St Ives branch line - engineering work, closures, incidents (merged topics)

[whole diary]

[Lee]

From the FGW^▸ (First Great Western) website :

19:40 St Ives to Penzance due 20:05
This train will be cancelled. This is due to a member of train crew being unavailable.

19:16 St Erth to St Ives due 19:29
This train will be cancelled. This is due to a member of train crew being unavailable.

18:45 St Ives to St Erth due 18:58
This train will be cancelled. This is due to a member of train crew being unavailable.

18:16 St Erth to St Ives due 18:29
This train will be cancelled. This is due to a member of train crew being unavailable.

[Lee]

From the FGW^▸ (First Great Western) website :

21:50 St Ives to Penzance due 22:13
This train has been cancelled. This is due to a member of train crew being unavailable.

Customers travelling from St Ives to Penzance should travel the alternative road transport service.

21:32 St Erth to St Ives due 21:45
This train has been cancelled. This is due to a member of train crew being unavailable.

Customers travelling from St Erth to St Ives should travel the alternative road transport service.

[grahame]

There seems to be a lot of this around at the moment.  What's going on?

1. Are the operations staff more prone to be sick at the moment because, let's face it, it can't be fun having less happy passengers complaining at worse timetables, higher fares and unreliable services?

2. There are fewer relief staff available to cover for sickness - services are being run without the backup that was previosuly available to render them reliable?

3. Is it simply that we're seeing these report more in the electronic age and there were always issues such as this and at the same level too?

4. Are safety or operations practices leading to a less reliable service (I saw a quote - NOT St Ives - about a service that was delayed due to staff no longer staying away at the far end of a line overnight, and then having taxi problems getting to the train left unattended to start it up in the early hours)

[Conner]

Hi
I went to St.Ives today with my family from Camborne. We checked the timetable and saw that the 11.02 from Camborne got into St.Erth one minute after a St.Ives train was meant to leave. Thinking we might make it so we got on this service and as we pulled into St.Erth we heard the 150 branchline power up and pull away leaving us to wait 30 mins. But what was so stupid was hearing a member of staff, about to begin a shift on the St.Ives branch who had been onboard our service say that it was 10 mins early at Truro. If FGW^▸ (First Great Western) accounted for this apparently regular early-running they could but the train back an extra 5 mins and make an extra connection. I also noticed that the 10.00 service from Plymouth which was meant to make a connection with the 11.41 to St.Ives hadn't turned up by the time we left. An absolute shambles with connections.
Trains we travelled on:
Ex TPE^▸ (Trans Pennine Express) 158/7 6.48 BTM^▸ (Bristol Temple Meads (strictly, it should be BRI))-Penzance
150 St.Ives Branch
Un-Refurb HST^▸ (High Speed Train) with 2 MTU^▸ (Motor Traction Unit) powercars 14.00 Penzance-Paddington

[grahame]

The standard rule of thumb is that connections are NOT usually held, and that is stated to be because (a) it would lead to knock-on delays and (b) it would inconvenience the people, usually in the majority, who don't rely in the connection.   I suspect that reason (c) - unstated - is that late trains incur penalties and they are to be avoided if at all possible.

There is something of an exception made into last connections of the day.  (Which im my local area means that the 07:00 Westbury to Swindon will NOT be held if the commuter connection from Frome is late, as there's a train later in the day at 19:35, but that 19:35 WILL be held even though it's a train that runs in marginal time with few passengers.  Funny Old system, isn't it?

To be fair to FGW^▸ (First Great Western) (why do I so often find myself talking in their defence now that I'm learning more about ralway operation?), they got something of a mess of a draft timetable for the December '06 to December '07 service which they put right in many areas (the easy ones) and they're planning to put more of these issues right this coming December.

[devon_metro]

As far as i can see the 1000 from plymouth was only about 2 mins late/

[vacman]

Hi
I went to St.Ives today with my family from Camborne. We checked the timetable and saw that the 11.02 from Camborne got into St.Erth one minute after a St.Ives train was meant to leave. Thinking we might make it so we got on this service and as we pulled into St.Erth we heard the 150 branchline power up and pull away leaving us to wait 30 mins. But what was so stupid was hearing a member of staff, about to begin a shift on the St.Ives branch who had been onboard our service say that it was 10 mins early at Truro. If FGW^▸ (First Great Western) accounted for this apparently regular early-running they could but the train back an extra 5 mins and make an extra connection. I also noticed that the 10.00 service from Plymouth which was meant to make a connection with the 11.41 to St.Ives hadn't turned up by the time we left. An absolute shambles with connections.
Trains we travelled on:
Ex TPE^▸ (Trans Pennine Express) 158/7 6.48 BTM^▸ (Bristol Temple Meads (strictly, it should be BRI))-Penzance
150 St.Ives Branch
Un-Refurb HST^▸ (High Speed Train) with 2 MTU^▸ (Motor Traction Unit) powercars 14.00 Penzance-Paddington

The reason the St Ives wont wait for any connections is that it runs at half hourly intervals all through the day to provide a "clock face" time table, the timings are so tight that a 2 minute delay can have a knock on effect all day. As the service is regular then it is not deemed unreasonable to have to wait 29 minutes for the next train, also, if the train leaves St Erth late on the down, then it will be late leaving St Ives on the return and could miss an onward connection to London etc.

[Lee]

What do you think about the rather strange summer timetable service pattern , which has round - trip services calling at Carbis Bay in one direction but not the other , plus a limited service for Lelant? (link below.)
http://www.firstgreatwestern.co.uk/Documents/Custom/Book%20B%20StErth%20StIves%20web.pdf

Also , I note that the official explanation from the Office of Rail Regulation for the following drastic falls in passenger numbers is "Changes in St Ives Summer Park & Ride Trains."

St Ives
2004 / 2005 - 220300
2005 / 2006 - 171281

Carbis Bay
2004 / 2005 - 66298
2005 / 2006 - 23737

Lelant
2004 / 2005 - 8697
2005 / 2006 - 1653

[vacman]

What do you think about the rather strange summer timetable service pattern , which has round - trip services calling at Carbis Bay in one direction but not the other , plus a limited service for Lelant? (link below.)
http://www.firstgreatwestern.co.uk/Documents/Custom/Book%20B%20StErth%20StIves%20web.pdf

Also , I note that the official explanation from the Office of Rail Regulation for the following drastic falls in passenger numbers is "Changes in St Ives Summer Park & Ride Trains."

St Ives
2004 / 2005 - 220300
2005 / 2006 - 171281

Carbis Bay
2004 / 2005 - 66298
2005 / 2006 - 23737

Lelant
2004 / 2005 - 8697
2005 / 2006 - 1653

The figures were cocked up because when the new AVANTIX machines were introduced then they recorded one park and ride ticket (which was for up to five passengers) as one passenger, (the ticket would be printed as Park ride 3/5 as a ticket type but only show as "adult one") a problem which in Wessex trains own passenger numbers was compensated for, the journeys for individual stations on the line can't be worked out properly any more because there is just a flat fare which is a rover ticket and doesn't show as starting from any particular station.

Lelant was very little used other than by walkers and is only 5/10 minutes walk from Lelant Saltings where every train stops but most of the locals were too busy trying not to pay for a ticket when the trains did stop there and hence the passenger numbers were never really known. Most (not all) local people who travel on the St Ives branch seem to think that just because they're local then they should go for free so the service was modelled around tourist's who account for around 90% of journeys on that branch.

[Lee]

That's a very interesting answer indeed. Quote from Andrew Griffiths (18/05/2007) reffering to Severn Beach Line fare increases due to the new zonal fare system :

"On the St Ives branch, 4 miles long, the flat fare return is ^4 - more than twice the cost per mile of Severn Beach.  When introduced it represented a much steeper increase than on the Beach (where some fares have come down, of course) and the result was a 20% increase in journeys."

[vacman]

That's a very interesting answer indeed. Quote from Andrew Griffiths (18/05/2007) reffering to Severn Beach Line fare increases due to the new zonal fare system :

"On the St Ives branch, 4 miles long, the flat fare return is ^4 - more than twice the cost per mile of Severn Beach.  When introduced it represented a much steeper increase than on the Beach (where some fares have come down, of course) and the result was a 20% increase in journeys."

The St Ives fare isn't that clever though, a "ranger" which is the only ticket which is availiable between St Erth and St Ives is ^4, no single tickets etc, yet a Penzance to St Ives Cheap day single is ^2.90 and Cheap day return ^3.00 so it's actually cheaper to buy a ticket from Penzance to St Ives than from St Erth!

[Lee]

From the FGW^▸ (First Great Western) website :

Line problem between Penzance and St Ives.
Train services between Penzance and St Ives are being disrupted due to a train fault.Engineers are working as fast as possible to restore services to normal. Short notice cancellations can be expected.

Replacement road transport is in operation for services in the area.

[Conner]

29/12/2007
Line problem between Penzance and St Ives.
Train services between Penzance and St Ives are being disrupted due to a member of train crew being unavailable.Short notice cancellations can be expected.

Replacement road transport is in operation between Penzance and St Ives.

That is two days in a row the St.Ives branch has been caped, is this a repeat of last years shocking situation?

[John R]

It's an interesting headline, isn't it. "Line problem", would to most people imply its a problem with the track or signalling, ie Network Rail's fault. Whereas plainly it isn't.

[Lee]

It's an interesting headline, isn't it. "Line problem", would to most people imply its a problem with the track or signalling, ie Network Rail's fault. Whereas plainly it isn't.

As well as coming up with the headline mentioned, FGW^▸ (First Great Western) have listed a different reason for each days disruption.

I am not suggesting that FGW are being in any way misleading, of course. It could be (as FGW claim) that two entirely different events have conspired to cause two days disruption to services on the same section.....