Great Western Coffee Shop

To be written up this evening


Edit to add ... initial post written .... see below

I attended a meeting today ... reviewing timetable change issues for 2020.  It's the first time I've been at a meeting that stepped beyond my TravelWatch SouthWest brief / area and listened to how some Wales local journeys are affected by planned timetable changes.    Very much as I have observed in the Wessex area where trains rushing though the area from and to London cause waves for the far less lucrative, but far more numerous  local and regional journeys.

1. The acceleration of the London to Swansea train, with little change in its time off Paddington, means it arrives in Cardiff somewhat earlier.   From Cardiff to Swansea, it used be that the London - Swansea train and the Manchester - Swansea - West Wales service together provided a service that was any every half hour, but now the planned service westbound looks lopsided

2. That same acceleration puts the Swansea train ahead of the train from Portsmouth Harbour and the connection from Trowbridge  / Bath / Bristol to Bridgend, Port Talbot, Neath and Swansea get broken.   Serious issue?  It could be, bearing in mind that the previous incarnation of the Portsmouth service was Portsmouth to Swansea.

3. The Swansea to London trains are every 30 minutes first thing in the morning (commute to Cardiff) but only provide an hourly Cardiff to Swansea commuter in the late afternoon / early evening - they go half hourly AFTER the peak off Cardiff and not when they're needed ...  "if one or two of the Cardiff terminators could be extended"

4. Connections from Bristol to Chepstow and Lydney at Severn Tunnel Junction are - err - poor.  And this is a very fast growing flow with people starting to live across the Severn and commute into Bristol.  Could not some of the Portsmouth trains call at STJ?

5. Ebbw Vale to Cardiff trains are being extended with local calls to Bridgend. Good, but looks like they may get in the way of the Swansea Express as they make intermediate calls.

6. West Wales connection ... especially of extended Manchesters ... become significantly awful.

Posting above to start conversations ... comments please.   I will add some later!

5. Ebbw Vale to Cardiff trains are being extended with local calls to Bridgend. Good, but looks like they may get in the way of the Swansea Express as they make intermediate calls.


Would these services be using the VofG route to Bridgend.

May I ask where the meeting was held,and was an open meeting?

No.  Via Main Line and calling at Pontyclun and Pencoed

Also the connections from Bristol to the Hereford line at Newport, which, as I mentioned recently, are broken in the new timetable.  There are an increasing number of commuters from the Cwmbran / Pontypool area who work in Bristol - houses in a number of new developments are being snapped up by people who work the other side of the bridge where the house prices are rather higher.

Back in the 1980s there was talk of running Hereford to London trains via the Marches Line - rather quicker than the alternative route via the Cotswold Line - but that never came to fruition.  I've often wondered whether an Abergavenny to Bristol Temple Meads service could tap into this commuter market, though I'm not sure whether either TfW or GWR would be be interested in running it.  Perhaps one for an open access operator?

Eh? I don't think it is every half hour even now. Currently, the eastbound services (Swansea to Cardiff) are close to half-hourly (W&B arrive CDF at xx:48 and GWR at xx:26, so a 22--38 minute split). Going from London to Swansea however, the GWR services depart CDF for Swansea at around xx:50 (give or take a few minutes), providing at best a 15--45 miniute pattern when combined with W&B services departing for Swansea sometimes at xx:43 and sometimes xx:04. If what Real Time Trains is showing for January is correct, then the Swansea to London trains being 8 minutes earlier at xx:18 makes for a perfect 30min interval between Cardiff and Swansea in that direction. BUT, in the other direction, the London to Swansea train departing Cardiff at xx:42 seems to clash with the Manchester to Swansea departing Cardiff at the same time (although Real Time Trains shows them being retimed slightly to accomodate the GWR service, but only by a few minutes so the tail-chasing would persist).

Or am I reading something wrong?

Ideally there would be an hourly Swansea-Bristol as well and this would be at half-hour offsets from the Cardiff-Taunton in both directions with both the Swansea and Taunton trains serving Severn Tunnel Junction, Cardiff Parkway, Patchway etc. giving those stations a half-hourly service to/from Bristol. The Portsmouth service could then run non-stop (or perhaps just Filton) from Newport to Bristol Temple Meads. Primarily for electrification reasons, I'd also transfer the Cardiff-Bristol leg of the Taunton services to TfW, with the Taunton trains extended to Gloucester/Malvern instead of Cardiff.

In a board room in Bristol.   And very much the feeling / size / composition / approach of a board meeting too.  A lot of very fine tuning work (mostly results of previous inputs/meetings) coming back to the table, and putting in local authority, CRP and community umbrella (such as TravelWatch SouthWest) responses.   A group of knowledgable, well informed and understanding people all pulling in the same direction, and appreciating committee / board collective responsibility toward sensible pragmatic outcomes.   There are 3 or 4 regional meetings like this gone / going on, and others will follow to lead up to future timetable changes.

For the area I know (broadly services operated out of St Phillips Marsh and High Speed services that call at the stations in that area) some excellent outcomes - suggestions have really been listened to and acted on where it's clearly in spec and in everyone's interest, with other things that can't be achieved this time informing future direction and allowing people to keep an eye on following steps, trying to avoid suggestions that would block them.  All sounds very much like verbiage, I know ... take a look at my review at http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/22002 as a very narrow Melksham look and compare it back to some of the severe worries I was expressing a couple of months back.  Much improved - thank you GWR - not perfect and some losses but also some cases where advantage is taken of opportunities and on balance steps forward for the future.

South Wales is not my 'home patch' railwise, and the geographic spread of the meeting differed from previous ones - hence my discussion starter thread looking at stuff that's now in the public domain via Real Time Trains and similar sources.   And I did understand from the meeting that those South Wales interests are co-ordinated much along the line that the greater Bristol / greater Wessex (Western Gateway area?) folks are.


Correct - the concern is westbound becoming even less even than it is now.


The Bristol to Lyndey and Chepstow flow, and ticketing / permitted route topics were something I was personally only vaguely aware of.   Change at Severn Tunnel Junction, at Newport, or at Gloucester?   Which stations and nice ones to change at and how long do you have to wait?  What do online timetable planning tools offer?    There probably is a case for adding a further service in the Bristol - Newport timetable - SEWWEB (http://www.sewweb.info) suggested that in the hourly pattern timetables and the more I look at that the more I think it's along the right lines.   Also consider the open access suggestion for Cardiff to London that stops at Severn Tunnel Junction - though that will point from there toward a new (London) destination rather that strengthening the regional link to Bristol.

On stopping (more) Cardiff - Portsmouth trains at Severn Tunnel Junction - yes, that came up.  Just as discussed elsewhere (Heart of Wessex board) recently, we have a single service looking to perform multiple tasks and various compromises, with a suggestion that flow size and capacity of lines both mitigate against running each task as a separate train.

There is also the possibility of new stations being built east of Newport - a parkway station near Llanwern, and perhaps one to serve a more local population at Magor.  With the cancellation of the M4 relief road around Newport, I can see greater use of the railway to take the pressure off the M4 for local journeys becoming a priority for the WAG.  Ideally there would also be an all stations from Cardiff to Bristol Parkway, giving connections into Inter City services there.  Despite being on the main line, Severn Tunnel Junction has no direct services that go to Bristol Parkway, let alone London (except on the days when the 0730 Cardiff to Portsmouth is short-formed!)

Those extra stations are one of the reasons I put 'etc.' on the end of the list. Basically the ideal service I think would be a half-hourly stopper/semi-fast (Swansea-Bristol and Cardiff-Bristol/Taunton) plus the Cardiff-Portsmouth as a fast service missing out all those stops.

What is the capacity of the route through the Severn Tunnel and how much freight traffic is there through there and on the GWML from Severn Tunnel Junction to Cardiff? With the 2nd M4 around Newport (thankfully) in the bin and the tolls gone on the Severn bridge, I do think there's a need to get something in place quite quickly. With electrification to Cardiff (hopefully) in January but not yet on Filton Bank (and possibly remodelling work required in Bristol to allow the full capacity of the 4 tracking to be used; it was claimed that Swansea-Bristol couldn't start for a few years because of that) I have thought that a Cardiff - Bristol Parkway service using some of the many EMUs coming off lease (eg. 365s) could be put on as a temporary measure before adding the Swansea-Bristol and having the EMUs take over the wired bit of Cardiff-Taunton (hopefully Filton Bank wires will happen in CP6, having been deffered rather than cancelled like Swansea). But would there be the capacity to keep the EMUs to Bristol Parkway long-term alongside the extra Cardiff-Bristol path?

The new stations in south Wales like Cardiff Parkway, plus Severn Tunnel Junction, shouldn't be served by long-distance regional express and intercity trains in my view, but there's asperations for plenty of services that could serve them. The South East Wales metro map shows Chepstow and Abergavenny, so presumably extra services are planned for those (although I think terminating the suburban service at Abergavenny is silly when going one stop futher to Hereford would allow connections to Worcester and Birmingham and more options for travel towards Shrewsbury if some of the regional express services miss out Abergavenny stops). In all, looking at the 'Metro' map, you could have the following east of Cardiff on the main line in south Wales:
Stopping / semi-fast services:

• 2tph Maesteg/Cardiff - Ebbw Vale / Abertillery
• 2tph Ebbw Vale / Abertillery - Newport
• 2tph Caerphilly - Machen - Newport
• 2tph Cardiff - Chepstow (inc. 1tph Swansea/Maesteg Cheltenham all stations)
• 2tph Cardiff - Bristol (inc. 1tph starting back from Swansea)
• 1tph Cardiff - Bristol Parkway
• 1tph Cardiff - Hereford

That would be 8tph at any new stations between Cardiff and the junction for Ebbw Vale, 10tph at Newport and 5tph at Severn Tunnel Junction (at least some of which could also call at Llanwern and Magor).

Fast services (calling at Newport only):

• 2tph Cardiff - London (inc. 1tph from Swansea)
• 1tph Swansea - Manchester
• 1tph Cardiff - Wrexham/Liverpool
• 1tph Cardiff - Nottingham
• 1tph Cardiff - Portsmouth
• 3 per day Cardiff-Holyhead

It is a 4-track route, so this sort of frequency (in the order of 14-16tph) might be deliverable but it probably depends on how much freight there is.

Not sure how many Welsh train users and residents read the forum.

Could I ask if those mentioned above could post anything train or bus related about things going in Wales.

I seem to recall that the Severn Tunnel has an 8 minute headway.

60 divided by 8 is 7.5. So... 6 passenger trains per hour (3 to Bristol Temple Meads (inc. 1 to Portsmouth), 2 to London and 1 to Bristol Parkway) plus 1 freight/charter path per hour? Or is there already more freight than that?

Come to think of it, if the Cardiff-Bristol Parkway local can be fitted in at an appropriate time, the Swansea-Paddington (being the faster of the two London services) could maybe have the Bristol Parkway stop removed to further speed that up.

Not to do with the main line, but I see that two of the valley lines (Rhondda and Rhymney) will see their Sunday services increases from two-hourly to hourly, with a half hourly service south of Caerphilly.  It's good to see TfW making improvements which aren't dependent on new trains earlier than all the other proposed changes, though I'm not sure why the other valleys aren't being improved at the same time.

 

A point I've been making for a while particularly on the Heart of Wessex and possibly Transwilts.

It is interesting to compare attitudes of the Southern Railway and Great Western to clock face services, poor serving of intermediate stations and poor connections at junctions.

Having electrified much of the network by the 1930s SR had mostly a mostly clock face timetable  imposed (even on some steam lines). with a relatively fixed stopping pattern. Thus as commuting developed certain towns, because of their good service became heavy commuter towns like Woking. This pattern has been followed with Kent Coast and Weymouth electrification, but the minor stations such as Micheldever, which seems to becoming a Parkway, are still mostly served by the stoppers. One of the few major changes to the Southern services is the introduction of the Javelin High speed Services into Kent from St. Pancras. The effect tha has had on the old lines is probabably a topic in it's own right and could be relevant in HS2 v WCML.

Contrast this the GWR who had very limited commuter services into Paddington some from the Valley lines into Cardiff /Newprt and from Solihull and Shirley into Birmingham. Mostly non clock-face until the introduction of DMUs. Many intermediate  and branch line stations were poorly served. Thus it could take hours to get from Calne to Malmesbury  by train with changes at least at Chippenham and Swindon. Whereas it's 15 miles 32 minutes  by Road the bus wins. Thus until recently places like these stayed much the same size, but now we have the growth of house building in these areas with the potential for more rail passengers but still the same poor services.

 Problem, which emphasises  Grahame's point.

 That "we have a single service looking to perform multiple tasks and various compromises, with a suggestion that flow size and capacity of lines both mitigate against running each task as a separate train."

Unfortunately  I don't have a solution. Unless it's to provide more capacity at Junction stations to allow stoppers to be overtaken by fasts and give easy  interchange. Platform 4 at Westbury? Otherwise we'll have to build any new stations with platform loops, as the GWR did at stations between Taunton and Newton Abbot.

From  Rhydgaled list of services in post above

Caerphilly - Machen - Newport

Did you mean Machen? If so are they going to open those favourite quiz question stations Fountain Inn Halt and Waterloo Halt?

There's a new station, Miskin, planned between Cardiff and Bridgend. I've no details on it, but I really hope they make it four tracks with platforms on the relief/loop lines to allow fast trains to overtake stoppers.

I think I do mean Machen. On at least one version of the early Metro proposal maps (https://www.citymetric.com/sites/default/files/article_body_2018/09/south_wales_metro-map.png), there is a route shown from Newport to Treharris via Caerphilly. With the Royal Gwent, Pye Corner and Bedwas stops it may well have been envisaged as a bus route but remove those and using the freight lines to Machen and Dowlais would get you most of the way from Newport to Treharris by rail, with just the Machen-Caerphilly gap to fill. Unlike Miskin station, there is nothing on the Newport-Caerphilly link in the new franchise announcements so far sadly.