Letter from Great Western Railway Managing Director Mark Hopwood

[whole diary]

[Timmer]

I would single out the North Cotswold line simply because it’s suffering from cancellations on a daily basis rather than just on weekends.

As I mentioned on another thread, London to South Wales isn’t far behind because it’s just an hourly service on weekends so it doesn’t take many cancellations for you to be left with not much of a service on this line.

At least Bristol being half hourly it can take the odd cancellation or two but if you cancel three trains in a row (each way) like we saw last weekend this line can suffer too.

[RichardB]

I think the best performing line at the moment is the Gunnislake branch. That one rarely seems to be mentioned on this forum, on JourneyCheck or GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway)'s social media.

Perhaps GWR have been focusing all their efforts on this very important strategic line. 

I really wish all was well on the Gunnislake line.  The service is usually very reliable but it has had its share of cancellations, train failures and short formed trains in recent weeks. 

[YouKnowNothing]

I would single out the North Cotswold line simply because it’s suffering from cancellations on a daily basis rather than just on weekends.

As I mentioned on another thread, London to South Wales isn’t far behind because it’s just an hourly service on weekends so it doesn’t take many cancellations for you to be left with not much of a service on this line.

At least Bristol being half hourly it can take the odd cancellation or two but if you cancel three trains in a row (each way) like we saw last weekend this line can suffer too.

I'm biased as I use the South Wales route. When you can't provide a service for 4 hours due to cancellations it's ridiculous! Then there is the issue of what's happened on days with major events on... like when GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) cancelled all trains after the rugby but they can provide extra trains for the Royal Wedding?

[martyjon]

Could this be the reason for his conspicuous absence of late, he's taken on a part time job as a journalist.

[devonexpress]

Could this be the reason for his conspicuous absence of late, he's taken on a part time job as a journalist.

Or maybe he's busy trying to sort out the mess made by Network Rail, you know the company which is state funded and everyone seems to love the idea of because it will be "better" (i.e cheaper and even worse) railways 

[bobm]

I think the best performing line at the moment is the Gunnislake branch. That one rarely seems to be mentioned on this forum, on JourneyCheck or GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway)'s social media.

Perhaps GWR have been focusing all their efforts on this very important strategic line. 

I really wish all was well on the Gunnislake line.  The service is usually very reliable but it has had its share of cancellations, train failures and short formed trains in recent weeks. 

I hadn’t realised until recently that apparently two 153s coupled together are banned from the Gunnislake branch which reduces flexibility when stock is tight.

[bobm]

I would single out the North Cotswold line simply because it’s suffering from cancellations on a daily basis rather than just on weekends.

As I mentioned on another thread, London to South Wales isn’t far behind because it’s just an hourly service on weekends so it doesn’t take many cancellations for you to be left with not much of a service on this line.

At least Bristol being half hourly it can take the odd cancellation or two but if you cancel three trains in a row (each way) like we saw last weekend this line can suffer too.

I'm biased as I use the South Wales route. When you can't provide a service for 4 hours due to cancellations it's ridiculous! Then there is the issue of what's happened on days with major events on... like when GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) cancelled all trains after the rugby but they can provide extra trains for the Royal Wedding?

I see the point you are making but in the case of the Royal Wedding aren’t GWR running longer trains rather than extra ones as the Windsor (GWR) branch runs at a 20 minute interval anyway - which is as much as you can do on the line. SWR^» (South Western Railway - about) are running extras.

[ellendune]

I'm biased as I use the South Wales route. When you can't provide a service for 4 hours due to cancellations it's ridiculous! Then there is the issue of what's happened on days with major events on... like when GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) cancelled all trains after the rugby but they can provide extra trains for the Royal Wedding?

I see the point you are making but in the case of the Royal Wedding aren’t GWR running longer trains rather than extra ones as the Windsor (GWR) branch runs at a 20 minute interval anyway - which is as much as you can do on the line. SWR^» (South Western Railway - about) are running extras.

Windsor and Eton Central can only take a 3 coach train and there is only one platform so there is not a much that GWR can do.  They can run a 3 coach shuttle instead of a 2 coach shuttle every 20 mins, but that is it really.

[grahame]

There's really no competition for travellers between "our" various lines - so the comparisons of who's faring better or worse are academic to a great extent. However, it is worthwhile using one another as benchmarks.

At yesterday's TransWilts AGM^▸ (Annual General Meeting), one of the slides presented showed a current performance chart across each of the areas, allowing us to get a feeling of Cotswold v Thames Valley v South Wales to South Coast (our Westbury hub services) versus West Country branches.  Page 15 of Dan Okey's presentation at http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=19577.msg236776#msg236776 .

Ppm measures are against the timetabled plans for each day, so the starting point (100% performance) is not the published National Rail timetable from January to May, but rather the the planned service after disruption caused by the Newbury and other blockades have been taken out.     Looking at what the means with a TransWIlts service, for example, it means that although our normal service is 18 single journeys per day, the performance measure for last week would have classified just 7 journeys as 100% and the ppm figure quoted is based on degradation from 7 rather than from 18.

Dan Okey's presentation - do take a full look - also considers issues and measures being taken to address them. Perhaps not in the slides - confirmation that class 1 trains get priority over class 2; lots of people steaming about where freight should (and has been) fitting in the priority tree.

[devonexpress]

I hadn’t realised until recently that apparently two 153s coupled together are banned from the Gunnislake branch which reduces flexibility when stock is tight.

Any reason why?

[RichardB]

I hadn’t realised until recently that apparently two 153s coupled together are banned from the Gunnislake branch which reduces flexibility when stock is tight.

Any reason why?

I think it might be because of the curvature of Calstock station platform.