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The GWR timetable for May has appeared on RealTimeTrains. A few observations from this part of the network...

Good news: half-hourly Gloucester to Bristol; hourly Worcester to Bristol.

Also good news: Slough stops removed from Cotswold/fast Oxford services; Reading stops reinstated on most evening peak down services (the 16.58 from Paddington still runs non-stop to Oxford).

Bad news: reduced Hereford to Paddington services, with one train withdrawn throughout (the 04.49) and another starting at Malvern instead.

What else has anyone noticed?

This was mentioned at a GWR meeting yesterday.

The message was any services shown should be treated with a pinch of salt.  While it is a guide there are still negotiations going on which could see services added or removed.   No timescale was given before what is on line is the finished product.

A draft timetable needed loading for t-12. Negotiations continue until such times at NR say no more. This can be later now without the pocket timetable deadline.

Looking at Didcot as it stands here (accept above caveats):
Reduction of service to Bristol Temple Meads to hourly from half-hourly. Probably has an effect for people traveling to/from the West connecting for Oxford (not to mention split ticketers!)
Clustering of fast services off-peak to Paddington into a 12 minute period. Ex Oxford XX14, Ex Cheltenham XX16 Ex Bristol XX26, then over three-quarters of an hour gap. (Somewhat better spacing in opposite direction)
Other strange gaps eg nearly an hour between 08:26 and 09:17.

The early morning  fast Plymouth service is no more.  Instead, there will be 0600 via Bristol service, calling at Reading, Didcot  Parkway, Swindon, Chippenham, Bath Spa, Bristol Temple Meads, Bridgwater, Taunton, Tiverton Parkway,  Exeter St Davids, Newton  Abbot, Plymouth and as then as before  to  Penzance.  This does however still provide an arrival in Plymouth  before 1000 which I believe was one of the reasons the current 0637 was introduced.

A three hour public journey time to  Plymouth will still be possible though with the 1004 to run non-stop between Reading and Exeter (as it used to do when it was the 1006 Cornish Riviera before December  2019) with a public arrival time in Plymouth of 1304 (1305 WTT).

Not GWR related (sorry!) but the XC Manchester Piccadilly services are shown as hourly with some running to / from Paignton.

Dave

Do you want to try that again?  :o

Or has concorde been hired?  ::) ;D

Edited, I was thinking too much about that early arrival into Plymouth when I was typing that.

Also seems Plymouth is finally back to hourly throughout the day after what will have been more  than  three years with some two hour gaps in service.  Not sure about the diagramming but could this mean more single  Voyager workings?

Indeed so but less trains down from Cardiff Central too as a result.

Another one I have just noticed.

1C36 (2202 London Paddington - Plymouth, via. Swindon & Bristol TM, arr. 0217) is curtailed to Bristol Temple Meads arr. 2336. An additional service is shown which will be 1C66 (2348 Bristol Temple Meads - Exeter St. Davids, via. Weston-s-Mare, arr. 0116).

Dave

You misunderstand, Chris. It's 0904 the next day. It's GWR's last attempt to get some use out of the 769s and they've given them realistic timings for the journey to Plymouth. The typo was that Zoe intended to write "a twenty-three hour public journey time to Plymouth".

At first look the Heart of Wessex seems ti be going to a more regular two hourly service but with the loss of the first up from Weymouth
Plus an 0845 SO Swindon Weymouth and 1940 Weymouth Swindon return, the Wizard is back?

https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/search/detailed/gb-nr:MDN/2023-05-24/0200-0159?stp=WVS&show=all&order=wtt

Just on CrossCountry, it's good to see the Manchester<>Bournemouth going back to hourly, instead of half of them only going as far as Reading.  And a limited number on the Reading<>York/Newcastle being reinstated at last, though still nowhere near as many as there were and none extending to/from Southampton.  Perhaps some more will pop into RTT as time goes by?

The Bristol<>Manchester axis sees a long overdue return to a pretty much hourly service to supplement the Devon/Cornwall to Scotland hourly service, rather than the current handful going to either Birmingham or Manchester.

I expect this will mean the end to most double Voyager sets though, so almost back to where we were pre-Covid!

Warminster's through train(s) from and to London Waterloo not (as yet) in the timetable, but that might be a Hook-related thing perhaps.

Mark

Looks like GWR's increased service to Carmarthen is happening. And Saturdays to Pembroke Dock.


It looks like not all TOCs have uploaded yet. Either that or TfW's crew shortages have come to a head and they've abandoned Cardiff!

Care to share what you are smoking?! ;D

Bad news: It's been decided to extend the 1548 Paddington to Swansea to Carmarthen. This hugely increases the risk of them putting half a train on the westbound departure at Cardiff at around 1740. Really not ideal – where was the consultation on such a decision? The 1618 would have been a much better candidate for turning into a Carmarthen train as it misses the South Wales peak.

Continued bad news: Once again the 1518 Paddington to Cardiff has failed to be extended to Swansea. Instead it continues to run back from Cardiff to Paddington lightly loaded to be swapped with a Bristol train that goes into North Pole depot. You have sidings at Maliphant Street too, GWR. You could even add an 11pm train from Swansea to Bristol to even things out if you ended up with too many units in Swansea – that would be useful too, especially on a Friday night.

Good news: no sign of TfW's awful consultation to trash the 0743 Swansea to Paddington (the one that actually recognizes that Cardiff has a morning peak) by putting a Swanline local service in front of it having any result at all yet. Hopefully this will be modified to the Swanline service running behind GWR.

edited by moderation team to tone down some of the wording used in original post.

As Bob said earlier, don't take too seriously what appears on Realtimetrains etc for the Summer timetable now.  This evidently is the Network Rail offer and subject to a fair bit of negotiation before things are finalised.  Improvements will need to be signed off by the DfT.

Still a fair bit to go before the actual May 23 timetable is known.

Agreed, and on that basis my local thoughts and comments to help document where adjustments would be improvements.

The job the timetablers do is the bedrock on which the service is based, and the right service is critical to passengers. So sometimes it's tempting to get rather emotional about decisions or suggestions made, which is why the timetablers, who are really clever and well informed technically, tend to batten down the hatches and hide away from the general public.  Intemperate language does not help, nor does telling them how to do their job.  Positive suggestions - early on - as to what we would like to see are useful, as are later tweaks.  And we can all work together to tune a service that works better for everyone.

I have taken a look at the timetable for my local station - Melksham - and the service that runs through it (through passengers account for two thirds of the passengers so are absolutely key).

The Monday to Friday draft service from May 2023 has two logical chunks. 

After 08:00 in the morning, it's close to ideal; I made some suggestions a couple of weeks ago and I suspect that the great minds of GWR had already seen and bettered what my tiny mind came up with.  Congratulations to the planners - it's a service about every 2 hours, maintains the critically timed late afternoon trains, and adds in (thank goodness, at last) a late evening return service. It even manages to provide (maintain) an extra early evening service by swapping a dmu with the Stroud Valley line.  Very welcome.  One tiny request - that the 22:26 off Swindon be retimed to 22:31 to provide a connection from London; it would leave the bay platform just after the Cheltenham Train rather than 1 minute after that train arrives which would be a customer service disaster that *might* connect. I see no pathing problem by holding back and indeed 2 minutes of pathing could be saved. Whatever, it would be a couple of minutes later into Westbury, but it sits there anyway for a few minutes before being shunted away for the night.  A few minute later into Westbury also REMOVES the temptation of people trying to bolt across to the Frome train that leaves at exactly the same time - another potential customer service PR disaster saved.  (Or run the train from Swindon on to Frome rather than the train from Cardiff??)

Before 08:00 in the morning, the proposal is a disaster.   There are no trains AT ALL. The 05:33, 07:21 and 07:53 to Swindon are lost, as is the 06:36 to Westbury and Southampton.  First arrival into Swindon goes from 05:59 to 08:32!! That will kill a lot of the morning trade, be a really big hardship to people, and kill the afternoon and evening trade too because people make round trips still.  I can see why it is done operationally - it saves a train.  There is no train at Westbury until an arrival from Filton Abbey Wood which then turns around to go up to Swindon.

So - what would I suggest.  Firstly, that the 06:51 Westbury to Weymouth starts back from Swindon at 06:08, restoring the 06:36 at 06:33. Giving connections from Melksham at Trowbridge to Bristol and at Westbury towards London and providing onward service that has irritatingly been missed for years to the Heart of Wessex.  In the up direction, 05:17 off Westbury as at present.  I did look at running it at 05:45 and turning it at Chippenham, but it would conflict with a freight and/or have to come in there just AFTER a Swindon and London train had left.

Secondly, I would suggest that the 07:28 arrival from Filton heads out to Swindon at 07:35 - the time of the train at present - calling Melksham 07:51 and arriving Swindon 08:17.  Not ideal, but the extra quarter of an hour would make a massive difference to an awful lot of very frequent / daily users.   Ideal would be another 10 or 15 minutes earlier, but I can't see that without interfering with services on other lines and I'm going to leave GWR (pretty please) to look at that.

The Saturday service - at first glance - looks excellent. Through train to and from Weymouth, down in the morning and back in the evening and (praise be!) something northbound after 18:35 at long last. Please may that last at 21:17 from Westbury at least run all year.  There is a reduction of two round trips, but they are the ones that would have been lost in my suggestion and on experience are sensible changes that will make the service more robust

The Sunday service looks good for the most part with the first southbound service connecting to Portsmouth, to Penzance and to Weymouth. The wait of 1 hour at Westbury on the return trip from Weymouth, somewhat less from Plymouth and from Portsmouth, are unfortunate but not new, and this could only be shortened by a few minutes as the train used has been shuttling up and down with limited turn arounds prior to that. Earlier return trains from Weymouth also have significant waits.

The elephant in the room is the question "Will this run reliably" ... and it has a better chance, I think, than some of the current services!  A lot of that is down to GWR actually providing the staff an not stealing them off for other services, having enough of them, and having them not withdraw their labour in a continued industrial dispute.

I am burning the midnight oil (or 3 a.m. oil) to write this; I will check in the light of day and if it my initial thoughts don't change, pass on my suggestions.

P.S. The  Monday to Friday morning service does not even meet that latest service level commitment, so something needs to be adjusted, doesn't it?. Or do we need to do an FOI to find out if that's been rewritten without consultation?

Two observations;

1. The 06:36 still runs to Westbury and Southampton, but starts back from Gloucester, as it used to a few years ago,

2. The 05:24 Westbury to Salisbury still runs, and then shunts to clear the platform at Salisbury - it currently goes on to form the 06:35 to Cheltenham Spa via Melksham (07:21), but I see nothing to show what happens with it next in these proposals - it could well be that it will still form that service, but perhaps there is an issue to resolve in the timings for that train?

So maybe a little unfair to describe it as a “disaster” just yet?

Overnight, the 06:36 has re-appeared ... and if the Salisbury to Cheltenham Spa service also re-appears with a call at 07:21 (plus or minus a few minutes) then that's "job done".

As published yesterday, it was a disaster and it remains close to that with just a southbound service at 06:36 restored. With the key peak train back at 07:21, that will change the whole thing.

As per BobM and RichardB - there are elements here which are not yet fixed.  And so this is an excellent opportunity to help GWR and the DfT realise where final "adjustments" are needed from a local / passenger viewpoint, as well as from an operational perspective.

Edit / Stop Press - a phone call just taken suggests that the further tuning is taking place, with final stuff supposedly in place by a week on Monday.  Past experience tells me to carry on documenting changes; in past iterations, things have moved from "please let us get on with this" to "you're too late - should have been raised earlier" which was a less that effective route to getting the right service!

Turning to the Thames Valley, the semi-fast Padd – Didcot services are shown as non-stop ML Padd – Slough (or at least Dolphin Junction) and vv as expected.  However, they sit at Reading for up to 14 minutes which makes them largely useless for through journeys between local stations west of Reading and Paddington and vv. 

I realise that GWR have to accept that on the RL's between Didcot and Reading there’s a free for all between out-of-path freights and their trains, and that a long layover at Reading on the up at least gives the possibility of punctual departures towards London.  But I’ve said many times before the solution is for NR to sort out the UR and DR between Reading and Didcot.  Not straightforward of course, as the XC’s and freights use bits of other busy lines across the network.

It wasn't 'published' yesterday, was it?  Or as well as the information on RTT did you also get some official information from GWR?

You're correct - it was not "published" by some definitions of that word.  It became available in public.

Publishing can include the following - from Webster's Dictionary
and the data has indeed been released to the industry engines for distribution.

Good.  That's reassuring then, given there's plenty of time for those missing services to appear until it is released officially...and we should all know by now how flaky data that far in advance on RTT is.  Though of course that means there's plenty of time for the additional services you've mentioned to disappear.  :-\

Interesting note on the 06:36 on RTT

I notice that both the 05:44 and 20:28 from Exeter SD to Exmouth are shown as running but the respective return services are not.

Service cuts or not?

On the Swindon - Westbury service, I have posted more specifics in Frequent Posters (http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/27156) to get some views from established members, and friends on Facebook can get at it on my page here (https://www.facebook.com/graham.ellis.5055/posts/pfbid02TPZjJMyZ8cQSNsXpPEs7Ja8GcZTP4o1Xap4mScmFqCGTCWkfq8bx3zcjA7C2Nod5l).

At Slough today, fencing is up on platforms 2 & 3 ready for the timetable change.

I can remember when real Inter-City trains called at Slough, which was really useful as among other things it's a focal point for local bus services (albeit with a temporarily messy drop-off thanks to the hideous new bus station catching fire). It seems we now have to trek out to Reading and change to pick up anything even vaguely long-distance.

Following on from a post on another forum it seems that, presumably as part of MetroWest improvements, there will be 2tph daytimes on Mondays to Saturdays from Oldfield Park and Keynsham. The services are not evenly spaced but it is still an improvement. See intended schedule on RTT for 24th May for Oldfield Park:
https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/search/detailed/gb-nr:OLF/2023-05-24/0000-2359?stp=WVS&show=all&order=wtt

Dave

I rather like Dilton Marsh:


(http://www.wellho.net/pix/202305_dmh1.jpg)