Great Western Coffee Shop

I've been doing the Farnborough North-Guildford commute for four months. It seems that during the evening peak there are some strange intervals between trains...

Services to Farnborough North run at 17:09, 17:44, 18:14, 18:24 then a gap until 19:36.

I fail to understand why there are two services 10 minutes apart (the 18:24 is lightly loaded), then a gap of an hour and 12 minutes. Half six in the evening is pretty much still peak hours. Even off peak, the service is hourly.

Also, if anyone wants to travel the one station to Shalford, departures are at 16:50, 17:40, 17:50, 18:54 and 19:48. Very odd- I guess if you want to travel Guildford-Shalford, First don't want your business and would rather you lined Arriva's pockets for the local bus service.

Any thoughts?

If I recall the only reason FGW serve Shalford as much as they do is because there's no capacity at Guildford for services terminating there to lay over.

The 18:14 departure has to run when it does to be in place at Reading for the 19:04 service to Shalford.  The 18:24 departure is the one that goes off to Wokingham after arrival at Reading and then works the 20:04 from Reading to Redhill.

If there was platform space at Guildford (or the possibility of running to Shalford and back), it would appear possible to run the 18:24 as a service from Redhill to Guildford in its current timings, terminate, let the train from Gatwick pass through (currently 18:47 from Guildford although could be earlier as it wouldn't have to wait for the signalling headway) and then run the stopper in the gap to pick up the 20:04 departure from Reading (although this would require further guard time).

There used to be a 19:17 departure from Guildford when the timetable was recast in 2006 but this was taken out when the 18:04 was extended through to Redhill.

I thought that extending the trains to Shalford also increased passenger numbers from Shalford considerably.

I reckon the 1814 could run 5 minutes earlier (as per regular off peak pattern) at 1809, then Ash (1819), North Camp (1823), Farnboro North (1827), Blackwater (1831), Sandhurst (1835), Crowthorne (1839), Wokingham (1844) and Reading (1854). SWT have an 1847 from Wokingham, but I assume that a 3 minute clearance is OK. Also, this would allow a 10 minute turnaround at Reading - the current 2 minutes seems a bit tight.

The 1847 from Guildford stands there for 6 minutes having arrived at 1841 from Gatwick (I was annoyed that the Dec 2006 timetable dropped the stop at Dorking West, yet waited for so long at Guildford). So I would have thought the 1847 could depart at 1844, and repeat the stopping pattern of current 1744 (Ash, North Camp, Farnboro North, Blackwater and Wokingham). 

I think a lot of the timetabling problems are caused by the single line into and out of platforms 4a and 4b at Reading. As well as the published timetable there are a number of empty stock workings as the rush hour ends. There's the FGW that runs to Wokingham and back that's been mentioned on here before. There's also at least one SWT to Staines.

Hopefully things will be easier when three platforms are in use at Reading and the access improved.