Great Western Coffee Shop

Timetables now online:
https://www.southwesternrailway.com/contact-and-help/timetable-consultation

Happy reading!

On the mainline changes west of Southampton, I think one of the subjects everyone was interested in was this new Portsmouth - Weymouth through service.  It is confirmed it is the existing all stations stopper from Portsmouth & Southsea that is extended through to Weymouth, but it has been moved round the clock face a little to form an xx00 departure from Southampton, so that long layover at Brockenhurst is no longer necessary.

There's also the new semi-fast SWR Portsmouth to Southampton that runs from the Harbour every hour, timed to depart Fareham for Southampton after the other TOC semi-fast services (ie the closely flighted set of SN, GW, SN trains), so it runs from Portsmouth to Fareham ahead of the Waterloo via Eastleigh service, but after the GWR Cardiff services.   Might take some of the load off the Cardiff train, if people notice it and prefer a 450 to a 158...
Paul

Looking at the Salisbury route there are significant additions.  Castle Cary, Bruton & Frome now have a "commuter" service to Waterloo together with other alterations to services.  Bristol gains an additional service from Waterloo (1624) together with a 2000 departure to Salisbury which connects into a Waterloo service. And, pause for fanfare of trumpets, Dilton Marsh now has through services to/from Waterloo.
We must bear in mind though that these are only proposals at this stage.

The link to the full consultation document is not there

 ;D ;D

Do bear in mind that people want to make journeys from Dilton Marsh to other places too.  Currently, a 2 stop ride to the little village  :D of Salisbury is possible at around 07:03 (arrival 07:36), then there's a service gap to 10:10, change at Warminster and get to Salisbury at 11:32, followed by the 11:13 that reaches Salisbury at 11:42.  And Dilton March is no longer a halt set in the midst of open fields ... its' between the housing of Westbury Leigh and of Dilton Marsh, ... extra services at 07:35 and 09:42, reaching Salisbury at 08:01 and 10:12 can make a massive difference.  Huge shame the 17:58 back from Salisbury doesn't call, but I suspect we could make a good point of asking for that; together with the 18:59 from Salisbury (which does call), you have a viable commuter service, and with a 13:52 back as well for people who want to pop into Salisbury for the morning.

Really pleased to see these extra services with the gap on the Bristol services between 12.20 and 19.20 finally 'plugged' with a service at 16.20.

I remember a few years back SWT planning to operate as many as five services to Bristol (paul7755 may be able to confirm this) but weren't able to for some reason so this goes a long way to providing a good service for Wiltshire north of Salisbury from Waterloo.

Looking at services to London from Weymouth, though there may be some lament in losing one of their direct services, they will now have a faster service to the capital to compensate as well as a useful second service to cover local journeys between Weymouth and Bournemouth.

The current timetable is not a good one with the second service leaving just 14 minutes after the faster service at 3 minutes past the hour stopping at all stations to Poole, then stopping at three stations between Bournemouth and Brockenhurst.

Good news for passengers from Wool travelling to London, this stop being added to all fast services not just afternoon trains out of London. I have a feeling those who use Hamworthy station won't be too pleased to lose there two trains an hour outside the peaks to London though.

I think there's going to be failry obvious complaints from a large number of the minor stations on the Southampton to Weymouth section where a change will be necessary for Waterloo. 

As I may have pointed out before though, this was all predictable if people had read the service specification spreadsheet that came out with the ITT.

Paul

It was. It's going to be interesting to see if SWR/Dft stand firm and push this timetable through without significant changes.

Since the link above was first posted the webpage has been updated to provide the actual consultation document.  Includes some of the rationale behind the changes.

Paul

Reading Platforms 4A/4B  ::)

Good to see the 4tph to Reading again as expected though

I see that in some cases the journey could conceivably be quicker if there were some easements put in place to allow the connecting journey to be in the wrong direction. The obvious example to me is my old haunt of Upwey, where going to London is in the shoulder quicker initially going to Weymouth (maybe more if the GWR services were shewn). There used to be an easement in place to allow this from the days when stops at Upwey were limited, but this disappeared at some stage after the stops became hourly in both directions in 1988. I see though that if anything usage at this station is in decline - but it has been served almost entirely by the slower London service for some years.

I see the Exeter services will no longer be stopping at Clapham Junction but the trains which terminate at Salisbury will call there instead.  Not sure if this is a great idea or not since it's quite a useful stop if you are heading towards Brighton although it does shorten overall journey times.  Back in the day of the class 50s I can't ever remember stopping at Clapham Junction though,

I do wonder how many tickets for those smaller stations are for stations beyond Southampton.  There appears to be a great kudos attached to having a London service but the further out one is I suspect the relevance reduces for smaller stations (there has been a similar debate about Stone station, which was proposed to lose its London service but get one to Birmingham instead). As an example, Holton Heath, Moreton and Upway only generate 130k entries and exits between them. Those with a reasonable flow will be keeping a through London service.

That might still be the official name! Not for the platforms, obviously, but then this timetable doesn't have platform numbers for anywhere else. The point is that those three platforms are part of Reading station for signalling purposes, but operationally have to be separate, especially if you are running third-rail EMUs. Hence a label just for this part of the station.

Fascinating discussions on this topic earlier today with someone who lives down there and came along to evaluate the Melksham Rail User Group's Railfuture entry.  The arithmetic that the professional and informed see from their heads on these things is not what the majority of railway customers feel in their hearts, and whilst the heart is often a good indicator, that's not always the case.

You talk of Stone and of Upwey.  There are others (of us) who look at through London service options, but in the end conclude that the balance of a good regional service, uncoupled from the mainline by having good connections into frequent long distance expresses that are passing, is a pretty good solution.   It means that there's an appropriate and economic shorter train running on the regional line - lower top speed, but better acceleration.  And it means that if there are main line delays (mind you, with perfect infrastructure in the Thame Valley, delays are rare  ;D ) the regional stations don't have to wait for their particular train to be clear of the logjam.

I am far too removed to claim any personal knowledge (or indeed interest) of the present day situation at Upwey etc - although it may well be a concern in some circles that the usage in general on this line appears to be stagnant. It is of course not a coincidence that the stops remain on the trains most likely to be used by people going to London on business. Appropriate easements though ought to be considered alongside the timetable.

When we first saw the proposal to split the Weybridge-via-Hounslow service into two bits, I pointed out that:

That have addressed the connectivity issue, by running the inner bit of the service (all stops to Hounslow) round to Twickenham, where it will now reverse to run ECS to Virginia water. That's in the timetables, though a little hard to follow, but the words about it don't make a lot of sense:

That bolded text seems to have been misplaced; it refers to the 2 Windsor tph which are the semi-fast ones:

That’s right, it is still the internal name of the separate timing point location for the “Southern” platforms, you can see it on an opentraintimes query, the code to enter is RDNG4AB.  The normal public facing systems must combine these split locations, of which there’ll probably be quite few across the country...

Looks like I'll be getting an improved service at Bookham. I can only see the Monday to Friday times but morning peaks increase from 2 tph to 4 and evenings increase from 1 tph to 2. Hopefully Sundays will also double to 2 tph.

SWR have published their response to the consultation exerci (https://www.southwesternrailway.com/contact-and-help/timetable-consultation)se. A number of the headline changes, as discussed above, are no longer being proposed - notably the reduction in the number of through Weymouth-Waterloo trains, and splitting the Hounlsow loop service from the Weybridge branch trains. Generally, changes planned to speed up trains by removing stops are being rescinded.

I do wonder how much allowance they have made for the obvious bias in such a consultation; loss of connectivity is a clearer disadvantage than a minute of extra time, and those who feel aggrieved are more likely to respond to a consultation (as a form of complaint) than those who gain. And how many might want to now respond to a consultation on the changes now proposed to the original changes?

Paul Clifton on South Today tonight made a lot of the U-turn aspect of this, and rather naughtily didn't once mention it was a consultation!

It’s the DfT who have to do the U turn, SWR’s proposals were nearly all in accordance with the ITT. Even the much criticised Weymouth reduction was in the ITT.  Many of the latest changes such as reduction of the off peak Windsor service require the DfT to alter the SLCs.

Paul

Of note within the GWR area:


No mention of Dilton Marsh calls which - however - were in the draft timetables and supported via write-ins.   They were good news, and I suspect that no further mention of them means they remain good news.  Platform extension at Dilton Marsh is underway.

Oldfield Park, Freshford and Dilton Marsh will now enjoy direct London services.

The SWR reports on five other (cross-franchise) services for the DfT are separate from this consultation - and there was a separate stakeholder discussion on them - so are not reflected in this SWR report, nor the timetable to which it refers. Nothing in the SWR plans goes against the requests / suggestion in to them as stakeholder suggestions for that next step.

Some one uk Rail forums mentioned the other day if it’s not mentioned it’s not changed from what was shown in the draft timetable. I don’t think anyone was going to object to the extra services/stops on the Waterloo-Westbury-Bristol line so all good. Get a regular Swindon-Southampton service and things have never looked better on the Cardiff-Portsmouth line.

edit: spelling correction