Great Western Coffee Shop

From The London Economic (https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/reports-of-packed-public-transport-and-rammed-roads-in-london-this-morning/11/05/)


About two thirds (66%) of Transport for London service have been running.   But GWR services have typically been running at 50%, with some routes much lower and some considerably higher.

Do we have any reports from GWR services of significant crowding this morning, or are we on a different curve once out of the London urban area?

A stopping service trundled past me from Tilehurst Station at about 0800, probably the 0754 to Reading. I didn't see any passengers in the eight carriages.

Popped into the station to get Metro (I did buy the Telegraph a few minutes later) and a customer was chatting to the ticket-lady. A young woman had also preceded me into the station. A couple of vehicles in the car-park. That's more activity than I've seen there  in the last six weeks.

I'd walked down through Prospect Park to deliver a packet and everywhere seemed as quiet as ever.

Rather too much is being made of alleged vagueness in Boris's speech (which I know is being discussed elsewhere in the Coffee Shop). Some Ministers have been trying to clarify matters, and I gather details are being announced today. One could hardly expect him to explain dozens of situations in a short speech.

Yes, it's very quiet still - I expect it will pick up a little during the week, but suspect any crowding is extremely isolated and largely confined to TfL services.  A week today is when the service levels were quite quoted as likely to increase up to around 80% of the normal service, so we'll see if that happens.

I have just been for a walk and there were a total of 8 cars spread across the 4 car parks (total capacity 2000+) at Didcot Parkway, although I guess most Didcot commuters will have a job where they can work from home.

Timetable change from the emergency timetable implemented at the beginning of the lockdown is not anticipated to happen until 18th May at the earliest, the increase is planned for 70 to 80% of the "normal" timetable.

The timetable change is subject to the railway companies meeting guidance from HMG on how to manage social distancing at stations and on trains

Charlbury station car park is becoming quite a popular place for little kids to practise riding their bikes.

As yet there are no reports of APCOA picking them up on the cameras and sending them fixed penalty notices for staying more than 10 minutes.

I expect the APCOA enforcement staff have all been furloughed!

Perhaps they have been re deployed to check for;
People buying Easter eggs.
Exercising for 61 minutes.
Allowing children to play in a front garden.
People lying down in public parks.
Barbecues on private property and only for one household.
Sunbathing on private property.

Well, we’re midway through the week and passenger numbers have probably DOUBLED.

Don’t get too excited though, as on GWR trains that means trains that had five people on now might have ten.  The ‘busy’ ones that had ten or so on board might now be carrying twenty. 

Slightly busier on the tube of course, and on other suburban trains in London, but don’t be fooled into thinking many of them are packed solid as the press might lead you to believe.  Still loads of room off-peak and, sure, the odd peak service here and there might be getting towards full and making two metre social distancing impossible, but that’s still very much the exception rather than the rule.

I’ll be watching closely to see how the situation develops.

I see in a photo' on the CRS site yesterday(12/5)  there's a 2+5 hst set on trial. Are we likely to see more with extra carriages returning?

 http://www.cornwallrailwaysociety.org.uk/latest-input--news--old-pictures-etc

.and scroll down...

Are London bound suburban rail commuters still crowding at the front of the train,  so as to be first through the ticket barrier?
The saving of a minute or two must surely outweigh social distancing concerns.

Three more to go...

How (if at all) are GWR planning to manage boarding to ensure that as far as possible social distancing is maintained and services do not become crowded?

Does this really happen? Even if I was going to work or somewhere else important I would do the exact opposite. I'm last out of the football stadium because I don't understand the hurry. I must be a different type

Once upon a time, many years ago .... it did happen.   One of the big concerns with the "10 car scheme" replacing 8 car trains with 10 car ones to places like Dartford and Sevenoaks was that it wasn't adding 25% capacity because the country end of the train was always much quieter.  And, yes, there were those of us who used to travel in the back of the train in the morning and the front in the evening, and wish that 10 car trains ran into Holborn Viaduct toot for some reason they never did.

Hence the old joke which asked why the extra carriages couldn't have been added to the front rather than the back.

Fascinating. The large rail terminus has never really been built for everyday journeys. London Waterloo is probably the one which handles everyday best. Germany has replaced many of it's termini, largely to benefit through running I guess, but with the added bonus of better crowd control.

One thing (which applies to Waterloo as much as the other London termini) which mitigates against the ability to maintain social distancing is the universal use of ticket barrier gates. Until this crisis is safely past, surely they should be left open so everyone can get to the platform without queues to get through the gates. The potential loss of revenue is unlikely to be great in the context of other factors depressing it at present.

Of course the reverse happens on Ascot racing days from Reading. Too far to walk down the train in heels.

RMT now threatening strike action - oh no we aren't - oh yes they are!  ::)

https://twitter.com/i/status/1260464900624863232

London Termini date from the early days of railways and a much smaller built up area - for the most part they're in a ring around London, and they were well suited in early days for relatively long distance trains that would come into "town" and turn around.

But is "Town" the City of London, or the West End?  The South Eastern Railway came in through London Bridge to Cannon Street in the City, where trains reversed and travelled via Waterloo.  The London, Chatham and Dover Railway took a different approach, with trains dividing at Herne Hill and a portion to each of The City (Holborn Viaduct Station) and The West End (Victoria Station).  Net result - six very short platforms at Holborn Viaduct.

With changing metrics, both City stations (Cannon Street and Holborn Viaduct) became very much commuter stations with services concentrated in the peak hours, and electric trains came quite early.  Holborn Viaduct, on a tight site, was particularly limited and the platform 2/3 island was removed - even so, the absolute limit was 8 carriages with trains needing to virtually touch the buffers on platforms 1 and 4 to clear the points far enough to leave the other one of those platforms accessible.  Platform 6, which was also short, was taken out as well leaving just the three platforms.

When we moved to London in 1959, my Dad's daily commute was from Petts Wood into Holborn Viaduct, from where a short walk took him across Holborn Viaduct itself to his office in a wedge-shaped building on the corner of Holborn Circus, blocking the view of St Andrew's Church.

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These days, Holborn Viaduct is gone ... and the trains carry on through, burrowing under through the replacement City Thameslink to Farringdon and onwards towards the North.   Call that "Crossrail 0" if you like, with "Crossrail 1" about to be (!) completed taking suburban trains out of the termini at Paddington Liverpool Street.   Things have gone quiet on Crossrail 2 - but that will take trains that currently terminate at Waterloo and send them under London to the Lea Valley.  Crossrail 3 will burrow down on the approaches to London Bridge and will emerge to the north of Marylebone, and Crossrail 4 will link Fenchurch Street and Victoria.

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It strikes me that - for some London termini - station exits at the country end of the platforms could help the asymmetric loading.  The intermediate bridge at Paddington, so that people don't crush towards The Lawn (especially now that City bound tubes to from the H&C platforms) isa step in that direction ... and I can't help feeling that exits / entrances (stairs or lifts) at the Embankment end of Charing Cross would be well patronised, even if the shopkeepers of Villiers Street moaned at a loss of business.

From Monday coming the 12-car 387 and 10-car 800/2 GWR formations are returning to at least some extent.  There's an increase in the 9-car formations out and about as well than currently is the case.

In other news, TfL are in desperate need of financial support: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-52662171

Among the great flood of Covid-19 documents pushed out over the last couple of days, there is this one called "Coronavirus (COVID-19): safer transport guidance for operators" (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-safer-transport-guidance-for-operators/coronavirus-covid-19-safer-transport-guidance-for-operators). I guess they hope id that GWR and the rest will read it and say "ooh, goody, that answers all our questions". Somehow I don't think it will.

Here's a small sample:

It's be interesting to know if GWR are actually implementing any of these suggestions, or indeed any other measures along similar lines? (As Avanti are)

Paignton-Exmouth seem to back to 4 coaches; probably more for the Exmouth commuters.

I'm no fan boy of the RMT leader that's not quite what he said.

He is saying to his members if you feel unsafe is to enact the "work safe procedures"  which are pretty universal in the Rail Industry.

The Unions and senior railway management (NR and ToC's) have work very hard over the last 2 or so weeks to agree how to ramp up the train service to 70 or 80%  The Unions have worked very proactively in this process.

The really annoying thing is the Prime Minister blusters out last Sunday people should start to return to work, when the DfT and the Rail Industry had agreed the 18th May to commence the service increase.

The reason the railway needed a few weeks, quite a lot of trains had been sat in sidings for weeks so needed checking and treating with antiviral, NR need to ensure system were fully working.  Also management plans and flow control needed to be set up at stations 

......if not that, they'll find something else to strike over.....🤦‍♂️

http://railnews.mobi/news/2020/05/15-rmt-threatens-strike-over-governments.html

A couple of examples of social distancing measures on GWR platforms.

The only termini in Germany which I can think of which have been replaced by through stations are Stuttgart (still being built) and the deep level lines - essentially the north-south routes - at the Berlin Hbf. Leipzig Hbf has had an S-Bahn tunnel dug underneath it but remains a terminus for main line trains and München Hbf is still a terminus and is likely to remain so, its S-Bahn tunnel having been built some 50 years ago. Frankfurt-am-Main is still a terminus.

The Hauptbahnhöfe in other cities: Hamburg; Köln; Hannover; Essen; Dresden; and so on are through stations and have been since time immemorial, so to speak!

New information, put on BBC after minight, could be intersting in London on Monday..
Quote: Security guards with crowd management training will be at some stations.
From. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52701112

Thankfully I live in Dorset, and can cycle to work when it restarts.

I do wonder if crowds are even 10% of what we saw at Manchester - see Manchester Evening News (https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/chaotic-rush-hour-scenes-jam-17259854) from last November - whether keeping people off the platform or queuing will (a) just not move the problem and (b) will ensure people don't miss their trains.   Going to be interesting.

Heidelberg and Braunschweig were two examples I had in mind.

 Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe as well. Hbf is now on a through tram train route connecting mainline with town system.  ED not dual voltage trams to a non electrified branch.

Not sure whether dual voltage trams from Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe now run through Hbf amd onto town system

Hmmm! I'm not sure they are particularly good examples. Planning for the replacement of both these terminal stations started in the 19th Century and work started in the 20th, in the case of Heidelberg in 1902. Both were held up by two wars and a lack of money between them. Heidelberg finally opening in 1955 and Braunschweig in 1960.

As eightf48544 pointed out http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?action=profile;u=228 (http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?action=profile;u=228) Kassel was also rebuilt. But this was because the division of Germany had shifted the traffic flows from bring, at least in part, radial flows to Berlin to being largely North-South. The Neubaustrecke Hannover-Würzburg largely built in the 1980s used the rebuilt Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe to avoid time loss in reversing at the Hauptbahnhof.

So we have a total of four termini (five if we include Kassel), which is hardly 'many', and these were rebuilt over a period of a hundred years or so. In all cases it was to improve train running and in the cases of Heidelberg and Braunschweig one of the main driving forces was the desire to remove road level crossings at the throat of the stations which even in the days of horse-drawn traffic were a PITA.

It doesn't look as if crowd control was in the minds of the architects at all - apart from trying to make the stations pleasant places to be in.

Edited: Forgot the NBS Hannover-Würzburg in my original post! Doh!

It was just a theory, I apologise.

That's fine! Unfortunately it didn't read like one - it was more like a statement of fact. :(

It's one of things I'm probably oversensitive about. There exists a school of thought that claims that foreign railways do things so much better than we do - and my experience of having lived in three continental countries shows that 'it ain't necessarily so' to quote the song.

I believe talks with the DfT are leading towards a largely normal timetable operating across the country from the first week of July.  Just in time for all those GWR staff shortages on a Sunday! 

Though I doubt the planned 4tph Bristol<>London service will commence then.  In fact I personally have my doubts that we’ll see that anytime soon.