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Author Topic: Pewsey and Bedwyn to Bath and Bristol  (Read 2053 times)
grahame
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« on: July 28, 2019, 08:29:25 »

From the Gazette and Herald

Quote
Commuters demand better train service to village

PEWSEY commuters have called on Wiltshire Council to support its bid to shake up train times and improve services from their station.

Campaigner Colin Gale went to the council's new leader to ask for backing in talks with Great Western Railways.

Mr Gale said: “There are students going to Bristol or Bath who have to go back on a Sunday night because there are not trains to get them to university in time for Monday morning.

"We have written to the councillor in charge of transport but we have not heard anything back about our survey.

"We need a survey to be conducted so that Great Western will consider improving the services from Pewsey and Bedwyn to Bath and Bristol.

The article carries on to cover a mix of other very interesting points and statistics. It also features a picture of Claire Perry, the local MP (Member of Parliament), with a substantial group of London commuters in front of an HST (High Speed Train) in FGW (First Great Western)/GWR (Great Western Railway) blue.  Whilst Pewsey was the very last station to be solely served by HSTs ...

Having seeded the thread on the forum with this article, I'll come back and comment further in a follow up. Others invited to follow up too, of course!

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martyjon
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« Reply #1 on: July 28, 2019, 09:16:18 »

It doesn't take much thought to realise that since IET (Intercity Express Train)'s will be/are working the Bedwyns, these services could be extended to commence at Westbury and early morning ECS (Empty Coaching Stock) diagrams amended to call at stations Reading (or Newbury) to Westbury, instead of ECS's, to connect with services to Bath and Bristol as both have universities.
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ChrisB
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« Reply #2 on: July 28, 2019, 10:47:10 »

Do these IETs (Intercity Express Train) originate from London or Stoke Gifford? The latter I think?
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grahame
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« Reply #3 on: July 28, 2019, 12:36:57 »

The ECS (Empty Coaching Stock) for the London commuter trains that start at Frome / Westbury, and the very early Bristol Temple Meads to Paddington via Pewsey, all come off Stoke Gifford, so no ECS to drop into passenger service.
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grahame
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« Reply #4 on: July 28, 2019, 12:39:46 »

"Commuters demand better train service to village" ... a headline which might have been calculated to have central government politicians and Wiltshire Councillors too rolling their eyes and saying "we've enough to do / enough pressure sorting out train service for our towns before we start looking at the demands of villages".  A further look by those very same politicians at various levels will inform them that Pewsey has just had all its trains replaced, and is due for faster trains to London, and an even service with serious gaps in the timetable filled as from this December. So - it could appear that the village being greedy beyond its station. But that's far from the whole, or even main, story. It brings us back towards the oft-repeated current concerns all the way from Berkshire to Somerset (or perhaps Devon) that the timetable recasts and developments are over-focused on the perceived need to get people fast and frequent from the major city stations of the South West and South Wales to London Paddington, to the extend that they damage / exclude shorter distance journeys between the network of stations spread all across the patch in between.

Pewsey is proud to still call itself a village. But the days of the "village station" are gone, and residents of Corsham, Royal Wootton Bassett, Wilton, the Lavingtons, Yarnbrook, Holt, Staverton, Box, Porton and Petersfinger will look somewhat jealously at the current service at Pewsey - indeed that the "village" has a station at all. But - hidden in the article - is a statistic that tells us that Pewsey is much more a catchment station for a large geographic area that a village station.  And indeed current passenger journey numbers confirm that - 67 passenger journeys per head of population per annum in the most recent data if you take "the village" population; Bedwyn, the next station up the line, also a very high figure ... and again a catchment station covering a large geographic area. Otherwise, Wiltshire station numbers range from 3 journeys per head of population per annum at Melksham up to 50 journeys at Bradford-on-Avon.

So ... Bedwyn and Pewsey, 10 minutes apart by train, have a similar pattern of use. Then there's no station to the west for about 20 minutes, even though the line passes near to the Lavingtons (population similar to Pewsey itself) and the bigger town of Devizes. And the station at the far end of that 20 minute run is Westbury, yet another station that's grown through catchment, and also an incredibly useful junction and jumping off point for lines in 5 other directions.

I appreciate the desire of students living in Pewsey Village to be able to get to college in Bristol on a Monday morning, rather than travelling on Sunday. That ain't going to get you a mass transit service though. But in combination ... Newbury, Hungerford, Bedwyn, Pewsey, Lavington, Westbury ... you start to get something sensible - affordable, efficient, safe, economically beneficial.  The current system of reversing trains in the middle of this sequence of stations to the extent that they have no useful service between them is perverse, and the London commuter bias in two very different ways from Bedwyn and from Pewsey shows just how diverse two ways of reaching the same goal can be.

How about a bit of constructive criticism?

Very short term:

* Welcome the extra train and retimings at Pewsey that eliminate 4 hour gaps from December

* Start the early "3 hour flyer" to Plymouth even earlier and as well as carrying fresh air from London and Reading, carry morning passengers (at peak fares that early, remember) from Bedwyn (connection from Newbury and Hungerford), Pewsey, to Westbury and from Westbury and Castle Cary to Taunton and beyond.

* Select two evening trains in the new pattern up from Westbury to call additionally at Bedwyn.

We have ... without any extra trains to GWR (Great Western Railway)'s proposals ... started to answer so many disparate and perhaps each small local flows. There are so many changes in December that I'm not attempting to be precise above - but as well as the immediate on-line flows, this should address (via connection at Westbury) Pewsey to Bath and Bristol early journeys - and while we're at it journeys from Newbury, Hungerford and Bedwyn too, and journeys to Trowbridge and Bradford-on-Avon as well.

And then perhaps

* Extend the Bedwyn terminators, hourly, all the way to Exeter St Davids and (yes) this would probably mean merging the service with the two-hourly planned semi-fast that typically calls only at Newbury between Reading and Newbury.

Not the through trains from Pewsey to Bristol, but rather an hourly connection each way sharing resource with other new flows such as commutes west from Trowbridge (connection) and Westbury to Taunton and Exeter (stop at Frome, I wonder, and making a huge difference for them).

All a very long way from the Gazette's village station
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