Great Western Coffee Shop

I thought it would be interesting to see how things have changed regarding the levels of service on FGW's routes for the coming 'Summer' timetable as compared with the same timetable of 10 years ago. I'll be breaking down the timetable as FGW have broken down their timetables for this timetable, so each route can be covered in some detail and I would love to see your own comments about the changes - good and bad - that have taken place.

Firstly a bit of history. Ten years ago is an ideal starting point if you are going to see what successes privatisation have bought to the railway industry. Most of the Franchises let after the demise of BR had a couple of years experience to mean they had been given chance to settle it to running a TOC and the various idiosyncrasies that this new system brought with it.

The trains currently operated by First Great Western now were covered by three separate franchises back in 1999.

1) There was the FGW franchise which operated the HSS services FGW currently operates which had taken over from Great Western Trains (basically a management buy-out with back up from Badgerline and 3i) who operated the service initially up until this take-over in 1998.
2) The regional services in the west country, now operated under FGW's 'West' banner were operated by Wales & West which covered a much larger area including Wales and parts of the North West, until 2001. Wessex Trains was then formed and the region was made much smaller. Wessex Trains were then merged with FGW in 2006 to create the current 'West' division.
3) Thames Trains was operating the suburban service out of Paddington and longer distance services to Bedwyn, Hereford and Stratford-Upon-Avon. It also operated trains on a number of branch lines and the route from Reading to Gatwick. It was taken over by FGW in 2004, initially as First Great Western link before eventually becoming the LTV (London & Thames Valley) sector of the current FGW franchise. Apart from the Stratford trains going to Chiltern Railway the routes LTV operate over haven't changed.

For the purposes of the comparison I'll usually only cover the weekday timetable, and like I say your comments on your own impressions of what has changed will make my efforts worthwhile and hopefully provide some useful informed! I'll add a new route to the thread every couple of days.

Right - I'll now start with Route 1 - Paddington to Bath Spa, Bristol TM and Weston-Super-Mare - I'll cover Bristol Parkway when I do the South Wales route

The basic service frequency hasn't changed much. There's a train off-peak every 30 minutes between Bristol and London stopping at Bath, Chippenham, Swindon and Reading. With one train also stopping at Didcot Parkway. This frequency continues through the peak hours. A couple of trains back in 1999 missed out Swindon. The journey time for the off-peak services was also similar to today, although the peak-hours service was generally slightly quicker with one train each way missing out a stop at Reading, now all trains stop at Reading. The last train out of Paddington used to be at 00:45 but now that's much earlier at 23:30 although the actual number of late evening trains has generally increased slightly.

The total number of direct trains from London to Bristol TM was 33 and is now exactly the same!

Through trains between London and Weston-Super-Mare have increased from a total of 12 to 16.

There was also a total of 11 through trains between Bristol and Oxford which had the effect of providing additional services on the Bristol-Didcot part of the route. These were withdrawn from the timetable around 2003.

Possibly not the most interesting route to start with, but I'll continue with another soon...

Returning to the original subject....

Surely one of the original franchise commitments was to increase the service from 3 tph on the HSS to 4 tph as far as Swindon (2 to Cardiff, 2 to Bristol TM).  I can't remember exactly when this happened but it should be included as a privatisation benefit of the HSS, as it enhanced the service on the Bristol run.

That's right. I'll be covering the additional Cardiff trains in the next route on here - I believe they started in 2002?

They started with the introduction of class 180s.

OK, so the initial conclusion that privatisation has brought no real benefit on the London to Bristol run isn't quite right, in that the service has increased from 3 trains per two hours to 4 trains per two hours.

Thanks, John R.

As this particular original topic was beginning to run in competition with a discussion on the EU directive requirement for annual timetable changes, I've split those posts that are more relevant there, to a new topic, Annual timetable changes (http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=4589).

Hope this clarifies things!

Chris  ;) :D ;D

Thanks, Chris - It's amusing how one choice of word in a long post can send a thread spiralling in a completely different direction to the original intention of the post!

Nice idea for a discussion IndustryInsider.

For me personally I found the cutting of the 00:45 service so that the 23:30 is now the last HST one hard to take.  About 7 years ago I sometimes worked late at a bar as a second job before commuting back to Reading and this train was ideal.  It was also great because as anyone who has got a late night train back from Paddington knows the policy of using 2 or 3 carriage turbos which are crammed with drunks getting home can be quite an awful ordeal.  The 00:45 provided a nice avoidance of this with their being plenty of seats/space for everyone.

The 00:45 removal was also followed up a few years later with the removal of the hourly service to Reading through the night (it's now bi-hourly) - although I appreciate this is another route in the discussion here it does go with FGWs policy of cutting these night services back since 10years ago.

Boppy.

The 0045 used to be a two car turbo not an HST

To be fair, I think the frequency was reduced by Thames Trains.  Did it ever run through the night Saturday into Sunday back in the BR days?

Route 2: London Paddington - South Wales

The main change on this route in the last 10 years was the introduction of the hourly off-peak Cardiff-Paddington services following the introduction of the Adelantes earlier in the decade. The Adelantes are now gone, but the trains remain - now being operated by HST's.

This means that Cardiff Central (as well as Newport and Bristol Parkway) now get a half-hourly frequency to the capital between the start of service and the 18:25 ex Cardiff. In the other direction it's half-hourly between 06:45 and 19:15. Cardiff (and Newport) now sees 30 weekday trains to London compared with 23 back in 1999 (and two of those were very slow services to Waterloo operated by Wales & West).

The Swansea services run hourly, and as in 1999, the peak-hour Cardiff trains also continue to/from Swansea to give a 30 minute frequency. There's 3 additional FGW trains running from Swansea now though as there is an additional evening service from Swansea and two in the morning. The last direct train of the day from Swansea to London is at 20:29 - that used to be as early as 18:30 on all days except Friday! Early birds won't be so pleased though as the first train from South Wales doesn't reach London until 07:32 whereas it used to get there at 06:36.

The opposite is true in the other direction. First arrival at Swansea from London is at 08:57 rather than 10:03 as it was. There's 21 direct trains from London-Swansea up from 18 - the last train back is later too, at 22:45 rather than 22:00.

The additional Cardiff trains have also provided further benefits, giving a 2tph service from Bristol Parkway (to complement the 2tph from Bristol Temple Meads), and in conjunction with the Bristol-Paddington route, there are now far more trains from Swindon-London - a total of 71 now operate. It was 47, so that's a huge increase (helped by the investment in a new platform at Swindon).

Didcot Parkway is now regularly served by trains to/from South Wales which used to happen on an occasional basis in the peak hours only. This has softened the blow of losing the through Oxford-Bristol trains and means that you can still get to Cardiff from Oxford with just the one change. The number of trains from Didcot to London has not changed much though as some of the Oxford-London trains that used to call there off-peak now don't.

Journey times off-peak have crept up by a couple of minutes on most services, though they follow a more consistent pattern than before.

Journey times in the peak hours are typically 10 minutes or so longer than they were in 1999. Mainly due to the fact that all trains now stop at Reading and Swindon whereas several peak hour trains missed out a Reading stop in 1999 and one train each was ran non-stop between Bristol Parkway and Paddington. That did the trip in 77 minutes; the quickest now is 82 minutes.

The only other changes of note are are the removal of the through 'boat' trains from Paddington-Fishguard.

So, overall a marked improvement in the number of trains, though nothing to shout about in terms of journey times. It'll be interesting to see whether the Cardiff half-hourly trains survive the Recession as there has been talk over the years as to their viability, and it would be the obvious service to remove from the HSS family of trains should times get too tough...

The SRA did suggest that they could be withdrawn in the new franchise back in 2005.

If they were cut..... what would happen to the rolling stock?

Three realistic options; they'd be snaped up by another TOC, they'd sit in sidings somewhere in long term storage until the leasing company can find them a home or FGW wants them again, or they'd end up on the scrap heap!

I haven't heard any talk about this happening recently though, but if you look at the off-peak loadings they are not exactly spectacular...

The obvious solution would be to adjust the fares system:

Cardiff - Paddington
Peak Return: ^173.00 : Single ^86.50
Off Peak Return: ^61.00 : Single ^60.00
Super Off Peak Return: ^30.00 : Single ^20 (valid between 1155 and 1455 towards Paddington, and 1115 and 1415 towards Cardiff.

Or, just massively increase the Advance Purchase availability on the xx55 from Cardiff and xx15  from London. Nobody benefits from empty trains so they might as well "flog" a few extra seats.

Quite right. There is no excuse for empty trains like these. The M4 is always busy, so there is demand! Preferably more Super-Off-Peak fares, and some extra Advances.

However, if the service were to be scrapped:

The HSTs displaced would be needed on the Cotswold line to get rid of the Thames Turbos on ALL Oxford fasts (and therefore, all trains to Worcester and Hereford). Although off peak demand is weak here too, it could be increased with cheaper fares on off peak services.

Route 3: London Paddington - Gloucester & Cheltenham Spa

Cheltenham and Gloucester have traditionally seen their services to the capital provided by a mix of local trains running to/from Swindon connecting into other fast trains with several direct trains mingling in with them. The last 10 years have seen a steady increase in the direct trains which now total 9 in each direction on weekdays. This compares with 6 up trains and 5 down trains back in 1999. That's a pretty healthy increase overall.

The spacing of the trains has also been improved over those years - 4 trains leaving Cheltenham between 05:55 and 08:31 cater for the regular business and long distance commute market and after that direct trains are provided every two hours from 08:31 until 18:31. In-between there's a local service to Swindon on a two-hourly basis too which gives a 1tph service throughout the day until the evening. The return journey from Paddington is very similar, with the majority of services biased towards the evening peak.

To give an indication of the improvements, ten years ago the direct trains from Cheltenham left at:
06:03, 06:54, 11:36, 14:19, and 15:59
Now it's:
05:55, 06:30, 07:31, 08:31, 10:31, 12:31, 14:31, 16:31 and 18:31.

Journey time wise, as in common with other routes, the point-to-point timings have marginally increased. Back in 1999 the down Cheltenham Spa Express was timed to do the journey in 2hrs 1minute which is 14 minutes quicker than anything on offer today, though towards London the increases are much less significant.

Early morning and late evening services are generally better than they used to be, notably from Gloucester you can now reach London for 07:16 whereas it used to be 07:52.

All trains on the Swindon-Gloucester corridor also call at Kemble and Stonehouse, and the total number of trains on that section has grown from 17 to 18 per day. The better spacing of the trains makes for a much better service too.

Serious consideration is being given to redoubling the single line section from Swindon to Kemble and if this happens then this will further allow the route to develop as well as acting as a strategic diversionary route. There is still scope for improvement, 18:31 is still quite early for the last direct train back to London, but is way than the previous offering of 15:59! I think marked improvements have been made on this route, which FGW should be congratulated for.

Some subsequent posts, originally made on this topic, have been moved to a new topic (http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=4613), simply to avoid any confusion on this excellent summary of the changes in the railway service over the past 10 years.

Chris  :)

Route 4: London - Exeter, Plymouth and Penzance

Probably considered FGW's flagship service is the route from London down to Devon and Cornwall. Important all the year round, but especially so over summer when holidaymakers swell the numbers on trains significantly, either using the train to get to their holiday destination, or using them for short day trips out when they get there.

Back in 1999, excluding the sleeper service, there were 8 through trains from Paddington to Penzance (9 on Fridays). Now there's one extra which gives an hourly service from the capital from 1-6pm (7pm on Fridays).

Journey times through to Penzance are as follows:
5h 48m, 5h 05m, 5h 05m, 5h 31m, 5h 30m, 5h 38m, 5h 27m, 5h 28m, 5h 12m, 5h 36m

In 1999 they were:
5h 36m, 4h 55m, 5h 27m, 5h 27m, 5h 44m, 5h 24m, 5h 57m, 5h 05m, 5h 25m

Not much change there - though again the quickest train today takes longer than the quickest train 10 years ago - but then the 4h 55m minute journey time was achieved with only ten stops en-route. Now that's a minimum of 13.

Coming back the other way it's a similar story, though departures don't follow the same clockface pattern that they do in the other direction. A 4h 57m journey time is possible on the first train of the day, but again it used to be quicker at 4h 44m for the 305 mile trip at a shade under a 65mph average (62mph today). Impressive given the nature of the route through Cornwall.

Plymouth and Exeter (the principal stops en-route) see a similar pattern - a couple of extra trains a day on what there were, but at the expense of a couple of minutes extra on the journey time on average.

Paignton sees a total of two through train on weekdays at 10:00 and 17:33. Back in 1999 there were three on the route from Paddington, so that's a reduction of one train a day. It's worth noting that South West Trains also operate two direct trains from Waterloo to Paignton (as they did back in 1999), though these are slower.

One weekday addition to the timetable is a through service between London and Newquay which didn't operate in 1999 - though there were through trains at the weekends.

The Night Riviera sleeper service continues to operate overnight in each direction despite whisperings over the years of it's viability.

I might be misunderstanding you here, but if you referring to the 19:03 departure that runs Monday - Friday..

Fridays only from May

Aha shows how much attention I have paid to the new timetable..apologies.

Interesting to see one of the few "improvements" introduced in the December 2006 timetable is to end.  This is going to make the Golden Hind even more busy Monday to Thursday then.

I would agree it is poor, especially seeing as you change at Plymouth for onward connection to Penzance Mon-Thurs, I fail to understand the reasoning for this.

It means that there is a morning Plymouth - Penzance operated by an HST.

So running an HST on a Plymouth to Penzance local is more important than a later direct service from Paddington to Penzance?

the 1903 from Pad is very quite after Plymouth, bear in mind it stops everywhere in Cornwall and gets to Pnz at 0035! The morning HST that will operate additional during July and August from Ply-Pnz replaces a unit that despite being 3 cars in high summer is usually rammed! being the first convenient train to get from north/East Cornwall to Penzance and St Ives.

It should also be noticed that since the December 2006 timetable there are quite a few more stops at Tiverton Parkway and Totnes.

Route 5: London Paddington and Reading to Newbury and Westbury

The biggest change on this route since 1999 has been the speeding up of the hourly off-peak Paddington-Bedwyn service, which is now non-stop from Paddington to Reading. It used to stop at Ealing Broadway, Southall, Hayes, Slough and Maidenhead on the relief lines and removal of these stops has reduced the journey time from London to Newbury and Bedwyn from 69 and 89 minutes to 52 and 73 minutes respectively. This makes them much more competitive compared with a car journey down the M4, though the majority of them are still operated by Turbos.

Another change is the introduction of an occasional semi-fast service from Paddington to the west which offers better opportunities when travelling west from Newbury, Hungerford and Bedwyn.

The stations west of Bedwyn, namely Pewsey, Westbury and Castle Cary remain lumbered with a very haphazard timing of trains throughout the day, although the total number of trains has increased. Passengers from Pewsey have seen an increase in their trains to London up from 5 to 9 per day, and in general most stations have seen a slight increase in the number of services stopping over the past 10 years, but there are exceptions to this rule; for example there are now 41 trains from Newbury to Reading every weekday, this was 43 back in 1999.

Journey times on the majority of services have not changed by more than a few minutes, other than the Paddington-Bedwyn trains detailed in the first paragraph.

The town of Frome has gained a through service to London with two departures a day in each direction provided.

Route 6: Reading to Basingstoke

Not a huge amount to talk about here to be honest. A pattern of half-hourly stopping services operated by FGW throughout the day is supplemented by roughly hourly Cross Country services running non-stop to give a total of 52 trains a day from Reading to Basingstoke (50 in the other direction).

Ten years ago the same pattern of half-hourly stopping services ran (though there was an extra train thrown into the mix between 9-10am). There were less Cross Country services (then operated by Virgin trains) although South West Trains operated a service roughly every three hours on the route which was extended from/to Brighton. These were withdrawn about four years ago I think? This meant a total of 50 trains from Reading to Basingstoke, and 49 in the other direction, so there has been a marginal increase in services.

From Basingstoke to Reading the first train of the day gets in at 06:05 - this was 05:43. The earliest arrival at Reading from Bramley and Mortimer is now 06:32 which is 50 minutes later than it used to be.

Other notable changes are the removal of the last train from Reading to Basingstoke at 00:10 - the latest is now at 23:34 meaning a late night out has to be curtailed a bit.

That's pretty much it for this route. Please chip in with your own comments on what I've said or anything I might have missed folks.

The SWT Reading - Basingstoke extension services ran until December 2007.

Paul

Thanks for clarifying that, Paul.

I'll skip route 7 as we all know there is, and always has been, a pretty much turn up and go fast service between Reading and Paddington. There's a few more train than there were 10 years ago and more of them are formed of HST's, but apart from that it's pretty much status quo.

Route 8: Paddington-Reading local services (in which I'll include Heathrow Connect and Greenford incorporating routes 9, 10 and 11)

There have been several changes to the pattern of services on this route, mostly due to the introduction of Heathrow Connect services about three years ago.

Ten years ago the basic off-peak pattern out of Paddington was as follows:
2tph at xx:22 and xx:52 on the Paddington-Greenford route calling Acton Main Line, Ealing Broadway and West Ealing before leaving the main line.
2tph at xx:12 and xx:42 the 'Slough stoppers' calling all stations to Slough (except Acton ML)
2tph at xx:28 and xx:58 stoppers to Reading calling at Ealing Broadway, Southall, Hayes, Slough, Maidenhead and Twyford (xx:58 only). The xx:28 trains usually carried on to Bedwyn.
2tph at xx:08 and xx:38 stoppers to Oxford calling at Ealing Broadway, Slough, Burnham, Taplow (xx:38 only), Maidenhead and Twyford.
2tph at xx:18 and xx:48 fast trains which called at Slough en-route to Reading.

Because of Heathrow Connect's introduction the stopping services to Slough were withdrawn, and services for West Drayton, Langley and Iver had to be absorbed into the longer distance Reading or Oxford stoppers.

The pattern is now:
2tph at xx:15 and xx:45 on the Paddington-Greenford route calling Acton Main Line, Ealing Broadway and West Ealing before leaving the main line.
2tph at xx:03 and xx:33 Heathrow Connect services calling all stations to Hayes (except Acton ML) before going on to the Airport
2tph at xx:12 and xx:42 stoppers to Reading calling at Ealing Broadway, Southall, Hayes, West Drayton, Slough, Burnham, Taplow, Maidenhead, Twyford and Reading.
2tph at xx:27 and xx:57 stoppers to Oxford calling at Ealing Broadway, Hayes, West Drayton, Iver, Langley, Slough, Maidenhead, Twyford and Reading.
2tph at xx:21 and xx:51 fast trains which call at Slough en-route to Reading.

It's a very similar pattern in the opposite direction. So, at a glance, there's the same number of trains operating, but if you delve a little deeper into the calling patterns there's some clear winners and clear losers compared with 1999 travellers.

The winners:
Some stations now have an enhanced level of services to and from London; Hayes and Harlington gets six trains to London every hour - this used to be four. West Drayton's service has doubled from two trains an hour to a service every 15 minutes. Taplow's service is now twice as frequent at every 30 minutes, and Twyford gets an extra train to London to make four trains an hour now.

Some stations now have a quicker service from London. Langley and Iver are the clear winners here as there journey time from London and Ealing has been reduced by 5 minutes. West Drayton also benefits with a 5 minute reduction in journey time of half of its trains. The others could also be that quick but for a seven minute schedule between Southall and Hayes for pathing reasons. The actual journey time is 3m30s.

Also, more through journey opportunities have been created as you can now travel direct from West Drayton, Langley and Iver to stations west of Slough.

The losers:
Unfortunately there's plenty of areas where the service has got worse in the last 10 years. Principally stations west of Slough who's trains have got a lot slower due to the additional stops and 'slack' that's been added to the timetable.

Maidenhead is probably the starkest example of this. It's a busy station ranked well within the top 100 used stations on the network, yet it's four direct trains to London take 44 minutes to reach the capital. It's only 24 miles by train so that's a very disappointing average of 32mph. Back in 1999 those trains took between 31-35 minutes to do the same journey at a much more competitive average of 46mph for the fastest ones. I really do think that Maidenhead deserves a better service than that!

Similar journey time increases have hit Slough, Burnham, Taplow and Twyford - though at least in the case of Twyford and Taplow there are now more trains an hour to choose from.

Less significant losses include the removal of through trains from Ealing, Hayes, Southall, Slough and Maidenhead to Kennet Line stations including Newbury, Hungerford and Bedwyn.

Peak hour service
The outer stations service has undoubtedly got better in the last ten years. The three main commuting stations of Tywford, Maidenhead and Slough now enjoy HST operated services on some trains (biased more inbound than outbound). There are now 13 fast trains (no more than one stop) from Maidenhead to Paddington during the morning peak up from 9. Slough and Twyford have seen more modest improvements.

The inner stations haven't done quite as well, with slightly fewer services for a few of the stations. The biggest loser is clearly Hanwell which enjoyed roughly 4tph into London during the peak hours, but this has been reduced to just two. It's worth noting that many of the peak hour services have much more seating capacity than they used to though as all Heathrow Connect trains are 5-car and many of the FGW services have now been strengthened to 5 or 6-car following extra resources becoming available now they are not used on as many fast services and the Bristol trains have been removed. Overall, the number of seats available in the peak hours has increased for all stations, except perhaps for Hanwell.

Late night services
The stopping service from Paddington to Reading used to run throughout the night every hour calling at Twyford, Maidenhead, Slough, West Drayton, Hayes, Southall and Ealing Broadway. Two of these trains have now been removed to still give a service at least every two hours. Having seen the type of passenger that wants to travel at 3am from West Drayton to Ealing Broadway I can't really blame FGW for thinning out the service - particularly as the trains are Driver Only Operated.

On a slightly separate note, why routes 8, 9, 10 and 11 in these new pocket timetables have been split like that is difficult for me to grasp. They repeat the information that each one of them carries in such a way to make them confusing. The good old Table 117 in the GBRPTT is a far better way of presenting the information.

Perhaps the Bedwyn services should stop at Maidenhead to give it a fast train per hour.

Journey times could be kept constant through removing slack.

That would be the obvious choice, as I suggested in some depth a while ago before the Adelante's were given away. Sadly the Bedwyn trains have very little slack between Paddington and Reading, so to avoid further pathing constraints 125mph stock is really needed to allow it to happen.

As far as Taplow is concerned we are worse off since privatisation since all our servcies to London take longer and have more stops. Also we still don't have a Sunday service although I'm not sure when that ceased whether it was pre or post privatisation.

I used to commute regularly on the 07:23 Taplow arrive Padd 07:56 (33 minutes) on 13/14 just in time to catch the 08:00 Hammersmith.

Now it's 07:29 with arrival at 08:14 or 46 minutes. So I would have to be on the 06:57 to be in Padd by 08:00.

Even with the 33 minute timing I reckoned there was 4 minutes slack to Ealing although the 7 minute sprint from Ealing to Padd could be exhilarating. Now all trains seem to be booked 10 to 15 minutes for the 7 minute journey. e.g 08:44 to 8:54 - 09:03 09:18.

So in general terms privatisation hasn't bought any benefit to Taplow. The only benefit it did bring was that I paying less for an  annual season ticket in 2005 than in several previous years,  due to the regular 5% discount for poor performance. But then you had to count on being late on around 2 journeys a week. My wife spent many happy hours waitng in the South Car Park before mobile phones allowed me to pre warn her of late running.

Routes 11, 12, & 13: Slough to Windsor, Maidenhead to Marlow and Twyford to Henley (incl. London services)

Route 11: Slough to Windsor services have broken with the long-time tradition of running at 30 minute intervals (every 20 minutes during peak hours) to now run every 20 minutes all through the day. Total weekday trains were 44 back in 1999, but there are now 54 thanks to this increased frequency. Connections for passengers to/from Paddington suffer slightly as the fast trains on this route run every 30 minutes so they don't connect as well as they have done, but it's still much quicker than the direct route from Waterloo to Riverside station.

A through train which ran in one direction only from Paddington to Windsor at 10:21 was withdrawn around 2003 I think. The ease of connection onto the branch at Windsor doesn't make this a great loss though. First and last trains of the day are virtually identical 10 years on.

Route 12: Maidenhead to Marlow services continue to operate on an hourly off-peak basis, which the 'Marlow Donkey' set being locked in section during the peak hours to provide a shuttle at roughly 30-minute intervals between Bourne End and Marlow, thus allowing a more intensive peak service between Maidenhead and Bourne End. There is no scope for any increases to this service without additional infrastructure.

There are two through trains between Bourne End and Paddington in the morning and returning in the evening. This was also the case back in 1999, but the time gap between them has been increased a little and they generally take longer - a pattern that seems to be prevalent on most peak hour routes:

1999: Up and Down services (time to reach Paddington in brackets)
07:25 (39 mins), 08:09 (49 mins), 17:36 (40 mins), 17:52 (55 mins)

Now:
07:28 (49 mins), 08:17 (53 mins), 17:42 (50 mins), 18:42 (50 mins)

Empty stock moves have been changed into passenger trains to provide an earlier morning service from Maidenhead to Marlow and a later evening service from Marlow to Maidenhead.

Off-peak journeys from Marlow, Bourne End, Cookham and Furze Platt to/from London take an average of 5 minutes longer, mainly due to extra stops on the connecting trains from Maidenhead to Paddington.

Route 13: Twyford-Henley On Thames
Similar to the Slough-Windsor route, service frequency off-peak has now increased from the long established hourly service to a train every 45-minutes. This increases the number of trains from Henley to Twyford from 24 to 27. I remain unconvinced about the merits of this change though as the regular hourly pattern that shoppers and day trippers had got used to is now all over the place.

45-minute interval trains just don't sit nicely on a timetable when compared with 15, 20 or 30 minute intervals that divide nicely into the hour. Compare 1999 departures from Henley at 11:06, 12:06, 13:06, 14:06 and 15:06 - nice and easy to remember. Their modern-day equivalents are 11:39, 12:24, 13:09, 13:54, 14:39 and 15:24. An extra train, yes, but you really have to have a timetable to hand, or access to the web, or a bloody good memory! Off-peak travellers to/from London now have around 5 minutes extra added to their journey due to extra stops on the Twyford-Paddington trains.

Through trains to London operate as they do on the Bourne End branch in the peak periods. There has been an increase from 1 up train to 2 per day and from 2 down trains to 3 a day, although one mid-morning through train from Henley to Paddington has since been withdrawn. Again, through trains from/to Paddington take a couple of minutes extra on average - in fact it's quicker to catch one of the fast trains to Twyford and change on to the shuttle service that it is to catch a through train in some instances - you can do the journey in as little as 37 minutes that way, compared with between 45-61 minutes on the direct service!

Services run around 40 minutes earlier in the morning in both directions, but the late evening services stop about 20 minutes earlier too.

The other notable change is that back in 1999 (and up until about 2005 I think) the majority of the off-peak Henley trains ran to/from Reading whereas they now all terminate in the bay at Twyford (with the exception of one train each way per day). Although the connections at Twyford for Reading are fairly swift and easy, the change of train typically adds between 5 and 10 minutes to the journey and must be more off-putting for mothers with pushchairs and shoppers. This will be partly alleviated later in the year when work to replace the old station footbridge with a new one including lifts will be completed.

I did a walk along the Thames from Marlow to Henley on Saturday so used both the Maidenhead to Marlow and Henley to Twyford branches as I live in Reading.

I'm quite a regular user of the Henley branch line and agree with your views regarding the 45minute timings requiring a timetable to remember!

I do think that the removal of the Reading to Henley direct services has helped though.  I used to live in Twyford and I was continually fed up with the London service being held up by the preceding train occupying the platform to turn around for Henley.  The Henley train would often sit there on platform 4 waiting for the train from London to arrive on platform 3 to provide a connecting service even if the train from London was late.  This had the knock-on effect of holding up the London bound train outside of Twyford.  A bizarre case of the London bound train being delayed by the train from London!

The only way Reading to Henley direct services would work without causing other delays is if the track layout was different so that a train from Reading could pull into the bay at Twyford.

In regards to the Marlow branch - Saturday was my first ever experience of it and a very pleasant line it is too - especially the Bourne End-Marlow section.

Boppy.


Boppy.

An article here on how the 26 metre coaches for the SET could reduce services on the fringes of the Great Western area. Basically it may not be worth increasing the clearances for these vehicles to operate on lesser used routes in Cornwall and West Wales etc.

http://www.railnews.co.uk/news/business/2009/05/08-super-expresses.html

Diversionary routes used occasionally by IC125s, such as Cardiff-Barry-Bridgend and Swindon-Kemble, would also need modifications for Super Express.

Hmmm, disappointing to see that Rail News is about as accurate as the general press in its reporting of railway matters.

Beat me to it! ;D

But this is a disgrace. The whole point of NOT building dedicated High Speed routes, was to run new trains on existing infrastructure, because they could reach more places.

But now they are going against their own aims. The cheap option. Again.

If you want bigger trains, build high speed lines with a European loading gauge! Don't destroy the British InterCity network, which must be one of the best in the world. >:(

Routes 14 and 15 (covering Paddington to Didcot/Swindon) have been discussed earlier in the thread, so I'll skip them.

Routes 16 & 16: Paddington-Oxford (both fast and stopping services)

Fast services:
Oxford-London fast services continue to operate at 30-minute intervals off-peak, just as they did in 1999. There have been some changes though. In 1999 virtually all trains were operated by Turbos, roughly half of which originated from the Cotswold Line or Stratford-Upon-Avon/Banbury. Now, around 2/3rds are operated by HST's, some of which originate on the Cotswold Line but the others start at Oxford following the transfer of Stratford services to the Chiltern route into Marylebone.

They call at Reading and Slough en-route usually taking 56-59 minutes to complete the journey. Back in 1999, half of them also called at Didcot Parkway and the use of Turbos meant the journey used to take a couple of minutes longer. There used to be a few Cross Country services operated to Paddington, but these were withdrawn around 2003. The half-hourly service continues later into the night than it used to, so overall roughly the same number of fast services operate.

Peak hour services omit the stop at Slough, but sometimes have extra stops at Didcot Parkway, and there are some 'semi-fast' trains that call at places like Slough, Maidenhead and Twyford operated by either Turbos or HST's. Between 06:00 and 09:00 the total number of fast trains from Oxford-Paddington (70 minutes or less) is now 8. In 1999 there was one extra. Journey times on the fastest of peak trains has increased - three trains (two to London and one from London) used to run non-stop and the fastest completed the journey in 46 minutes. Now the quickest you can do the journey is in 53 minutes.

Start up of services and last trains of the day remain virtually identical.

Stopping services:
They also run at 30-minute intervals off-peak as they did back in 1999. Stops at Didcot Parkway, Cholsey, Goring, Pangbourne, Tilehurst and Reading before carrying on via Slough, Maidenhead and Ealing to Paddington. The overall journey time has increased as there are now more stops between Reading and Paddington, and longer layovers at Didcot and Reading (especially in the Up direction). This means typical journey time increases of 15-25 minutes on the total through journey. That's not so important though as nobody would deliberately get one of them all the way, but some intermediate flows by direct train are now disappointing lengthier than they were 10 years ago, for example:

Oxford-Cholsey: Now 30 minutes (was 18-25 minutes)
Oxford-Maidenhead: Now 70 minutes (was 55-63 minutes)
Didcot-Ealing Broadway: Now 78 minutes (was 68-69 minutes)

The service to/from Radley remains hourly off-peak, but from this timetable, services to/from Culham and Appleford have been cut back drastically from every two hours throughout the day, there is now a 6 hour gap in services from the end of the morning peak until mid-afternoon. True, passenger number are low, but I have said on this forum that there should be one train stopping to plug that gap and make it a more reasonable 3-hour gap. The peak hour service to these stations has actually increased, thanks to the increasing number of commuters travelling to the Science Centre near Culham station.

The popular service between Oxford and Didcot has seen a reduction in the number of trains throughout the day, due to the withdrawal of the Oxford-Bristol services, a reduction in the number of fast Oxford-London trains which call at Didcot, and the removal of Didcot stops on a few XC services. There are now 48 trains a day from Oxford to Didcot Parkway, this is down from 60 ten years ago.

Peak hour services between Cholsey, Goring, Pangbourne and Tilehurst to Paddington remain a combination of local trains with connections at Reading, or faster limited stop services through to Paddington provide these stations with a service at (very) roughly 20 minute intervals. Services were at a similar level in 1999, but now these commuters have the chance to travel direct on HST operated services on occasions (two Up and one Down train per day). Previously these were all Turbo operated.

And sadly, although the Didcot to Oxford service is still a respectable 2 per hour, the timetable is such that usually only 1 per hour northbound connects with the half-hourly XC service at Oxford; and quite a few eastbound services from Swindon are timed to just miss Oxford services. I don't know what could be done to improve the situation, presumably capacity and pathing constraints limit the ability to time the stopping services better for connections- any prospect of this being improved with proposed Reading and Oxford developments?

Hopefully, journey times will fall with the Reading re-build.

Hmm.  Some parts of that Reading rebuild now seem rather uncertain ... see http://www.readingchronicle.co.uk/news/reading/articles/2009/04/23/37851-nervous-wait-for-station-funds/  ::)

Maybe, but there's specific mention that the investment in infrastructure in terms of track capacity is not under threat: "The project has won most of its funding from the Government, including all of the money for track works to massively increase capacity and get Reading ready for Crossrail, should its western terminus be extended from Maidenhead, plus a ^4.3m boost this month for improvement to nearby bus and taxi stops."

I'm a regular user of the Henley line and I'd have to disagree with the views on 45 minute frquency - I welcome more trains! I'd like to see it introduced at the weekend as well as it seems a waste of a unit to only get in one 5 mile round trip an hour. I'd really like to see a half hourly frequency on the line which I think is possible, but services couldn't wait for late connections at Twyford. On the flip side you wouldn't have to wait that long for the next service!

I'd also like to see a few of the connection reviewed - some of them in the evening are very loose.

With so many ways to access travel information these days I don't think it is a huge issue not having exact clockface departure if it means you can increase frequency.

The big question is what will the situation be like in 10 years time with Crossrail? Hopefully those journey times to London can be reduced with Twyford stoppers missing out a lot of stations after Maindenhead.

As an aside during the Reading works could an hourly Henley - Shiplake - Wargrave - Twyford - Maidenhead - Slough - Hayes & Harlington - Ealing Broadway - London service be introduced to help ease congestion at Reading?

I agree that it's not as important to have clock-face timetables these days, but a 45-minute interval timetable still sits awkwardly to me. I would be interested to see what six months of that service has done to the overall passenger numbers. A 30-minute service is just about possible as you say, 'autotank' - indeed during the Regatta one is operated, though it really is on the absolute limit regarding service recovery, and even with some trains missing out Wargrave and Shiplake, I don't think FGW would want to risk it.

As for Crossrail's impact - that really is a big question. If there are faster services from Twyford to London then I can't see them running at the current 4tph levels. Perhaps 2tph will run from there to Paddington, and two others will run as far as Maidenhead/Slough where you'd have to change? More likely I feel is that Crossrail will be extended to Reading and a similar service will run as now - albeit through central London to the east and maybe a couple of minutes quicker thanks to the superior acceleration of the new trains.

How would it compare to the St Ives branch in summer? That's pretty tight, and with much greater volumes of pax I would speculate.

St Ives has 3 mins turnaround at each end all day, plus every other trip runs fast from Lelant Saltings to St Ives.

Route 18: Oxford to Banbury and Bicester Town

Oxford-Banbury fast services

The Oxford-Banbury service has changed quite significantly over the last ten years. Back in 1999 there was a roughly hourly non-stop service operated by Virgin Trains, supplemented with a mix of fast and stopping Thames Trains services to/from Stratford-Upon-Avon, and a smattering of local services as well. Now the Stratford trains run on a different route, but the introduction of a half-hourly Virgin trains service has been continued by present operator Arriva.

Total number of weekday trains from Oxford-Banbury is now 44, which is a large increase on the 1999 total of 28. First trains of the day are later than they used to be, the 05:18 and 04:39 departures from Oxford and Banbury respectively are now later at 05:45 and 06:08.

The last train from Oxford is now at 00:20 following the introduction of a train by Chiltern Railways that used to run empty - though disappointingly, this is not shown in the FGW timetable.

Oxford-Banbury local services

These stop at the intermediate stations of Tackley, Heyford and Kings Sutton and there are now 11 trains a day compared with 10 back in 1999. This isn't as positive as it sounds though as some of these trains used to run to/from London as fast services in the peak hours whereas now you have to change at Oxford unless you fancy a very long journey stopping at most stations en-route.

The commuting situation to Oxford is also not as easy as it was back in 1999. Commuter trains to Oxford aren't so bad with an extra morning train compared with 1999, although an 07:55 arrival isn't as good as the 08:09 arrival that used to be available for those working 9-5 in the City. Going home again the old departures ran roughly hourly at 16:27, 17:50, 18:59, and 19:46. Now they leave at 16:23, 17:44, 19:14 and 20:54, so things have worsened for those commuters.

Oxford-Bicester Town services

This route has seen a boost following the opening of Bicester Village shopping outlet which is a 4 minute walk from Bicester Town station. There are now 11 trains each weekday (12 on a Friday). Back in 1999 there were 12 each day of the week with a late service at 11pm which now only runs on a Friday. Over the last ten years services had slowly reduced to about 7 a day and so the recent increases are welcomed to bring the service nearly back up to that offered in 1999.

This timetable also sees the re-introduction of services on a Sunday which last operated in the mid-90's. There will nine trains a day, largely aimed at shoppers.

This route has a promising future with both Chiltern Railways and East-West Rail wanting to operate services on much enhanced infrastructure as discussed elsewhere on this forum.

On the first point a half hourly service is possible with three minute turnrounds at each end as per St Ives branch.

E.g  00  Twyford 12 Henley
      15  Henley   27 Twyford
      30  Twyford 42 Henley
      45  Henley   57 Twyford

With say a 5/6 minute connection from London then with current puctuality levels this ought to be achievable. If the branch does have to go then at least it's only a 30 minute or less wait.

As for Crossrail through Twyford I suggest it would be unlikely there will be semi fasts from Twyford with stops as you suggest as they won't fit in with the 10tph all stations from Hayes on the Relief lines.

I still advocate clockface departures whilst the extra trains on the branch are good 45 minutes seems a very akward interval to calculate especialy as it's not exact quarter hours. I would reckon that Murphy's law would probably  mean you still have to catch the train 45 minutes before, because the next train doesn't quite get you to where you want to be in time. If you want to be in Reading at around 12:00 you have to catch the 10:54 rather than the 11:39 whereas with a half hour service an 11:26 would get you there at around 12:00.

I suppose that's  OK you only have  a max of 45 minutes to waste, in the above case it's 38 minutes, rather than up to an hour.

Fast? ;D

The Oxford Banbury local service was dealt a blow when at the last refranchising the DFT decided to tidy up the franchise map by transferring the Stratford services from FGW to Chiltern. Interestingly, I understand that there is a desire in Stratford to see Paddington services reinstated. There is a substantial tourist market between Oxford and Stratford.

Also worth noting the three trains per day each way summer Sunday service, which runs specifically to promote access to the Cherwell valley and the delights of the canalside at Heyford and Tackley.

I can understand the desire for Oxford - Stratford trains, but I expect Stratford residents are grateful for having Chiltern Railways running their London trains!

Faster, more reliable and much more comfortable.

Hardly, Chiltern Class 165s are very similar to FGWs. Not much difference in comfort.

I'd have thought you'd approve of that, btline...! Fast is "correct", long-established railway terminology for non-stop, after all...  ;)

That's right, cereal_basher - there's precious few Class 168's used on the Stratford route. And the journey time is generally slightly slower on the Chiltern route than it was under Thames Trains, so I think we can only give Btline 1 out of 3 for research/accuracy in his post this time.  ::)

I am not sure of the reliable bit any more either, FGW are pretty reliable now.

I think as far as Btline is concerned, a Chiltern Train with a Super Off Peak walk up cheap fare and Phil announcing the next station would be verging on heaven ;)

I should add - the train will run non stop to his required destination.  :P

Oh dear! ??? Don't worry, I have comebacks....

:P


Ah, but FGW being reliable does not make Chiltern unreliable. And as reliability on FGW was poorer when they ran to Stratford, my point still stands!


Not sure about the journey time. But I doubt it was faster with FGW as it went the "Great Way Round".  And Chiltern do run 168s on Stratford trains. Even on services they use 165 Turbos - they are air conditioned! (and in better condition)

Primarily because the time tables have more padding than a 13 year olds bra on a friday night

I never said they didn't run 168's to Stratford. But the majority are two car 165's (morning/evening peak services excepted), which air-conditioned or not, is hardly a great improvement on a 166.

I will concede that I was wrong to suggest that journey time to Paddington was quicker - a quick glance last night gave that impression, but having looked at it in a little more detail the timings are practically the same. The fastest Up service takes 2h 04 minutes, just as it did back in 1999, and others seem to take a similar amount of time. Below are the timings for the Up services now with their equivalent from 1999 when they ran to Paddington in brackets. There are three more direct trains a day now to give a service every two hours which is a definite improvement on the Thames Trains schedules.

2h 06m,   2h 04m,   2h 19m,   2h 15m,   2h 15m,   2h 13m,   2h 16m,   2h 16m,   2h 14m
(2h 16m), (2h 19m), (2h 04m), (2h 12m), (2h 16m), (2h 10m)


However I'll still only give you 1 out of 3, Btline - based on your previous record...  ;)

Route 19: London Paddington and Oxford to Worcester and Hereford - 'The Cotswold Line'

On a route that was struggling already to accommodate the number of trains on it back in 1999, changes since have seen extra trains squeezed in and changes in traction on many services from Turbos to more comfortable, faster, but less flexible HST's. The result has seen many journey times being increased with lots of 'slack' built in to allow delays to be recovered.

Good news is on the horizon - as you will probably know, a six week blockade over this summer, together with lots of other less noticable work throughout the remainder of this year and next will mean the route has added flexibility with re-installed double track between Charlbury and Ascott and Moreton and Evesham. This has been badly needed for over a decade now.

Below is a breakdown of the number of through trains running on the various sections of the route, together with the figure (in brackets) for 1999:

Paddington - Hereford: 5 (5)
Paddington - Worcester: 14 (13)
Moreton-In-Marsh - Worcester: 16 (14)
Evesham - Oxford: 16 (14)
Great Malvern - Paddington: 10 (9)

So, as you can see, most sections of the route have had a modest increase in the number of trains running. It's a totally different story with regard to journey times though, as with the majority of trains now worked by HST's, extra allowances have been built into the timetable to cope with the lack of flexibility they bring. Although their top speed is far greater than a Turbo, they compare badly with regard to low speed acceleration and station dwell times (a passenger with a bike waiting at the wrong end of the platform can easily put 3 minutes delay into the train). Their turnaround time (the time it takes for the Driver to immobilise one cab and walk down the train and mobilise the other end) is also far greater meaning that extra allowances have had to be built into the timetable at places like Worcester and Malvern.

The net result is that some services that have been worked by HST's have now reverted to Turbo's - though the choice of trains from FGW is questionable to say the least.

As far as journey times are concerned, the following list the journey times on the section from Worcester Shrub Hill to Oxford which is where most of the slack has had to be built in. The 1999 journey times are in brackets.

 83 mins, 78, 80, 80, 74, 73, 79, 76, 78, 91, 97, 93, 111, 84, 76.
(69 mins, 66, 77, 65, 68, 71, 71, 58, 70, 67, 72, 76, 70, 75).

That works out at an average of over 1hr 23m for the 57 mile journey which compares very poorly with other InterCity type routes. The 1999 average was a much more respectable 1h 05mins.

Although most routes I have covered so far have seen journey times slip slightly over the last ten years, an average increase of nearly 20 minutes on a comparatively short section is hard to believe and you know something is wrong when the all stations 'Halts' train in the morning (all stations that is, except Honeybourne) completes the journey three minutes quicker than the average of the days trains!

Peak trains are taking much longer too, the three main services to London from Great Malvern in the morning now take 2h 42m, 2h 48m and 2h 33m (in 1999 it was 2h 29m, 2h 20m and 2h 15m). The return two main services take 2h 40m and 2h 37m (in 1999 it was 2h 17m and 2h 12m - the latter is 25 minutes slower now!). These increases will obviously have had an effect on the number of business travellers - though opinion varies as to what extent potential custom has been lost.

On the plus side, Hanborough, Honeybourne and Pershore all see a slightly more regular service, and late evening and early morning services all now offer better choices - the extension of what was the 20:18 Paddington to Moreton-In-Marsh through to Great Malvern is an excellent example of this.

It will be very interesting to see what happens to the timetable when the partial re-doubling has taken place!

Thanks Insider, for this and all the other routes.

One slight correction, I believe, is the duration of the 1821 ex Padd takes 2hrs 37 (not 47) as you mention to Great Malvern, though 2h 47 is the time taken by the 1922. 

Ironically, the fastest evening journey from London to Great Malvern is the 1923 Virgin service from Euston to New Street, arrive 2045, change and depart at 2059, arriving Gt Malvern at 2154.

Also, although the number of Hereford/Paddington trains is still 5, one of these is the really useful (not!) 2153 service.

Thanks for the correction, Steve. And the fact you can get from Euston via Brum to Malvern quicker is an even more glaring example of how slow the FGW trains are now!

Route 20: Reading to Guildford, Redhill and Gatwick Airport

This route has traditionally had a limited stops service running between Reading and Gatwick Airport at hourly intervals, with an all stations service also running at hourly intervals from Reading. Back in 1999 most of the stopping trains terminated at Shalford (an operationally convenient station just the other side of Guildford). There were some stopping trains running from Guildford to Redhill. Now these stopping services virtually all run on to Redhill which gives more trains on the route, but selective stopping patterns see the quieter stations of Gomshall, Chilworth, Dorking West and Betchworth seeing a train every two hours off-peak (every hour in the peak).

The journey time through from Reading to Gatwick Airport is virtually unchanged at 76 mins for the 52 miles. This includes seven intermediate stops and a reversal at Redhill, so isn't too bad.

Total number of trains are as follows (1999 figures in brackets):

Reading-Gatwick Airport: 20 (23)
Guildford-Reading: 39 (45)
Redhill-Guildford: 34 (31)

The decrease in the number of trains above is mainly due to the removal of a few XC trains that used to run from/to Brighton on the route.

First and last services of the day are virtually identical ten years on, though one interesting change is that the last train from Reading to Gatwick Airport (23:34) now ceases to stop at Wokingham on Friday and Saturday nights, following years of trouble caused by drunks heading home. SouthWest Trains now bravely provide the last train at 23:12!

This is now my adopted route as I live in Dorking.

For several years, Thames Trains used to run 2 buses (Goldline?) through the night from Reading to Gatwick. Stopping points were Guildford, Dorking, Reigate and maybe Redhill. I remember catching these on occasions from Guildford after a night out at I think 2.31am, and 4.01am to Dorking. Some nights these buses would be quite well used, and I was disappointed when these were withdrawn (date anyone?). From Gatwick, I think they left at 0030 and 0400? I doubt if FGW would have the courage to re-introduce these.

Dorking West lost out on several westbound evening commuter services in the December 2006 timetable, when the 1703 and 1803 ex Gatwicks used to stop. I am still annoyed that the stop in the 1803 hasn't been re-instated, as this now runs fast from Deepdene to Guikldford, only to stand at Guildford for 7 minutes. Dorking Business Park where several hundred people work, is located very close to this station, and it is a shame that FGW don't experiment by stopping a few more peak hour services here. (No self-interest here at all!!)

On Sundays, the hourly Reading/Gatwick service was supplemented by a 2 hourly stopping service. Since Dec 06, the 2 hourly stopping service was withdrawn and the hourly fast services had additional stops added.

I'll skip Route 21 as it's the bus link to Heathrow Airport, and that's not a train service! I'd also like to point out that as we head further west, my knowledge of the route lessens, so please shout out anything I may have missed...

Routes 22 & 23: Great Malvern, Worcester, Cheltenham Spa and Gloucester to Bristol

There have been several changes to the structure of the service on this route since 1999, some for the better, some for the worse.

The basic pattern of trains is:

1) Two trains per hour serving Cheltenham Spa, Bristol Parkway and Bristol Temple Meads on the XC network, these are longer distance trains serving Birmingham and the North West as well as sometimes continuing on to Plymouth and Penzance. These trains used to run in a haphazard manner equating to roughly one per hour, but served Gloucester on a roughly two-hourly basis and went to a more varied number of destinations north of Birmingham. Now, Gloucester has been all but wiped off the longer distance XC network, though it still gets an hourly service on the XC route from Nottingham, via Birmingham and Cheltenham to Cardiff Central. These changes have resulted in a 33% increase in the number of trains running between Birmingham and Cheltenham, and almost twice as many now run between Birmingham and Bristol.

2) One train per hour from Nottingham to Cardiff going via Birmingham, Cheltenham and Gloucester (as mentioned above). This used to be provided by either a roughly two hourly Central Trains service from Nottingham to Cardiff or a roughly two hourly service operated by Wales & West from Birmingham. Some of these trains used to go the slower route via Worcester and so took much longer.

3) A roughly two hourly service from Great Malvern via Worcester, Cheltenham and Gloucester to Bristol and on to either Brighton, Weymouth or Westbury. These are supplemented with an extra train starting at Gloucester, to give an hourly service south of Gloucester. This opens up many more through journeys that were previously possible in 1999, and it's nice to see Great Malvern seeing a long distance service, but at over 30 stops and well over 4 hours journey time, it's not all that appealing for anyone wanting to go all the way to Weymouth!

4) To fill some of the gaps in the Gt.Malvern-Worcester-Gloucester-Cheltenham service, London Midland run five train each way per day between Worcester and Gloucester.

What overall impact these changes have on the service is difficult to judge. There are some distinct winners and some losers. For example, whilst the total number of trains between Birmingham and Gloucester has reduced, the trains that do operate run to a much more defined clockface pattern and generally take less time. Also, between Gloucester and Bristol TM the total number of trains has remained the same, though the service off-peak is now hourly when there were huge gaps from 10:57-13:28-16:02 - this has come at the cost of are several less peak hour trains to choose from though. Here are a couple of examples on how the number of daily direct trains has changed since 1999 (as usual 1999 totals are in brackets):

Worcester-Gloucester: 13 or 14 on Fridays (12)
Cheltenham-Birmingham N. St.: 47 (33)
Birmingham N. St.-Gloucester: 17 or 18 on Fridays (23)
Gloucester-Bristol Temple Meads: 18 (18)

A difficult route to assess and any regular users of the route are more than welcome to make any specific comments of their own of course!

Just checked the timetable. It is not just the commuter trains that have Clubmans. The "days out" trains (arriving in London 9 - 11am; leaving 4 - 6 pm) are all Clubmans. Only contra peak, and other non "days out" off peak trains are Turbos. (i.e. majority of people will travel on a Clubman) Two out of three.... ;D

The FGW and LM services should both be axed, and a new hourly Great Malvern to Bristol Temple Meads service operate.

The loss of the direct trains would make few suffer - most people alight/ change at Bristol anyway. It would give more efficient stock utilisation and reliability.

It would plug the current two hour gaps northbound (which are still there due to the bad times of the LM service) and the morning two hour gap in getting from Worcester to Bristol (where the LM shuttle doesn't operate, depite it being a key time).

I believe the rolling stock would be available - preferably 170s (for the 100 mph speed), but 158s would do - because LM terminate at Gloucester every two hours, as do FGW.

I certainly do not claim to know a great deal about the railways, just classing myself as another "poor b****y passenger" (customer ?).

There may be some historical reasons, but I must confess to being at a complete loss as to why anyone should have the bright idea of running a through train service linking Gt Malvern with Weymouth, Warminster, Westbury or Brighton.
Great Malvern may be a delightful place, but not to put too fine a point on it, it is in the "middle of nowhere", the best description is - "halfway between Worcester and Hereford" ! Why start and terminate a service there ? The afternoon service from Warminster to Great Malvern actually comes out from Westbury, then reverses at Warminster; it invariable has more crew than passengers. I could understand a service from Brighton or Southampton to Worcester or Gloucester - but Warminster to Great Malvern  ???
I must confess that I do use this service, it provides a very cheap way to get to Birmingham, by "split ticketing" - much cheaper than changing at BTM. Of course, I change at Worcester or Gloucester, not Great Malvern ! In fact there seem to be very few passengers between Worcester and Great Malvern.

I presume that this is just some method of FGW being able to tick a box somewhere saying that they have provided another "service" to/from Warminster/Dilton Marsh/Westbury/Great Malvern.
If anyone has any more sensible ideas .......................

Usage of trains between Worcester and Malvern is relatively high. No more trains (currently hourly + 4 FGW HSTs + extra peak trains) can get to Hereford due to the single track.

An hourly service from Great Malvern to Bristol, all stops to Filton Abby Wood, then fast to Bristol, would be well used at all points. (IMO)

Usage of trains between Gt Malvern and Worcester may be relatively high - for trains heading to Birmingham. In my experience the FGW "cross country" services are not heavily used and if they weren't running there would be no great loss of service.
The more you look at this route the more bizarre it becomes: as you say, an hourly service by LM, plus some FGW HSTs - why throw in the "cross country" services ? In the middle of the afternoon, slotted in between the hourly LM services there are TWO FGW services from Great Malvern to Worcester 17 minutes apart. In the two hours from 1345 to 1545 there are no fewer than 8 trains from Great Malvern to Worcester. No wonder the TOCs are calling for more subsidy !

No I mean there is high demand between Malvern and Worcester - as in, people travel from one to the other due to the fast journey time (which could still be a lot better - but that's another story). There are also a lot of commuters and school children.

There are even more trains per hour to Malvern than to Hereford (at least 2 tph). This frequency is justified.

I agree with Moonrakerz. The extension of these services to and from Gt Malvern is 'nice', but there has never been a massive demand, or public campaign for trains to Bristol etc. In priority terms, Malvernians want to travel to Worcester & Birmingham, and Oxford and London. They would be quite content to change at Worcester, so long as it was a decent connection. You mention high demand for commuters and schoolchildren, but this is the same on any route anywhere. In fact having more trains between Malvern and Worcester can be a bit of a nuisance, with the single working in Worcester liable to cause congestion and delays.

But the FGWs provide Malvern with a link to Worcester. An extra train every few hours which is useful.

There is always high demand between the stations. The more trains the better.

I'm afraid I don't see this "high demand" when I go there, as I said before 8 trains in 2 "off peak" hours is totally bizarre.
To say "the more trains the better" really is totally simplistic, I would have thought there were plenty more deserving routes than Great Malvern to Worcester - Swindon to Salisbury, via Melksham, perhaps ?

Route 24 - Cardiff Central and Bristol to Weston-super-Mare and Exeter St Davids

This route can be broken down into several different sections.

The core trains are the hourly services operated by FGW between Cardiff Central and Taunton via Bristol TM and Weston SM. Ten years ago this was a much more irregular service that went to destinations further into the West Country - Paignton and Penzance being two examples. Whether you favour a regular, more frequent service or a less frequent service to a wider range of destinations really depends on your personal needs I suppose, but in many routes I have covered so far, the former appears to be prevalent.

The busy stretch from Bristol TM to Weston-Super-Mare sees services operated almost exclusively by FGW these days. Arriva Cross Country make token stops once or twice a day, but most of their trains run the more direct route to/from the South-West Coast. This means quicker journeys, but is a blow to the tourist pull of Weston which 10 years ago saw four or five trains a day from places like Glasgow, Manchester, Newcastle and Edinburgh.

Total numbers of trains on the busy Weston to Bristol TM route now total 43 per day. In 1999 when FGW, Arriva and Virgin XC provided a mix of services that total stood at 40, so there's been a modest increase.

Services on the other main section of this route from Bristol Parkway and Bristol TM down to Taunton and Exeter have fallen, despite the Operation Princess which saw services running roughly twice as frequently on the XC network at certain times of the day. There's now 24 per day between Bristol TM and Exeter SD - this was 31 per day in 1999, though a lot of these extra trains were slower. Through trains between Bristol and Taunton have remained fairly stable, though the disparity in journey time via the Weston route would be off-putting to many through passengers.

The local services to Weston and intermediate stations have now stabilised as a regular half hourly service, with gaps removed and services running half hourly with good connections to London services. So that is an improvement. Also, morning commuter services are much better, with an extra London bound service arriving in Bristol around 8.20.   

As you intimate, the Operation Princess debacle has not been kind south of Bristol. The original plan to make services half hourly south of Bristol was soon reversed, with the result that in some hours a 7 coach HST (pre 02) is now a single Voyager unit. And that's with 7 years of passenger growth in the meantime.

 

Yes, Operation Princess did not necessarily increase frequencies!

And at the extremities of the network, capacity was halved, as there were the same number of Voyagers running as there were HSTs.

Why can't XC extend their Bristol terminators to Weston? I suppose they don't have enough stock to facilitate this.

There isn't any capacity at Weston. They'd be far more suited extended to Exeter.

Routes 25, 26, 27 and 28: Cardiff Central, Bristol and Swindon to Southampton, Portsmouth and Weymouth (incl. Melksham!)

Again, these routes can be split up into different core routes.

1) The premier route is the busy service between Cardiff and Portsmouth which runs via some busy towns and cities including Bristol, Bath, Salisbury and Southampton. There's a basic hourly service throughout the day, which doesn't increase in frequency for the peak hours, but certain other services running on sections of the route do provide for extra capacity (details below). Back in 1999, the same core service operated by Wales & West - the only change being that services now stop at Bradford-On-Avon, but journey times have slipped slightly in the last 10 years with the through trip now taking 3h 24m which is 7 minutes slower than most services in 1999.

2) There's also an hourly service on the Bristol Parkway to Westbury route - many of these trains start from Gloucester or Malvern, and run through to Weymouth a total of 8 times a day to give Weymouth (and several other stations, including Dorchester and Yeovil) a direct link to Bristol at least every three hours. When there isn't a through train to/from Weymouth, there is a train to/from either Southampton, Warminster, or Brighton which gives the central part of the route between Westbury and Bristol with an hourly off-peak service. These trains slot in with the Cardiff-Portsmouth services above to give 2tph at 30 minute intervals between Bristol and Westbury. A couple of extra trains feed the Bristol commuter market to provide a 15-20 minute frequency into Bristol in the morning and back in the evening.

Ten years ago there was a very similar service to/from Weymouth, with exotic sounding train names like the 'Weymouth Sand & Cycle Explorer', but they usually only ran as far as Bristol TM, and the pattern of trains on the core central part of the route was much less ordered.

For comparison the number of trains from Trowbridge to Bristol TM per day is now 42. Back in 1999 it was 35. There are so many different stations to compare, so you'll have to forgive me for not getting to in depth with them, but I would say in general most stations have seen a slight increase in the number of services, and some have fared well such as Bradford-On-Avon, Freshford and Avoncliff.

Whilst the timetable is much more ordered and regular than it was 10 years ago, there are still a couple of interesting anomalies caused by the extension of some services north of Bristol towards Gloucester and Worcester and Malvern. For example, you can travel direct from Great Malvern to Weymouth three times a day at 12:51, 14:51 and 18:51, but there are no direct trains in the other direction, with all the trains that reach Malvern starting at either Southampton or Warminster!

3) Finally, I'm sure Graham wouldn't forgive me if I didn't give some details of what has happened to the service through Melksham over the past ten years! Well, despite the service increasing to five trains a day each way in the intervening years (until 2006) the current service of two trains per day each way each weekday and one southbound service on a Sunday evening is actually more frequent than it was back in 1999! There was no Sunday service then, and only one train per day heading northwards during the week.

However, that doesn't tell the whole story! The timing of the trains is now much worse. Melksham to Swindon commuters need to leave at 07:17 and return at 18:44. With a just under 30-minute journey time, that is a long day for anyone and so not surprisingly the train isn't considered an attractive prospect. Back in 1999 the times were 08:05 and 18:36. Still not ideal, but much better! Now and then, the potential shoppers market on a Saturday from/to Swindon and Salisbury is completely ignored.

The Melksham service is one of the main reasons for the existence of this site, and I'm sure Graham won't mind me directing you towards the http://www.savethetrain.org.uk/index.html (http://www.savethetrain.org.uk/index.html) sister website for those that haven't read up on the details of what happened in 2006 to the TransWilts service.

I would run them through to Paignton calling at Weston, Bridgwater, Taunton, Tiverton Parkway, Exeter St Davids, Dawlish, Teignmouth, Newton Abbot, Torquay and Paignton.  This would give many of the stations a 30 minute rather than 60 minute service.  I used to live in Teignmouth and it was frustrating only having 1 train per hour through most of the day.  This is just a suggestion though, I know we will never see it.

I have been really enjoying reading this series ... and, yes, wondering what IndustryInsider would have to say about the TransWilts. 

So a big "thank you" to him, and encouragement to carry on to the final clusters of lines that are yet to be covered.  It's a very special "thank you" because I know only two well how much a statement of fact thread such as this is read by many, yet draws comments from few;  I know I feel the same way sometimes with the important but boring admin stuff, and that's usually one post and not into double figures.  So - we're very grateful for you stamina, and the real resource it's adding.

Thank you, Graham.

Route 29: Bristol Temple Meads to Avonmouth and Severn Beach

This is a bit of a strange one for me, as I think it's the only stretch of FGW operated track that I have yet to travel over.

The service has changed since 1999. Now, you can travel between Bristol TM and Severn Beach on a total of 11 through trains a day. These trains operate on a 2-hourly basis throughout the day with an increased service at peak times. Back in 1999 there were only 6 through trains a day running in the early morning and late evening with an extra through service at 16:30 from Bristol returning at 17:12. However, the actual off-peak service from Severn Beach was more frequent back in 1999 as there was an hourly bus service running from Severn Beach to Avonmouth where it connected with the train. Do any of these buses still run? If so, they're not shown in the timetable.

Between Bristol TM and Avonmouth the service has improved over the last ten years. Back then there were a total of 15 trains a day from Avonmouth to Bristol - that now stands at 24. This means a rather odd frequency of three trains every two hours.

The Saturday service used to run pretty much every hour from Temple Meads through to Severn Beach. Now you can still do the trip on an hourly basis, but every other hour the last leg from Avonmouth to Severn Beach is by a replacement bus. Again, the route between Avonmouth and Bristol TM has seen an increase in the number of daily trains; 22 compared with 15 back in 1999.

Finally there is an hourly Sunday service running between 10am-6pm operating on the Bristol TM to Avonmouth route, although none of these extends through to Severn Beach. Back in 1999 there was no Sunday service at all on the route though.

A good summary, and of course these were the changes put in place last year with the support of the local council. I hope the increase in passengers is enough to encourage the council to continue supporting the improvments, as I understand the original commitment was for a limited period (3 years comes to mind, but I couldn't be sure about that.)

Yeah it was originally an election commitment to provide a half hourly service for three years from April 2007. After they'd actually discussed it with First, it became a forty-minutely service from December 2007, which eventually materialised in May 2008. So as I understand it the funding lasts till the end of March next year. Bristol City Council has had to make spending cuts every year of my adult life, so we can't take a continued subsidy for granted. However I'm hopeful that the political benefits of being seen to be green will motivate whichever party is in power to keep finding the 100k a year, which isn't really a lot of money in the scheme of things.

i realise that it is not a fgw line and that i go on about it alot but living in sidmouth i have two options one is fgw the other is swt on the west of england main line
 :-[ are we going to talk about that one  :)

Unfortunately it's not that low, it's more like ^450,000 per year. We can hope that the more frequent service is included in the Service Level Commitment for the new franchisee.

Just a few comments:

Route 28 -
services from Filton are now much improved with up to 5tph to Temple Meads and a basic service of 4tph during the day, although they are quite poorly spaced; 3tph leave Temple Meads within 13 minutes and then there is a gap of 27 minutes. Filton to Parkway also has 2tph but rather uselessly they are both within 10 mins of each other, in both directions! Annoyingly though the trains start rather late - the first departure to Temple Meads is the 07.02, I don't know what it was 10 years ago, but even back in 2006 it was still possible to arrive at Temple Meads before 7am. There is also an hourly direct service between Parkway/Filton and Stapleton Rd/Lawrence Hill.

Route 29 -
services from Stapleton Rd/Lawrence Hill are much improved with up to 4tph to/from Temple Meads, helping to relieve crowding on trains coming off the branch in the mornings.

Sorry don't know why I had 100k in my head. :-\ 450k is a much bigger deal.... I'd be surprised if it got added to the franchise commitment because surely the government aren't going to be in a position to increase the burden on the franchise holders in the current climate.

I've pretty much covered Route 30 in previous posts, so, moving on...

Route 31: Exeter to Plymouth and Torbay

The route between Exeter and Plymouth is operated with a mix of trains. There's a roughly hourly Cross Country service making limited stops at Newton Abbot and Totnes and a FGW fast service to/from London which make similar stops. In both cases there are occasional extra stops at places like Ivybridge, Teignmouth and Dawlish.

There's also a local stopping service operated by FGW (and even South West Trains occasionally get in on the act) which only run through to Plymouth a few times a day.

At Newton Abbot the branch line to Paignton splits off of the main line and this is served roughly twice an hour with a combination of local services that have usually run from/to Exmouth, and occasional express services operated by FGW (to London) or Cross Country heading up north to either Birmingham or Manchester.

Back in 1999 it was a similar mix of services, but frequencies have changed quite a lot. For example, there was just the one Cross Country operated service running from Paignton back then (as far as Newcastle) whereas there are now four daily services. To give some examples, taking total number of services in one direction on a weekday (not Fridays) now as compared with 10 years ago, you get the following totals (1999 in brackets):

Exeter St. Davids to Plymouth: 36 (39)
Newton Abbot to Exeter St. Davids (some of these are slow trains that get overtaken at Dawlish Warren): 62 (56)
Exeter St. Davids to Torquay: 26 (23)
Paignton to Dawlish Warren: 23 (14)

As you can see, most routes see an increase in the number of trains. Journey times haven't changed much; Plymouth to Exeter in around an hour is the norm, though with more trains stopping at Newton Abbot and Totnes, the average trip now takes a couple of minutes longer. Nothing much could be done to improve on timings without tilting trains or a total rebuild of the route as it twists and turns following the coast for long periods.

Early morning and late evening services were marginally better in all examples that I looked at, though there are still some noticeable gaps in the service. One that really sticks out is from Plymouth to Exeter in the evening, when after the 19:40 has left, there's only one departure (at 21:23) before the sleeper service. That's pretty poor for two big cities like that and by way of comparison from Paignton or Torquay to Exeter at a similar time of evening there's no less that six options available before the end of the days service.

Any info on London services? Currently there are two and 1 takes just over 4 hours! I distinctly remember there was an off peak morning departure to London in Great Western days!

There was a 10am departure from Paignton which reached Paddington at 13:21 (via Bristol) and a 14:17 which got to Paddington at 17:14 via the B&H.

Now it's much earlier at 07:38 from Paignton which goes via Bristol to get to Paddington at 11:40 and then the afternoon fast service is similar at 14:15 arriving at 17:24.

There's also the odd service to Waterloo, but they're very slow!

Why does the afternoon train take 12 minutes longer now? I would expect an additional 4 stops at least. Let me guess - 12 minutes of slack?

Does Torbay need a regular London service (every 2 hours)?

It has the one extra stop at Tiverton Parkway, and is given an extra 5 minutes between Exeter & Taunton including this stop. It's then given an extra 6 minutes on the non-stop stretch from Taunton to Reading. So whether you call it slack or a pathing allowance, it's doing what the majority of long distance services has done in the last 10 years and slowly got slower.

3hr21 is impressive via Bristol & Box!

Btline - no, Torbay doesn't need a regular service. Instead it needs the trains it has to either connect well at Newton Abbot see (http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=4705.0) or the services it currently has to take a sensible amount of time to reach their destination. The 1415 Paignton - Paddington could have quite a bit of time taken out, however as it overtakes the 15xx Taunton - Paddington at Frome (I think!) then if it ran 5 minutes later it might get held up whilst the train it overtakes make its way to Westbury, and if it simply had the slack cut it is likely to get delayed by a Turbo near Reading or will not get a platform at Reading itself. It is completely possible for all West - Paddington to arrive at Reading at xx48 and depart at xx50, however slack means they don't arrive till xx51!

Routes 32, 34 and 36: The Devon branch lines - Exeter to Barnstaple and Exmouth and Plymouth to Gunnislake

The Exmouth branch:
This is a busy little branch line service the town of Exmouth and some large villages and suburbs of Exeter that lie along the River Exe estuary. It has a basic half-hourly service throughout the day until the mid-evening when it reverts to an hourly service. There are no extra trains during the peak hours, although all trains stop at Lympstone Village (x), Exton (x), Polsoe Bridge and St. James' Park during the peak hours. Outside the peak hours these stations are only served once per hour.

Generally speaking one train per hour continues on to Paignton, and the other (limited stops service) runs through to Barnstaple. There are a total of 32 trains a day in each direction with an overall journey time of around 30 minutes for the 11 mile route length.

Back in 1999 the journey time was a little quicker, as fast as 22 minutes with the same stops. The one change in the calling patterns is that Lympstone Village is now served half-hourly whereas Lympstone Commando station (used exclusively forces personnel) is an hourly request stop. In 1999 this was the other way round. There was a total of 29 trains per day. The extra three trains are comprised of an extra early morning service, an extra mid evening service, and a late train from Exeter at 23:27 returning at 00:01. This late train especially is a real improvement as in 1999 the last train back from Exeter was as early as 22:41 from St. Davids.

At weekends there's usually a train every 30 minutes following a similar pattern to weekdays, and on Sundays it's an hourly service. Ten years ago similar frequencies operated, but services again didn't run as late into the evening, and were also much more erratically timed on Sundays.

The Barnstaple branch:
A roughly hourly service operates throughout the day on the 39 miles from Exeter to Barnstaple. It's a long trip of just over an hour. Interestingly there is only one commuter train of the day from Barnstaple at 07:09 as the next train of the day doesn't get to Exeter until nearly 10am! After that it's hourly until mid-afternoon when a few slightly larger gaps open up until the last train which leaves as early as 21:00 from Exeter and 22:18 from Barnstaple. Virtually all the trains are services through from/to Exmouth. There are a total of 14 trains per weekday in each direction.

In 1999 there were fewer trains operating which gave a frequency of roughly one train every two hours off-peak, increasing slightly in the peak hours. This meant a total of nine trains per day back then and a last train from Exeter that departed as early as 20:21!

At weekends the same sort of service operates on a Saturday as during the week, and again there have been the same increase in trains since 1999. On Sunday there are six trains a day which is one extra than in 1999.

The Gunnislake Branch:
There's a service every two hours on the 45-minute trip from Plymouth to Gunnislake. There are no extra trains in the peak hours, though Keyham, Devonport and Dockyard stations on the suburbs of Plymouth see the occasional extra peak train which run along the main line stopping at St. Beaudeax Ferry Road (literally right next to Victoria Road station on the Gunnislake branch) and then crossing over the Tamar Bridge. These are far from ideally spaced though meaning commuters from Plymouth to Keyham have trains at 17:06, then a gap until 18:17 before the next train running only 6 minutes later at 18:23, then a large gap until the last train of the day at 21:30. Similar inconsistencies existed ten years ago! Not surprisingly these stations have very low usage figures, with most commuters from West Plymouth using the bus.

Total number of services between Plymouth and Gunnislake are 9 per day in each direction. Back in 1999 this was only 7, but there was one early morning train that ran to/from Calstock which is the station nearest to Gunnislake. The other extra train plugs gaps of nearly three hours in the service of ten years ago.

At weekends, there's one extra train a day on Saturdays giving a total service of 8 trains a day. The Sunday service has decreased since 1999 with only 5 trains a day which is one less than ten years ago.

II as a matter of curiosity have there been changes in the timings on the peak Portsmouth to Cardiff diagrammes between now and then. In particular from the Wiltshire towns to BTM (and Filton)

I am curious as I started commuting around 2001 and I don^t remember there being much difference in journey times between the outward journey and return. I haven^t kept timetables from that time so I^m at a loss trying to compare.

Filton ^ Trowbridge times are quick outer surburban runs on the way home, approx 40-45 mins, even peak evening, whereas peak travel to work is approx 1hr.

Also catching the 0800/0900 Trowbridge allows plenty of time at Bristol to change trains to get to Filton as both have long layovers, in fact the 0900 allows sufficient time to catch the previous 0851.

Also IIRC there may have been a later Portsmouth Bristol train, and I now have 6 timetables covering my journey to work instead of 1, I wonder what new passengers are going to think of that.  ::)

Well, now the overall journey time from Portsmouth Harbour to Cardiff is typically 3h 23m, which doesn't really vary in the peak hours, but does in the mid to late evening. In 1999 they overall journey time was 3h 11m. There seems to be the odd minute added here and there throughout the route, but in particular between Warminster and Bath Spa where 5 or more minutes are typically added to the journey. This is largely due to all trains now calling at Bradford-On-Avon, and also some trains back in 1999 missed out stops at either Westbury or Trowbridge.

Additional calls here and there mean many more direct trains from somewhere like Trowbridge to Filton AW, although they generally take a minute or two more. If you'd like me to compare any specific train(s) with what was available in 1999, then just post the details and I'll see what I can do.

II, actually the question relates to my comments in the ^Wanted^ thread re comparative out and return journey times from West Wilts to the greater Bristol area.

IIRC it was around 2001 that Wales and West split and Wessex formed, with I assume running pretty much the WW timetable, and it was at that time that the Filton specials first ran via rhubarb curve avoiding BTM in support of the large numbers of MoD staff suddenly uprooted from Bath to Filton, many of whom lived in the West Wilts area.

The old WW service from Trowbridge was rather limited and as you point out there were trains that ran straight through a very crowded platform. Wessex did a very good job of improvements of stopping all Cardiff^s at Trowbridge and with the help of WCC added the specials. It was still at that time that the Waterloo service started in deepest South Wales and there was a return service to Manchester.!!!!

Even then there were services that didn^t stop at BoA, my interest is were the journey times to BTM (Filton) of the 40-45 min region? Although again I think many of the Cardiff^s initially didn^t stop at Filton, there were certainly some of the peak Portsmouth^s didn^t as you had to catch the slightly earlier service and change at BTM if you wanted the quick run back to Trowbridge.

PAX always adapt to whichever TT is put in front of them, another example was the early days of the SWT Waterloo service which initial ran ECS from Salisbury, again going past platforms full of passengers on the way. This quickly changed and became a very good outer surbaban sprint to BTM which PAX quickly caught onto and is now a full 3 car service into Bristol from Salisbury.

A bit long winded so now the specifics, Currently the first fast service begins with the first clock face time from Portsmouth the 0822, through Trowbridge at 10.14, Filton at 11.01.

Prior to that all services take approx 1 hr, a really annoying 15 min difference, all peak return journeys take 40-45 min. Was that the case in 1999?

I see what you mean, tramway - sorry, my route knowledge of the area is a little lacking! Here's a breakdown of the journey times from Trowbridge to Filton from 1999:

06:21 - 53 mins
07:01 - 50 mins
07:34 - 48 mins
08:02 - 55 mins
09:04 - 52 mins
10:11 - 45 mins

So, for a 9-5 job in Filton the 07:34 would have meant an extra 10 minutes in bed, compared with the equivalent 07:24 you'd have to catch now. As an interesting aside there were no more direct trains after the 10:11 until the 17:41 - now there's usually two every hour!

Coming back from Filton the times were:

16:59 - 44 mins
17:37 - 51 mins
18:08 - 42 mins
19:08 - 44 mins

Route 35: Plymouth to Penzance - The Cornish Main Line

This route has to compromise between providing local services for the many tourists that visit Cornwall, with services those travelling towards London on business. I'll deal with the branch lines and connections in my next post, but taking the route from Plymouth to Penzance as a whole, there's roughly an hourly service throughout the day, with extra services in the peak hours. Several of these are through trains to/from London, and when they don't run the gaps are filled by local services, and four services each way operated by Cross Country, biased heavily towards eastbounds in the morning and westbound in the evening. The nature of this mix of trains means the service is far from clockface.

All trains stop at Redruth, Truro, St. Austell, Bodmin Parkway and Liskeard. Most trains stop at St. Erth, Camborne and Par. Stations at Hayle, Lostwithiel, and the local stops between Liskeard and Plymouth see some trains stopping, with calling patterns swapped around to make sure that no train stops everywhere.

The Plymouth to Liskeard commuter market is catered for by a couple of extra trains in the evening peak, though towards Plymouth in the morning these are all services that have started from Penzance.

1999 saw a similar pattern of services operating, with the local services being provided by Wales & West. Here's a comparison of the numbers of trains operating between selected stations on the route. The 1999 figure as usual is in brackets:

Penzance to Plymouth: 22 (20)
Hayle to St. Austell: 12 (9)
Bodmin Parkway to Plymouth: 22 (24)
Plymouth to Redruth: 22 (22)
Liskeard to Truro: 22 (23)
Lostwithiel to Penzance: 13 (10)

So, that's a marginal increase on most routes.

In terms of journey times, it varies between services, but most trains take in the order of 2hrs between Plymouth and Penzance which is just under 80 miles long, some trains with less stops actually take longer due to the signalling headways that exist on certain sections of the route. However, as with other routes the average journey time has increased slightly over the years. You can still do the trip in as little as 1h44m, which is actually quicker than back in 1999, however the number of trains making the trip in less that two hours has increased slightly.

Early morning and late evening services are better than they were in 1999, especially eastbound where the first train out of Penzance is at 05:05, when this used to be much later at 06:35 and gives an early arrival in Paddington at 10:02 which is almost two hours earlier than it was.

I'm pretty sure the up "hind" the 05xx ran in 1999? arriving into Pad a little before 1000, also, there is one service that doesn't call at Redruth, the 0521 Penzance to Truro which has an odd stopping pattern of Pnz-Hyl-Cbn-Tru in order to get out of the section as not to delay the 0541 Pnz-Pad.

One thing not picked up on is the extra London services to/from paddington now.

Yes, my mistake, the 'Hind' did run at 05:15 from Penzance arriving 09:59. Thirteen minutes quicker than it is now! I covered the general London-Cornwall services back in Route 4. Thanks for that and the Redruth correction though 'vacman'.

and those six added together don't give all the info that the old booklet E used to !

Also, have the times between Warminster and Salisbury been altered ?  Most trains take 20 minutes (some only 19) from Salisbury to Warminster, in the opposite direction they are scheduled at 22-25 minutes. I'm sure at one time they were the same !

Hi, moonrakerz. Those timings were pretty much the same back in 1999 - southbound trains 20 minutes, northbound mostly 23 minutes.

Are you sure you don't mean the other way round ?   ;)

Routes 37 & 38: Liskeard to Looe, and Par to Newquay.

Liskeard to Looe
There's a total of 12 weekday trains in each direction between Liskeard and Looe. This is two more than existed in 1999, although there was a Monday only additional service bringing the total to 11 back then. All except two stop on request at St. Keyne, Causeland and Sandplace. Two trains a day stop at the isolated Coombe Junction. These calling patterns are very similar to ten years ago. The extra trains mean the service frequency of a train roughly every 60-90 minutes can be maintained, but allows for an earlier start and later finish.  

High summer services on a Saturday have increased from 10 to 13 round trips, and Sundays remain at 8 trains each way. Saturday's evening service has been particularly improved with last trains at 20:40 and 21:12 which is over two hours later than they were in 1999.

Connections to/from London Paddington services are important to the success of the branch. You can reach Paddington by 11:23 off of the first train from Looe (this used to be 11:56). The last connection of the day also leaves slightly later at at 18:34 arriving at 23:40. There are 8 other Looe to London possibilities throughout each weekday. A connection into the overnight sleeper is also available, that wasn't an option back in 1999, though you have a three hour wait at Liskeard to suffer!

Coming the other way, things have worsened slightly. It was possible to reach Looe by 11:25 with a couple of changes, but now 12:43 is the earliest arrival unless you catch the sleeper in which case you'll be there for 07:41. That's 40 minutes later than in 1999 as you have nearly an hour at Liskeard having missed the first train of the day by 10 minutes. Later in the day things have improved significantly though as there's a connection off of the 15:05ex Paddington - ten years ago you had to leave London as early as 13:05 to make the last trains of the day.

Par to Newquay
High summers sees seven return trips a day on the lengthy branch to Newquay. That's the same number as ten years ago, although services are now spread out further to give earlier and later journey possibilities. What could even loosely be described as a commuter service is now available leaving Newquay at 06:57 with a change of train at Par you can be in Plymouth, Truro or St. Austell for 9am and return options from all three stations between 17:24 and 17:41. You'd have to be a pretty hardened commuter to put up with those journey times though! All bar one train stop at all the intermediate stops on request.

The Saturday service is split into high and low peak periods. The low peak service is similar to the weekday timetable, with the high summer timetable catering for the longer distance holiday traffic with all trains bar one coming through from Plymouth and two of them direct from Paddington. Sundays see a total of 6 trains (one direct from London) until the end of the summer when the service stops totally. Cross Country get in on the act at the weekend with three of the Saturday trains and one Sunday train serving places such as Birmingham, Newcastle and Manchester. Similar services operated in 1999, but there were slightly less options to choose from.

There's a total of six possibilities through from Newquay to London Paddington on weekdays, including the overnight sleeper. Things have improved since 1999 with a 12:25 arrival at London possible now. In 1999 the earliest arrival was 14:47. During July and August the Atlantic Coast Express runs through from Newquay to London at 15:00 arriving 20:39. This train did not operate during the week in 1999. Latest connection (sleeper train excluded) through to London leaves Newquay at 17:22 arriving at 23:40; again much later than back in 1999.

Coming the other way you can reach Newquay by 13:00 outside of July and August but not until 14:31 when the Atlantic Coast Express is running, although that is a direct train. Ten years ago a 12:16 or 12:40 arrival was possible depending on what month you were travelling. The latest you can leave London for Newquay is 16:06 - ten years ago it was much earlier at 13:05.

Routes 39 & 40: Truro to Falmouth Docks and St Erth to St Ives

Truro to Falmouth Docks
Good news, to all but the most desperate local newspaper it seems, is that a long closed passing loop at Penryn has been re-instated to allow a more frequent service along the branch. There is now a half-hourly service in operation from 6am-7pm, usually operated by two single Class 153 units. After 7pm the trains run hourly (coupled together?) until the last service at 22:06 from Truro and 22:33 from Falmouth Docks. All trains stop at all stations en-route, except Perranwell which is now a request stop on an hourly basis (half hourly at peak times). This gives a total service on the route of 29 trains per weekday each way.

On Saturdays the service is virtually identical, and on Sundays trains start up with the 10:45ex Truro with a service at least every 1h 30m running through until 10pm which gives a total of 10 trains each way.

Back in 1999 a much less frequent service was offered by Wales & West. Gaps of 1h 45m existed at certain times of the day, and there was a total of only 12 trains a day on weekdays. There were only two possible commuting services to Truro from Falmouth at 06:45 and 07:57. Now there's twice as many. The last service from Truro was at 20:42 which is nearly an hour-and-a-half earlier than now. The Saturday service was the same. The only day that hasn't had an improved service, frequency wise at least, is Sunday's which also saw 10 trains each way per day.

Connections onto the main line don't always work quite as smoothly as you might like, that's unavoidable when you have a clockface timetable connecting into one which is far from clockface on the main line, but there are a total of 12 daily journey possibilities from Falmouth to London with either one change at Truro, or an extra one at Plymouth. The quickest you can do the through journey is 4h 54m off of the 08:50 service. Through trips typically take around the 5h15m-5h30m mark. The additional trains now operating mean that there are also many more possibilities for travel to other Cornish towns too.

St Erth to St Ives
A similar half-hourly frequency now operates on the St Ives branch, giving a total of 28 trains a day between 06:45 and 22:00. There are two trains a day that continue through to/from Penzance, one of which is the 08:19 from St Ives which forms a commuter service to Penzance and has the effect of opening up the gap to hourly for that hour. There is no return direct service though, and other through trains are basically stock positioning moves early morning and late evening.

Saturday sees a total of 25 trains a day. The same frequency as weekdays, except the service reverts to hourly earlier in the evening. Hi season Sundays see no less than 19 trains a day each way from 9am to 7:30pm, but this drops down to 13 in September as services don't start until nearly midday.

Back in 1999 there were only 21 services operating each weekday at a mix of half-hourly and hourly frequencies. This did however enable a total of 6 trains per day to travel through to/from Penzance. A practically identical morning commuter service operated from St Ives reaching Penzance for around 08:40, but the return trip had options of a 17:30 with a change at St Erth and a through train at 18:38. Both trains took between 20-25 minutes to get there. Now regular hours commuters only really have the option of the 17:37ex Penzance with a poor connection at St Erth leaving you with a journey time of nearly 50 minutes. I'd be interested to know if there was much of a commuter market into Penzance and if these changes has affected it?

There's been a similar increase in weekend services since 1999 too, though one interesting change is that there used to be a couple of trains that started/terminated at Lelant Saltings which is the park and ride station for St Ives. Now all services run through to St Erth.

Connections to/from London are varied. The first train at 13:40 into Paddington is actually the worst of all the Cornish and Devon branch lines, but then again it is the furthest away. I can't help but think starting the service 30 minutes earlier would be beneficial though as it would make a 12:25 arrival in London possible, which is the same as the other Cornish branch lines.

Commuting opportunities to/from Redruth and Truro also exist, though they're rather spoilt by the fact that the ideal return train from Truro and Redruth just before 6pm only runs from 29th June until 4th September!

The Falmouth service isn't coupled in the evening although it would make sense.
And for most the year the 1557 service from Plymouth to Penzance is the commuter service from Truro. Connection from St Ives are generally poor with trains often missing by one or two minutes.

Summary:
Well, it's taken nearly two months and getting on for 15000 words, but that's all the routes covered. I could have delved a lot deeper, but hopefully you have been given a good flavour of what's gone on and enjoyed reading? I have added a poll which I'd like as many of you to vote on as possible, so that we get a reasonably accurate impression of what the customers and staff think of things.

Obviously I've only covered the train times and not the many other things which make up a good/bad journey like fares, availability of seats, etc. In terms of the timetable, there have been two underlying trends. There are definitely more trains running on most routes now, and those that do operate nearly always take a little longer - either as a result of making extra stops or just being given more recovery time. There are exceptions to these trends of course; the reduction of trains between Oxford and Didcot and journey time improvements between Bedwyn and London are two that spring to mind.

The next ten years...
One obvious disappointment of the service development since 1999 is the lack of improvements to the infrastructure. There have been no really major projects, a few extra signals here and there, some minor linespeed increases, and the odd extra platform like at Swindon, but the only project of any size that I can think of is the Probus-Burngullow redoubling on the Cornish Main Line in 2004. The Penryn loop has of course just been finished and work has started on the Cotswold Line redoubling but that's a pretty poor list.

In 2019, as well as the Cotswold Line improvements, we will hopefully have a Crossrail network, IEP trains running over a hopefully expanding electrification area, a much improved layout at Reading, Swindon to Kemble double track, and reinstated services to Tavistock and Portishead. There are potentially many more. Perhaps I'll be sat at my keyboard commenting on them in ten years!

In ten years, that is very optimistic!

IEP will be diesel. I doubt either of the new lines will be re-opened; but don't worry, they'll have wasted a few million doing surveys and reports! Kemble may be re-doubled (most likely out of the above). Reading and Xrail should be completed (assuming the projects aren't scaled down or cut by a Conservative Government). The only one I would put money on being complete is the Cotswold re-doubling.

A HUGE thank you for taking the time to write up your review IndustryInsider...very much appreciated.

I agree - it has been v interesting reading. Do you have the 1999 timetables, or did you have to do research?

reguarding the poll, now ok i dont use the london half of fgw (past swindon) but i think people should back up there votes in the poll as currently there is a 50/50 split in got worse and better, i voted there has been an inprovement as in my area trains are more frequent (if not sometimes full) the whole fleet has recived a refurb the only issue is the pacers but this really isnt fgw's fault  i would be interested to know if the people who voted that things have got worse actually traveled in 1999 on the fgw network (i moved down in 1997) so i have

One thing that isn't picked up regarding Looe and Newquay is that you are comparing summer for summer, yes there were 7 trains per day in HIGH summer in 1999 but only 4 the rest of the year, now days there are 7 per day ALL year, likewise for sunday services on the St Ives and Falmouth, in 1999 the sunday service only ran in high summer on the Falmouth and all summer on St Ives with no winter sunday trains!

Thanks gents - hard work, but fun! I borrowed a copy of the timetable from a friend.


Yes, that's a very valid point. I didn't get into too much detail with the seasonal variations to avoid getting bogged down, but the ones you mention are indeed significant for the routes concerned. Come on people, get voting!

I voted for a slight inprovement based on trips mainly from Bath to London, Bristol and Cardiff.

On the good side - service is now more reliable and marginally more frequent.  Stations and stocks have been cleaned up and refurbished.  Buying a ticket is easier with TVM and more staff

On the neutral side - ticket barriers are installed but not always used properly buy to insufficient staff.  They bring benefits but also inconvenince.

On the negative side -  jounrney times are up and open fares are extortionate into London. 

Thats just my view.  I know not all of my comments relate to things that First has control over and some of them would have happened if the franchise was with someone else, but overall I think that First has made a fairly good fist of things (after a dreadful start to the franchsie - well done to everyone involved in turning things arround) and not been afriad to spend money where needed.  I do think thatthey have managed to salvage their reputation and I no longer wear my "I hate FGW" badge.

What a fabulous piece of work you've done in this thread, "Industry Insider".  Words fail me ... a 'useful review' would only be scratching the surface, thank you.

I have had a look at your poll, and I want(ed) to vote, and I am just about to do so personally.   But I have a bit of a quandry.   In 1999,  we had a useable service - meagre but usable - where I live.  Under Wessex trains, that improved to a useful service, and passenger usage rocketed - double figure percentage growth rates, compound, on all measures. So First took over a growing service.  We are now back to a service that is much less useable that it was in 1999 (even if the 06:15 from Swindon and 19:35 from Westbury are new compared to '99), due to timings that defy logic with regard to the journeys people want to make on the line.

If I compare back to '99 ... then it will be somewhat negative.   But if I compare what has happened since First took over - replacing arrivals  (from Swindon and Chippenham) at 06:56, 09:12, 14:49, 18:09 and 22:37 with just two arrivals - 06:40 and 19:11 ... and this for a growing town of over 20,000 ... then my vote will be as negative as it possibly could be.

Yes, Graham - I see what you mean. Perhaps I should have added a 'It's been a Roller-coaster Ride' option in the poll just for you!  ;)

Ah - it's tough to specify options on things like this.   I have chosen an appropriately negative personal response, even though I know that our local degradation isn't matched all over the FGW area (imagine the anger if Barnstaple was reduced to just two trains a day from Exeter - at 06:15 and 18:45!)

Hardly a fair comparison is it?

Probably not ... here are some of the many differences.

Barnstaple has a population of 24,000 to 34,000 according to various Google searches I have done; I expect the difference rates to what is and isn't included.  If we look specifically at Melksham, you're looking at a smaller population - somewhere between 20,000 and 23,000. 

Then you have the intermediate traffic;  there are no extra intermediate stations served only by TransWilts trains, as they were shut in the 1960s, but those to Barnstaple survived;  I'm not an expert to know how much extra traffic they do / could bring. 

I believe Barnstaple has something of a railhead role;  Melksham doesn't, although it's one of the few stations around here that can be reached by road without having to fight your way into town (Chippenham and Bath are the other extremes!)

The shorter the journey, the more people want to make it.  Melksham to Chippenham is 6 miles, and to Swindon is 20 miles.  Barnstaple to Exeter is about 5040 miles.

When FGW took over, there were (?) 8 or 9 trains a day from Exeter to Barnstaple and now there are 14. There were 5 trains a day from Swindon to Melksham, and now there are 2.

It probably IS very unfair of me to compare to the Tarka line - which with service improvements, and services at times that people want to travel, goes from strength to strength.  Yet at the same time, it's very  instructive to weigh up factors and to consider what is (and what is not) a fair comparison. 

I'd like to add my compliments to IndustryInsider for the contributions on this thread.

I find it difficult to vote as I can't help asking myself the question how many of the changes are due to the railway being privatised. Unless I'm grossly mistaken, improvements to infrastructure and rolling stock have been financed at least in part by local (councils), governmental and supranational (EU)bodies and improvements to the service have also been funded by local authorities at times - or imposed in others.

I would also like to add my thanks, especially your bit of extra work regarding the timings to Filton, I had been wondering how to obtain the info for a while, and has re-ignited my interest in the recommendations in the comprehensive RPC report from 2004 for the Portsmouth/Cardiff route.

an hourly regional express service from Cardiff to Portsmouth, as now, but with a standardised pattern of stops; we suggest the stops should concentrate on those stations which generate the most passengers, with a cut-off threshold of say around 3% of ticket sales on the route other than where a station has a significant flow of passengers connecting into other routes (such as Westbury)

Stopping pattern proposed was:

Cardiff, Newport, Filton, BTM, Bath, Trowbridge, Westbury, Warminster, Salisbury, Romsey (Peak), Southampton, Fareham, Cosham, Portsmouth Stations.

Current timings to North Bristol are not currently competitive with car journey times, and I am aware of many people who choose to drive because of this, and as noted by Graham, current  plans for housing in the West Wilts area are only going to add to road congestion unless improvements are made to public transport.

The stopping pattern is also strongly supported in the Draft South West RSS which identified regional Strategically Significant Cities and Towns, with trains services developed to meet their needs. There are further regional studies also in support which I was going to get back to Lee with but didn^t get around to as I stalled when looking at detailed passenger figures and attempting to compare the route with other UK regions with a similar loadings. I must get back to the station comparator.

 Also from the RPC report in support of Melksham needs:

We suggest that the current irregular and infrequent service via Melksham to Swindon should become a regular, clock face shuttle from Westbury to Swindon (for which a single class 153 would be suitable), timed to connect at Trowbridge with Southampton trains, and at Swindon with London services. This would improve reliability and marketability. In the peak period, timings would also need to take account of commuter flows to and from Swindon.

For the next ten years I understood that the Temple Meads to Filton 4 tracking was currently in Network Rails small scheme plans.

I will now add my vote.

Thanks, tramway.

Let's get some more votes in people - I was hoping for 100 votes and we're only 25% of the way there!

Had a bit of a look around and came across this from the Notwork Rail Route plan for the area, unfortunately although it^s mentioned there are no specifics regarding funding in CP4 as far as I can see. Route Plan CP4 (http://www.networkrail.co.uk/browse%20documents/StrategicBusinessPlan/RoutePlans/2009/Route%2013%20-%20Great%20Western%20Main%20Line.pdf)

The reinstatement of the four track railway between Bristol Dr Days^ Junction and Filton Abbey Wood would increase capacity by better separation of traffic flows between Bristol and South Wales and Bristol and the north/London via Bristol Parkway. This would also further enhance cross-Bristol capacity.

I assume the voter for a ^transformed^ railway was being ironic.

Well, we seem to have ground to a halt on the voting front at just 27. Not enough to get an accurate picture, but it's interesting to see that two-thirds of voters think that the service has generally improved over the last 10 years, with just 26% thinking that it's got worse.

I wonder if the result would have been the same if I'd asked the same question a couple of years ago?

I've voted marginaly worse based on Taplow services and I'm basing it on comaprison with the NSE service.

Although we now have a regular 1/2 hourly offpeak service both peak and off peak services take considerable longer and stop more frequently. I'm not sure what year we dropped to hourly.

My usually peak service was 07:23 to 07:56 with stops at Burnham Slough Hayes and Ealing Broadway. Now it's at least 15 minutes longer with stops at Langley (Iver) West Drayton and Southall thrown in.

Off peak we now have an asymetrical service more stops on the down. Thus one catches the fast Oxford/Worcester to Slough and change. In the Up it now takes 39 minutes including the excessive padding from Ealing, instead of 33 in NSE days.

Admittedly this has enabled puctuality to increase but if you allow around 17/18 minutes to get from Ealing to Padd for a right time arrival (up to 5 minutes late, don't forget) it ought to be punctual.

But as they seem to lost NSE's punctuality figures, possibly through embarassment, it's only a subjective opinion but the full NSE Turbo service seemed to run pretty well to time most of the time, unless there were major incidents. 

We still don't have Sunday services. The fares are also considerably higher.

No doubt you would have a Sunday service at Taplow (and Burnham) by now, probably hourly, if there were suitable platforms in place on the main lines. The same goes for Hanwell and West Ealing. Sadly the extra cost of buses that would need to be provided when the relief lines are closed on a Sunday makes it a non-starter. Taplow's situation is frustrating - two full length (7-car) platforms on the main lines, but only available in emergencies as they are so low following successive track renewals.

Despite that the public can still wander around on them and it was interesting to note that the anti-trespass gates and rumble strips installed at all the Reading to Paddington stations for some reason didn't get installed on the down main platform.

Update, the gates and rumble strips have not been installed on the Down Main, too narrow?

However, a fence from the platform side of the end footbridge parrallel to the platform edge and a gate at right angles between the new fence and the old fence has been installed. Currently the gate is padlocked. So no more wandering up and the Down Main platform.

It varies from route to route I think, although there's generally been an improvement. At the moment, with more trains on most routes in the former FGW/Wessex area and a generally reliable service things are fairly good. Although as an Exeter City fan living in Bristol I'm annoyed the last train back on a week night is now at 2111 (earlier than it was under Wessex), far too early if there's a game on, but there's a train from Taunton at 2245. Sort it out FGW! ;)

Incidentally if you'd compared November 2000 and 2010, the answer would have to be much better - compared to post-Hatfield, even the fairly abysmal service in 2007 was great!

Over two years on since I started this topic and I thought I'd give it a bump so that the many new members on the forum since then can take a look and perhaps cast their vote so we get a bigger representative sample of what passengers/staff think.

my route has improved ten fold, but due to funding getting the passing loop at penryn, how much FGW influenced this i dont know, but because of this i can comment on massive improvements in my normal route