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This is going to be a constructively negative post.  Where does your timetable need sorting out??

Huge timetable changes in December, and for the most part they've gone far better than they might have done - though some rocky starts.   My questions:

a) Where are there little (?) things that [now] need sorting out?

b) Can you see / suggest how that could be done?

I am looking in particular at the "Central" area - to the west of Network South East land, and to the east of Exeter - but by all means feed in other items.   Reason for questions - timetabling meeting coming up, zero promise of getting anything fixed (the "impossible" likely to remain impossible) but a number of things may be tweakable in December if not in May.

On my list for starters / noted and in no particular order

1. "Worcester to Bristol is a mess"

2. Bristol 'burbs - 11 local trains to Parkway aren't - they turn back at Filton Abbey Wood

3. Maidenhead (yeah, East I know) at around 07:00 into London

4. First Saturday service Westbury to Taunton far too late

5. Last Saturday service Westbury to Swindon far too early

Far from a complete list - I note the Cotswold Line 2020 issues log thread, but unsure as to which / what are key issues.  Similarly the TransWilts log, where the biggest January issue was actually broken down trains not the timetable being none-robust.

Please add your own items ... numbers would be useful.   Solutions not guaranteed, but having them on the radar is, by very fact of posting into this thread.

I have a seperate thread on this service but the 0740 Reading -  Oxford. Last 4 weeks RT 0% and RT - 5 minutes 24%, and it was no better before christmas.

The two big issues on the Cotswold Line are (as extensively chronicled in the Maidenhead thread) the 05.11 from Worcester failing to couple up at Oxford, and the lack of Reading stops in several evening down trains. The XC connections were never a good substitute anyway, but in practice they just don't work reliably. See the Recent Train Times summary of evening Reading-Oxford XCs (https://www.recenttraintimes.co.uk/Home/Search?Op=Srch&Fr=Reading+%28RDG%29&To=Oxford+%28OXF%29&TimTyp=A&TimDay=4p&Days=Wk&TimPer=4w&dtFr=07%2F01%2F2020&dtTo=04%2F02%2F2020&ShwTim=AvAr&MxArCl=7&ShwAdv=ShwAdv&TOC=27&ArrSta=5&MetAvg=Mea&MetSpr=RT&MxScDu=&MxSvAg=&MnScCt=) - there's a lot of red on there for a train that people are relying on to get them home...

Agree this is not good. Good news is from the start of the Summer timetable a train at 8.12 for Penzance. I think Summer only though.

Connections onto the Avocet Line from Down Paddington services at EXD.

The previously not bad situation was substantially wrecked by the new timetable such that:
ex-PAD arrivals at 0929, 1113, 1153, 1211, 1312, 1412, 1512 & 1613 have connection times in excess of 30 minutes (which takes some planning when the connecting services are half-hourly!).
The 1918 ex-PAD does not connect until 2017 (59 minutes).
The 2116 & 2121 ex-PADs have to wait until 2215 for a connection. The 2117 EXM service could surely be retimed.
The 2225 ex-PAD only connects to the 2340 EXM service - I bet the local taxi drivers love this.

Which is a key cause of the problems with the Didcot to Oxford service, especially in the peaks. Fewer services than  before,  rammed trains and poor punctuality and reliability.  Especially the 0807 - the infamous 0740 from Reading.

From the summer timetable change, the unit for the 21:07 Swindon to Westbury service on a Saturday is diagrammed to be provided by a new 20:04 Westbury to Swindon service. This is a much more useful utilisation of a unit and crew compared to the current timetable, which sees the unit running empty from Bristol to Swindon.

This will also provide a nice connection out of the 18:15 Weymouth to Bristol service, which divides at Westbury to provide a unit for the Swindon run (effectively providing a through service from Weymouth to Swindon, even if not advertised as such).

A bit of a shame it can't be advertised as such - a well timed through train returning people from a day on the coast on a Saturday would go down well, surely?

It may well (and hopefully will) be advertised as such. I was just being cautious regarding the limitations of the customer information systems, although having said that, services that are currently scheduled to divide on route seem to be advertised as such on both the GWR and SWR systems.

Why on earth can't it be advertised as such??  Real Time Trains also shows the 08:45 (Saturday) Swindon to Westbury being attached to the Weymouth train from May.   For upcoming "snagging" meeting it's very much a "YES PLEASE" on feeding the 21:07 off Swindon in this way and a "please continue to do so beyond September".


Phew!

I was pleased to find out this week that Network Rail are making a couple of changes in May that I had discussed with them.  These are both to fix important connections with services on the Hereford line at Newport.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that there are real people at Network Rail prepared to listen to the experiences and suggestions of individual passengers.

Although not a timetabling issue as such, I've noticed the lack of robustness when the non-stop Paddington to Bristol Parkway services lose their paths, as there are not many places for them to overtake stopping services.  It's a pity that westbound non-stop services can't make use of the middle road at Swindon while another train is stopped at platform 4.  The alternative is to delay the stopping service by about 5 minutes by putting it into the loop between Wantage Road and Challow.  With both services then running late there is almost inevitably another conflict at Severn Tunnel, and I recently saw a Taunton to Cardiff service put into the Pilning loop to let a late running IET get past.   

It hasn't been a middle road since 1966 and after that someone built a tower block too close to put a platform loop back in.

Before they put platform 4 back there were huge delays as all the down services calling at Swindon had to cross the up lines. 

OK - call it the up fast line, then.  I think it does have bidirectional signalling, but what speed are the crossovers from the down line?

Bi-di signalling, yes, but very slow crossovers - 30mph at the eastern end and 25mph at the western end.

You could route the down stopping service over to platform 3 if it's not going to conflict with something.  I've seen the possibility of doing that a couple of times since the December timetable, but not actually seen it happen as yet, so the non-stop train ends up getting checked badly.  That would be the most efficient way of getting a down fast around a stopper at Swindon.

Speaking of platform 3, there seems to be a real aversion to using it these days.  Up services more often than not get put into platform 1 which is a less efficient way of operating as the eastern and western points and speed through the platform are only 20mph rather than the 30mph of platform 3.

A good example of that is in the evening where 1L27 the 17:51 to Paddington is put into platform 1 - usually running a couple of minutes late, with 1H52 running fast through behind at 17:56 and then another stopping train due to leave platform 1 at 17:59 from Cheltenham.  Nothing uses platform 3 at that time of the evening, but the 17:51 going through 1 often means the fast doesn't get a clear run through and the 17:59 has to wait its departure.  Seems something very easy to resolve?

To be honest, the whole station approaches could do with a remodelling.

The current design such as it is with Platform 4 wasn't so much as a design as an add-on.  Even then when P4 was done there were virtually no non-stop passenger services through Swindon so stopping then on the down fast was not an issue. 

OK, since that quotation is from me, I’ll bite. The main problem with the Malvern/Worcester-Cheltenham-Gloucester-Bristol service is the two-hour frequency. The second problem is that the service is trying to do too much. At the northern end, it needs to provide connections to XC at Cheltenham. At the southern end, it’s providing a local service from Gloucester to Bristol. But it doesn’t need to do the whole route. So if you were inventing the thing from scratch, it would be split - Malvern/Worcester to Cheltenham, and Gloucester to Bristol.

But the problem with that is that Cheltenham is very ill-equipped to deal with terminating trains, and already has as many as it can handle (from London and Wales). The chance to alleviate this by having two terminating platforms for services from the south (coupled with a good new car park) was blown a few years ago.

It might be worth splitting the service at Gloucester, but again I’m not sure about the station’s capacity.

But it's also a very, very useful direct service from the Vale of Evesham / Worcester / Cotswold Line area to Bristol, and the connections available at Temple Meads. I've used it many times for that.

Forcing a change at Cheltenham would ruin that. If CrossCountry were stopping their Bristol trains at Worcestershire Parkway then that might provide an alternative, but it's only the Nottingham-Cardiffs that will be stopping there.

Worcester-Bristol just needs to be hourly.

The CLPG will be taking up the Cotiswold Line/Worcester-Bristol issues & I'm taking up the Oxford area issues (incl Reading/Oxford issues above) on February 25th at the East Timetable meeting.

Incidentally, the CLPG has already heard that Worcester-Bristol won't become hourly until a new franchise includes it - there just isn't any available stock in the current franchise.

Pleased to hear that. The Reading-Oxford local service is a mess - irregular gaps between services, poor connections at Didcot, and none of this seems to fit in with other traffic to make it at least reliable.

Perhaps two Paddington stopping trains an hour to/from Didcot, and two to/from Oxford (bi-mode - running onto to the North Downs as Grahame has suggested recently) on a near even 15 minute clockface timetable, Oxford-bound to be timed at Didcot to provide a reasonable single change service from Swindon pending investment in the Didcot west curve?

If the timetable can't be fixed, GWR should look to update some of the double-back easements that already exist to include Didcot so that passengers travelling using XC are actually able to get to/from Didcot without irregular waits at Oxford.

I believe the precedent already exists in easements 700137 and 700138 which were present when the was a reliable(ish) regular stopping service between Reading and Oxford.

I think I'd amend No3 to be Twyford & Maidenhead. Generally the fast services for London are over crowded and unreliable. The evening trains also suffer this as well especially where trains have to be joined or separated.

A more general (vague?) issue is the London centric timetable and 'suprer fasts' makes going to Wales a bit more difficult or at least means travelling into London first rather than picking up trains at Reading.

Are the ‘fast’ trains worth it?  I was on the 17:00 PAD-BRI tonight, it got in late, held up at Swindon, I suspect behind the Swansea, there had already been some slow running before Swindon and then from Bath to Temple Meads we must have been following a local service in. 

It’s not just about timing but also capacity.

The fast services provide space for the longer distance traveller (at the expense of the Reading commuter).  The fasts also mean that there’s more throughout available at Reading as you don’t lose several minutes in braking/acceleration and a platform dwell.

Really useful, thank you.  Please keep posting. 

For my immediate meeting, please note that we'll be looking at smaller issues (in operation terms) that are ripe for a quick fix - things like upping service frequencies are not going to happen from this route (though extending from Filton into Parkway and running a passenger carrying train in place of an empty train might).  No harm logging the bigger things - just don't be surprised to get "out of scope" as an answer!

No 3 - the commuter trains from Twyford and Maidenhead that have had atrocious rates of cancellations and delays in the morning peak. That’s the self-centred priority for me please.

The evening peak from Paddington to thames valley is also much thinner than it was, but I can deal with that.

So whilst the comments re: New Trains are noted - i agree with the previous poster but that is perhaps one for the future.

I do agree that the Reading-Oxford does not work at present. There are gaps during the day of up to 50mins at Didcot and the connections are not always very good at Didcot adding time to what should be short journeys.

Some of this comes from bunching of services linked to the fact that pre-electrification they were through services so in effect you get the electric to didcot closely following or being followed by the service to Oxford to maintain the historic paths. If it was possible to space these out that would be better and reduce the long waits at Didcot for through journeys.

One nice example would be in the evening where you have an arrival from Oxford at 21.39 with a service all stations towards Reading leaving at 21.38 - retiming the latter by a few minutes would be great for journeys and remove a 40 minute wait.....

The reliability on the route could also be improved if it was possible to retime to reduce conflicts at the two Didcot junctions.

A decently timed service from Temple Meads back down to Weston on a Saturday evening would be a god send
Just after 10pm is rubbish if you have any plans for being out in Bristol on a Saturday evening

One small irritant noticed in the new timetable.

The 18.07 PAD-FRO is now faster through the B&H but then waits 13 minutes at WSB to assume its previous path, arriving FRO 20.07. This is presumably to avoid conflict with the up SWR service which also calls at FRO (19.57) and is often late. Any chance of improving either service and maybe the GWR service does not now need to be service train back to WSB (only) on its return, before continuing ecs to Bristol. This might then mean a swifter reversal at FRO if that helps.

Exactly the sort of thing to ask!

Question.  Lawrence Hill and Stapleton Road to Bristol Parkway, lost connectivity - problem caused by "having to" turn Weston trains back at Filton Abbey Wood.  How does stopping outbound trains via Yate additionally at Lawrence Hill and Stapleton Road rate as a solution from a passenger viewpoint?

Question I would like answered is how are paths to be found for the long promised half hourly Bristol Gloucester service.

Something that I thought would be fixed in the December TT was Severn Beach line trains skipping Lawrence Hill. I presume this continues because it improves the chances of getting a train from CFN to BRI and back in 40 minutes, which is the core frequency on this route.

We still have a reliability problem on this line. In January there were 24 cancellations and 307 services running more than 5 minutes late (out of 1427). I suspect that these delays are often caused by extended dwell times, particularly on the Clifton Down to Temple Meads section where peak hour trains are packed with school children and cyclists.

It's probably too much to hope that anything much can be done to improve this in May. I am, I should say, in awe of the people who write the timetables; it amazes me to see how the units that ply up and down the Clifton Extension get to turn up in Malvern, Taunton, Westbury and goodness knows where else...