return trains arriving at 11:39, 17:39, 19:04 and 19:39 ... those are Monday to Friday. A sprinkling of others running 1 dy per week.

Logic suggests commuting to Reading, or a more genteel working day in London.  An extra train Monday morning only to London, and Friday evening only from London, suggest weekly commuters.  Interesting that extra trains ran via the Berks and Hants on Friday evening, isn't it?    Can't imagine there would be any call for that these days  ;)

For comparison, this is 1965.

London-Westbury (https://i.gyazo.com/84ffb8ff31ae664ab6ed7ca6f2a45c7f.png)
Westbury-London (https://i.gyazo.com/32908d1681ce560e52d063a7584e7a91.png)

Can't help wondering how on earth they expected the Lavington service to attract passengers ...

Maybe someone important in those days lived in or near Lavington?  ::) ;D

I wonder why Bedwyn was chosen as a terminus even back in the 1960s for some services from Reading.  There really isn't much of note between Hungerford (except maybe Pewsey) and Westbury so it seems an odd place to turn back rather than either running on to Pewsey (which would have removed the need for intercity services to call there) or turning back at Hungerford (which would have then required intercity services to also call at Bedwyn).  I wonder if it was chosen simply for operational convenience.

I think Bedwyn was possibly chosen as the Up Siding was converted to a Bay Platform.  Nowhere at Hungerford for trains to wait other than in the sidings.

Here's an older timetable ...

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/band1895.jpg)

Oh, for the days when there were trains stopping at Seend, Holt and Limpley Stoke ...  ::)

Bathampton too - perfect for a park and ride

Well, yes - but I was trying not to get too involved in current re-opening issues - or indeed going even further off-topic from the Kennet Valley.  ::) ;) ;D

I've used Limpley Stoke, it's not that ancient!  :o

Curious how the 1965 timetable has several halts between Westbury and Newbury that were closed by 1983 but not beyond Newbury. Or was it just that they didn't list those on that timetable?

Thank you all. Very interesting. Just shows to show how much more intensive the modern railway is and that things were not always better under BR, or even the pre-nationalised railways for that matter.

With the trains from Bedwyn, yes, the sorts of fairly wealthy people who were using them worked fairly short hours and came home relatively early (presumably staying in their clubs and private houses if they were dining in London). Certainly in the case of the Manchester club trains, they were usually timed to get in about 10am and leave about 5pm. I believe that included a director of the GWR, but that might be an urban myth.

The Wednesday, Saturday and Thursday services in the GWR are likely accounted for by half-day closing and market days.

There would likely have been a significant traffic of school children, including to and from boarding schools such as Marlborough. My father-in-law lived in Devizes and took the train to secondary school in Bath every day, which if I read the timetable rightly, meant that he spent 95 minutes each way on the train, getting home after 7pm.

And of course it goes without saying that if the infrastructure had just been left in-situ with minimal maintenance from the 1960s to the 1980s, there's a reasonable chance that many of the closed stations would now have significant levels of traffic, justifying far higher service levels than the ever did before.

With the boundary between the BR(WR) London Division and the West of England Division near Lavington, I think Bedwyn was chosen as the last station in the London Division.  Beyond that, into the territory of the Bristol folks running the West of England Division, there was a far grater zeal to shut stations and reduce any remaining services to as little as could be got away with.  London Division tended to keep stations open and stopping services remained a thing on their rails.  But cross that divisional boundary, and different rules applied.

Back in the GWR/early WR days the boundary was indeed at Bedwyn which was indeed the last station in the London division with everything west of there up to and including Castle Cary in the old Bristol division.  That said though, I can't see the case for keeping Bedwyn open would have been that great compared to Hungerford and east.   I'm not quite sure when it was moved to Lavington but if it was still at Bedwyn then given what you said above, it's suprising that Pewsey survived.

Actually had there not been a need to serve Pewsey, I wonder if closure of the line west of Bedwyn would have been considered with West of England services instead routed via a double track Weymouth Line from Thingley Junction to Westbury.  This would have been longer than the direct route but would have still been shorter than going via Bristol and any significant time penalty could have been reduced by line speed improvements.  Had this been done then maybe we'd now have a regular direct service from Trowbridge and Melksham to London.

I can't lay my hands on the references I'm thinking of at the moment, but I believe the long term plan was to single (again) most of the B&H west of Newbury and including eventually, all the way to Taunton.  I don't think total closure was ever on the books (now prove me wrong  ::)).

Serpell option A closed the whole B&H ... option B turned Westbury into a branch from Reading:
http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/DoT_Serpell001.pdf
The whole route survived in C3 which was the next most draconian.

Thanks Grahame, couldn't remember where I had seen it (and you proved me wrong in the process :P).

Indeed, although the Serpell Report was rejected the BR 5 Yr Plan published in the autumn 83 proposed significant reductions in track miles, including partial singling between Newbury and Cogload, with 42 miles affected.  Many of these reductions took place, e.g. Dr Days Jn to Filton Jn dequadrification, and some were done and long been reversed (eg Burngullow to Probus).  Thankfully many didn't, such as the then remaining double track section on the North Cotswold Line.

It also proposed some passenger closures, most famously the Settle to Carlisle line, and the complete closure of Marylebone. Of interest to some members, it also proposed the closure of some routes with no intermediate stations, including the 8.5 miles between Thingley Jn and Bradford Jn.

A few years ago someone "in the know" told me that one of the main reasons the decision was made to keep the B&H open was because of the stone traffic.