Great Western Coffee Shop

From This is Wiltshire (http://www.thisiswiltshire.co.uk/news/4870954.Welsh_report_calls_to_cut_Swindon_train_stops/):

Are there really more stops than 20 years ago?

Newport
Bristol
Swindon
Reading
London

Doesnt seem a whole hell of a lot to me - Didcot could easily be removed - the only one I can see not being there 20 yers ago would be Bristol Parkway

There used to be a non stop train every two hours from Newport to Paddington, which gave journey times from Cardiff to Paddington of <1 hr 45m.  This service began in 1977 after the full speed up following HST introduction until the mid eighties, when the rot started to set in with extra stops, recovery time, and 8 coach sets all adding a few minutes here and there until we end up with trains 20 minutes slower.

It's the same on the Temple Meads run too.

I would have thought if this were to happen then it would make sense to have the peak services to Cardiff be stoppers whilst services orginating from Swansea travel as fast between Bristol and Reading. Removing the stop at Reading may not be an ideal situation as it is a station important for connections but Swindon less so therefore could be easier to drop from services as such.

Of course this does not solve the problem caused by removing stops which is how do you compensate for it?

Do you need to?

However I'd also say does South Wales need that many fast trains - surely SOME which stop and some which don't is fine

Now Swindon - even if you remove the swanseas - you still have bristol, cheltenham and cardiffs stopping plus some others I guess that I never use.

Use to catch the Cardiff's from Reading for both Cardiff and Bristol Parkway most ran non stop to Parkway. In about 45 minutes. Just time to get a full english breakfast on the way down to Bristol.

Cutting Swindon would save about 4 mins, then the train would be on the tail of vomits to Bristol at Parkway

I take it you don't support the proposal from the Enterprise and Learning Committee then, devon_metro?  ;D

I wouldn't remove Reading, as it a major commuter destination and interchange. But I see no reason why Swindon and Didcot stops shouldn't be cut from peak trains. Couple this with electrification and removal of slack, I'm sure the journey could be cut by over half and hour, which is what they should be aiming for.

FGW isn't going to be cutting many stops at Swindon. Many of the managers travel to Swindon!

And replying to Chris, I was simply pointing out how with the current timetable structure the benefits would be very limited ;)

In the current timetable, the standard running time from Paddington to Cardiff is 2:01 on trains that continue to Swansea, but 2:06-2:08 on the Cardiffs, which shows how much timetable padding there is.

Meanwhile, the Summer 1993 timetable had an hourly service through to Swansea. Standard off-peak running time from Paddington to Cardiff was 1:58, calling at Reading, Swindon, Parkway and Newport. The Reading stop was cut out of the 16:00, 17:00, 18:00 (and an 18:25 extra). The Swindon stop was cut out of the 18:00 and 18:25. But that only reduced the running time to 1:54. Fastest of the day was the 09:25, which only stopped at Reading and took 1:48 to Cardiff. But that's hardly a worthwhile time of day (and the train was the summer-only one to Fishguard Harbour!).

In the opposite direction, standard off-peak time Cardiff-Paddington was also 1:55. Fastest was the 07:25 from Cardiff, which took 1:50 by not stopping at Swindon or Reading.

I can't see the point of not stopping at Reading. Much more important traffic-wise now than it was 20 years ago, and you have to run through the platform anyway - so a non-stop is going to reduce the line capacity.

Shortly after Paddington-Cardiff became half-hourly, there was a period when several off the off-peak Swanseas missed the Swindon stop (possibly Summer 2002?). It didn't last long - someone realised that with Cardiff and Bristol both being half-hourly, it was possibly to provide a 15-minute interval at Swindon.

Given that the Cheltenham trains run just behind the Paddington/Swansea trains in both directions, they could omit the Swindon stop in the hours when there's a Cheltenham train. In the down direction, that would require re-timing of other services through Bristol Parkway, and of the Portsmouth-Cardiff path through the Severn Tunnel, and no doubt there would be issues in the Reading area if the up trains end up being a few minutes quicker.

But the rot had set in by then. You have to go back a further 10 and 15 years to get journey times about 15 minutes faster.

Er, that would be the time allowed for those trains to slow, stop at Didcot, and then get back up to speed.

I do love the way whenever this one rears its head, it always ends up with someone harking back to what happened 30 years ago. Yet none of you speed merchants seem willing to recognise that it was that very speed in the early years of HSTs that encouraged the long-distance commuting market in the first place.

On top of which policies pursued by successive governments, of whatever colour, have seen the likes of Swindon grow massively. In 1981, the population of Swindon was just under 130,000, now the town is nearing 160,000, with another 25,000 or so in the wider borough council area. Newport was about the same size as Swindon in 1981. Its population has increased by about 10,000 since then.

Trains will go where the customers are - and there are more and more of them in Swindon.
Many of them travel out of Swindon for work, other people travel into the town to work. How else do you propose that FGW moves them, given the finite rolling stock resources available? Same applies to Didcot, on a smaller scale. Answers on a postcard to the FGW bunker in Swindon.

It's very easy to say just drop the stops there, they can always get on a train from somewhere else. How do they do that when the people living in somewhere else have already filled that train? And what about people who commute from Bristol Parkway to Swindon? Sorry, you'll have to go via Temple Meads now...

Maybe we could apply the same 'what happened 30 years ago' principle and ditch stops by express trains in another growing community, called Milton Keynes. After all, it didn't even have a station in 1981 (Central opened in 1982), other than the less than ideal Bletchley and Wolverton, with some InterCity calls supplementing the staple diet of Northampton line electrics.

If you had a service that took 1 hr 45 to London 34 years ago then it's not unreasonable to be aggrieved that it now takes over 2 hours.

Other lines have speeded up enormously in that time. On the Midland there are trains every half hour to Leicester that do the 99 miles in 1 hr 7 or 8 mins (88mph). The West Coast has an hourly service from London to Warrington that takes 1 hr 44 mins for the 182 miles (105mph).  Yet on the Great Western trains dawdle the 118 miles to Temple Meads in 1 hr 40mins or 45 mins (71mph).

Even Hull Trains manages services to Grantham (105 miles) in 1 hour. And at least 8 trains each hour pass through Milton Keynes in exactly the way you suggest.

So whereas other services have managed a sensible mix of longer distance and commuter trains, FGW has ended up with a fleet of trains and services that try to meet both the demands of commuter services and longer distance services. With the result that neither market and particularly the longer distance market is satisfied with the results.

And as a commuter to Swindon I am very well aware of it's importance. But I'm not convinced every HST should stop there.

I'd quite happily cut out Swindon from my journey. But how can this even be proposed? when Swindon is twinned with Disneyworld. The number of tourists cramming into Swindon now to look at the roundabouts is unheralded

http://www.thisiswiltshire.co.uk/news/4781996.Swindon_twinned_with_Disney_World/

And the service provided 34 years ago on the Great Western was a different service, one that was subsequently changed due to the radical changes in travel habits brought about by the HSTs, without the benefit of lots of extra rolling stock to cope with those changes.

If BR had got all the HSTs it wanted to build in the mid-1970s, then they would probably have been able to add extra semi-fast services to cover growing demand for long-distance commuting, while allowing long-distance trains to storm past the likes of Didcot and Swindon. It didn't, so they don't.

Hmm, the Midland Main Line - not hard to speed things up there, using HSTs and Meridians in place of 133 lumbering tons of Class 45, a type which was hardly noted for sparkling acceleration, never mind the power being drained off for the train eth supply.

MK is served by another train operator as well as Virgin and sits on the core section of the WCML, before routes start to diverge, so there are many more trains to go around - and straight through the station, in that case.

Swindon is served by just one operator, lies some distance beyond Reading, the last point at which the GWML core services are all on a shared route (and that a route which is carrying way more trains than in 1976, with precious little by way of capacity improvements in all that time), and again past the divergence of the frequently-served Oxford route and was never included in the Network South East area, so InterCity, then (F)GW, has had to cover all types of (growing) traffic.

Electrification may offer the opportunity to run some queue-buster peak emus out as far as Swindon, though given the number of routes that Class 319s are now supposed to be the salvation of, that may be difficult.

In the meantime, how do you propose maintaining capacity and frequencies at Swindon (and Didcot) if you remove a series of stops by long-distance trains there? Serious answers only please.

I'd not want my occasional changes at Swindon to be compromised. I'm still hoping to bump into Billie Piper.  8) With my luck it'd probably be Mark Lamarr........  >:(

You do need more rolling stock. The suggestion in RUS for 6tph as far as Swindon and 5 tph to Bristol post electrification is the first acknowledgment that there is a need to cater for the two markets separately.

If there was an additional semi-fast to Bristol Temple Meads via the Badminton line each hour, you could run the Swansea service non-stop from Reading to Newport.

As mentioned above, this would need more rolling stock. >:(

John, I consider your comparisons to be completely unreasonable. You have quoted an FGW terminating station with a bit of low speed running from Bath, whereas both Warrington & Leicester are the first stops after a high speed run.

If we compare the 54 minutes allocated for Paddington - Swindon we achieve 84.25mph, a far more realistic and fair comparison of speeds.

D-M  I do accept your point. Though to the citizens of Bristol, it doesn't mean a jot to them that they are at the end of the journey. They used to have services that ran limited stop, and now they don't, and are much slower as a consequence.

And both the examples I cited were ones where journey times have improved considerably over the years, whereas on the Great Western they have universally got slower. WillC cited (in an ironic way) Milton Keynes as an example whereby the growth in commuting meant it would be unreasonable to have trains passing through non-stop, yet that's exactly what happens several times each hour.

The fact that the RUS has suggested a 5th train ph thus enabling some faster services to be restored does imply that there is a recognition that the current service provision is not completely appropriate for the major cities served.       

As a traveller from Bath to Paddington, how I miss next stop Reading services that flew past Chippenham, Swindon and Didcot.

Anyone remember the West Country Pullman that ran for a couple of years in the late eighties between London-Paignton that ran non-stop both ways between London-Bath giving an HST opportunity to show what a great Intercity train it is  :P

I highly doubt any of the South Wales services would drop Parkway as it is need of a half hourly service, and if I remember rightly First not to long ago advertised services every 15mins to Bristol alternating between Temple Meads and Parkway.

The reason I ironically cited Milton Keynes was because we were being told such and such happened on the GWML in 1976 and that apparently this was better and we should go back to it. My point was that Milton Keynes Central did not exist until 1982, so if Virgin adopted the 'what happened 34 years ago' approach they could just ignore the station entirely and save lots of time on trains to more traditional WCML destinations. But they don't, because there is lots of money to be made - just like Swindon and Didcot, which is why more trains stop at them than did 34 years ago.

Virgin has nine trains per hour passing through Milton Keynes, backed up by LM semi-fasts, so the opportunities to provide a number of non-stop services are rather greater than at Swindon. IF FGW was running HSTs every 20 minutes to Cardiff and to Bristol and hourly to Cheltenham, backed up by half-hourly trains turning back at Swindon, I'm sure it would do things differently itself.

Depending on how much control outside the DfT FGW actually have, I suspect this issue boils down to money. If FGW thought they could fill trains between Wales and London by cutting out Swindon or Reading they'd do that (although as pointed out finding a path to make use of it would be tricky) - people travelling further pay more for their tickets. If they can't count on enough people filling the train then it makes more sense to stop it at Swindon, Didcot and Reading. At the moment it seems their view is that stopping all services at Swindon makes more money than if they didn't stop some. If you want to change that you'd need to be able to show that you could attract more people by reducing journey times by 5-10 minutes.

I was on the first Paddington - Swansea yesterday (30/1/10) and it was well loaded in Standard class in all coaches. Despite sitting behind the 0730 Paddington - Penzance between Didcot & Swindon we still arrived into Bristol Parkway early. There is certainly lots of slack however as the xx30 stops at Didcot it would probably catch up with the preceding service. Lots of re-jigging would be needed I suspect!

In the December 2009 timetable a train from Swansea was altered to cut out the Didcot and Reading stops (and leaves Swindon ONE whole minute earlier than it did in the May 2009 timetable).
This has made the next two trains from Swindon busier as those travelling to Didcot, Reading and connecting stations have to get those. (The 08:11 which is from WSM, and the 08:28 which is another Swansea). So I think it's a really bad move. >:(

Blame the WAG

^

(not too subtle was it?)

It may leave Swindon only one minute earlier, but doesn't it arrive in London around 10 minutes earlier. And provides a nice fast non-stop service for Swindon to Paddington pax of whom there are quite a few. These things are always a compromise, and with at least 5 trains ph from Swindon to Padd in the peak, it's not unreasonable to run one non stop to give pax further west a faster journey.

What we need is a form of transport that offers every user the chance to make a non-stop journey from start to destination...... oh, hang on, that's a car isn't it?

The rail network is providing public transport accessible to all and that means it has to make compromises when it comes to calling patterns and overall journey time, both to provide a decent service and put bums on seats.

By enabling the serviceto arrive before 9am whilst also being under 3 hours in journey time from start to finish is fantastic PR and was reported in some local papers in Wales as such. This little bit of positive PR is what is needed to encourage peopel onto rail. If I'm honest as well, Didcot and Reading both have many services to London so speeding up one service that serves South Wales and Bristol Parkway will encourage people to use rail. The other two trains may be busier but this service may benefit a lot more people before from stations west of Reading and Didcot so even though it's only a slight PR win, every little helps in helping to male the railway a viable alternative to the car to both business and leisure travellers

Just an observation, but we currently have two services (one from BRI and one from SWA) that skip RDG in the morning peak, but no return services that also skip RDG.