Grahame, it looks as if you’ve been to Bedwyn
Yes ... we had an appointment in the Kennet Valley at 10 a.m.; drove for once and passed through Great Bedwyn at around 12:30 on our return trip. Stopped to take a brief look at the station, and it happened that the 12:38 to Reading (2 car turbo) started from there while we watched. For those who don't know Bedwyn, the train from London terminates at the Exeter-bound platform, heads off into a siding for the layover / turn around, then calls at the London platform for no more than a minute or two as it starts it return Journey - in normal times to London, yesterday to Reading, but mostly at the moment just to Newbury.
I would estimate that some twenty people joined the train - a handful more seeing them off. The two car turbo was adequate from here, but could have become a social distancing problem with joiners along the way. The Station car park appeared full, village had lots of cars parked too.
Witness yesterday, at what should have been a quiet time in the middle of a Sunday ... Bedwyn has a surprisingly high traffic flow. It serves not only the immediate village area (where I suspect people have moved because of the train, and been able to take jobs otherwise impractical) but is also the railhead for a large area of Wiltshire - not only drop-offs and parkers, but a connecting bus service from Marlborough too. The Bedwyn train also serves Hungerford (a town of 6,000 people) and Kintbury. In the proper timetable, an hourly service to London is provided by
IET▸ trains. At present, I think uniquely amongst the
GWR▸ services, a shuttle is being provided most of the time just to Newbury, change for a local train to Reading, change again if you're headed for London. Connections at Newbury have to be timed to work operationally, and that means some long waits. The cause of the problem is not the coronavirus restrictions, but the rail industry's failure to have enough serviceable IET trains available to run the service that was timetabled.
Sharing here - from the Bedwyn Trains mailing list, an update received yesterday.
Dear All,
We have received the following email from the MD of GWR, regarding the current situation.
It looks as if we are stuck for the foreseeable with the majority of our trains, with the exception of a few peak trains, being shuttle service between Bedwyn and Newbury.
Thank you for letting us know about the poor timings for school children returning from Newbury, poor connection times at Newbury, the short notice cancellations and the poor quality of information when things go wrong. We have taken all these points up with GWR.
For now please (i) always check your journey online and (ii) let us have any feedback.
Best wishes
Steve Smith
Bedwyn Trains Passenger Group
The attached letter from Mark:
Hi Steve
Thanks to you and Bill for your emails and for passing on the comments coming through from Bedwyn users. I’ve asked Jane to come back to you separately on the customer information point you sent through below.
I asked our timetable team to go away and try and find a fix for some of the school trains back to Hungerford, Kintbury and Bedwyn. We won’t be able to put them back to their original timings, but certainly move them closer, and I am hopeful we will have this resolved for services next week. We will confirm as soon as we have everything in place, and will welcome your help in spreading the news to your members.
We have also had a look at the connection times at Newbury for the Bedwyn shuttle. This is more challenging with both our services coming to/from the South West and the amount of freight on the line. In the evening peak, even with the connection at Newbury, timings are comparable to the direct services we usually run, but I understand the frustration of waiting for the shuttle and we are looking at it. We would of course prefer to bring back the direct services, something I know you want too! We will return these to the timetable as soon as possible. I am cautious however at putting a firm date on that while Hitachi continue to work through the repair plan for the IETs.
We will keep you updated on any further mitigations re the connections and will confirm the school services as soon as we can. I am really grateful to you and BTPG members for alerting us to these key services. I do understand it is frustrating that we cannot get everything back to normal more quickly. Things are better, and the loan of additional Class 387s has been a great help in plugging the missing IETs gap, but there is still a gap, and we can’t yet return weekday directs.
I’m therefore very grateful for your patience and that of our customers at Bedwyn, Kintbury and Hungerford as we work to resolve this, along with Hitachi and other industry partners. As the picture gets clearer I suggest Jane sets up a meeting with you and Bill, and some members of our team, and potentially Hitachi. In the meantime, we will keep in touch and again thank you for your help in mitigating the temporary timetable.
Best wishes
Mark
Mark Hopwood CBE | Managing Director | Great Western Railway
Milford House | 1 Milford Street | Swindon | SN1 1HL
I will add that although the root cause of the current degradation of the service is a rail industry fault, it is not rooted at GWR who have to pick up the pieces caused by a shortage of trains, and I complement Mark and his team on being forthright and on taking steps to mitigate the issues. I will leave it to those who are fuller informed to follow up, if they wish, with comment as to whether the issues are sufficiently addresses for the customers (in this case using "customer" for passengers rather than for contract awarder -
DfT» ).
