The 2018 Battle of Taplow

[eightf48544]

The Taplow Rail user Group were discussing the future last night.

I was explaining that at the moment we are in hiatus awaing the appointment of the next franchisee and we won't know that much before early next year then we have to analyise are service and start compalinging if it's worse than now.

However the real crunch comes in 2018/19 when hopefully somebody would have put together  a service plan taking into accont the electrifcation especialy of the branches (through trains  from Bourne End and Henley), the potential of the Western Approach Line and Crossrail hopefully NOT terminating at Maidenhead.

The danger as I see it if Crossrail does still terminate at Maidenhead then stations East of Maidenhead especialy the smaller ones like Taplow will lose their through services to Reading. This being one of the great benefits of travel from stations like Taplow that you have services to London and Reading. There are quite heavy flows westwards to Reading for work, education, shopping and of course onward journies to anywhere West and North of Birmingham.

So we are starting to plan our compaign. this being the first shot.

[Worcester_Passenger]

Alas, there are two ways of running a railway (or indeed, other forms of public transport). The first one concentrates on carrying passengers and freight, the second on running trains - and they are not the same. Unfortunately, there's far too much thinking about the running of trains and virtually none about the carrying of passengers.

If in doubt, always ask the question "what are we trying to do here?".

[eightf48544]

"What are we trying to do here?"

I think we meet your crietria that we want to ensure passengers from Taplow and other stations East on Maidenhed still enjoy their through services to Reading without a change at Maidenehad.

We don't care who runs but it should be every 30 minutes and a Sunday service at Taplow.

The only real addition we actually want is a Sunday sevice.