Great Western Coffee Shop

From Saturday May 25th the Summer Only, Saturday Only, Newquay to London Paddington direct services have all been speeded up.

The 1121 Newquay to Paddington will now depart Newquay at 1130 but with the same arrival time in Paddington as Summer 2012, 1632. An improvement of 9 minutes.

The 1314 will now depart at 1319, arriving 1823, an improvement of 5 minutes.

And the 1720 will now depart at 1726, arriving 2226, an improvement of 6 minutes and doing the journey in 5 hours flat.

However, what FGW giveth with one hand they taketh with the other.

The down service off Paddington at 0736 (with far fewer stops than the crack 1726 up) has been slowed by 3 minutes to 5h11min.

Wonder if some will still be nine coaches with the extra coach for surfboards!

Good to see the increased line speeds on the Newquay branch leading to decreased journey times. Last year the services regularly arrived up to ten minutes early into Newquay.

What are the linespeeds now? I understood it's previously been around 40mph all the way from Par, which must seem very slow in an HST.

Everything except 150s and 153s used to be limited to 30mph. There are now proper differential speed limits along the whole line. Network Rail's Online Sectional Appendix is a bit out of date unfortunately so doesn't show the new speed limits and I can't remember them off the top of my head. There are still the limits for the many level crossings along the line of course.

The time savings must be entirely down to speed limit improvements on the branch. The timetable shows that the up services are pretty much, within a minute or two, the same as 2012 once the services are on the main line.

What is somewhat disappointing though is that the down services haven't benefited from line speed improvements. That is probably nothing to do with infrastructure improvements and more to do with timetable padding to avoid penalty payments should a down service arrive in Newquay 10+ minutes late. FGW taking advantage of the line speed improvements but not adjusting the timetable. Which will probably see down services regularly arriving in Newquay 10+ minutes ahead of time. Looks good from the point of view of passengers on those particular services, but we all know that padding is the real reason.

I think its more to do with the fixed crossing points at St.Blazey and Goonbarrow Junction.  Trains have to be delivered on time at those places otherwise the timetable quickly falls apart.

A lot of the services do have quite a wait at Goonbarrow Junction whilst a service arrives from the other direction.  A few of the Cross Country services also have dwell time at Plymouth so that they fit into the standard pattern of departures from there. It's still largely the same timetable as 2012 running just with shorter journey times from Par-Newquay but this has meant it's a bit of a compromise. At least it appears Goonbarrow Junction signal box remains open for another year, it had been mooted for closure. The worst service of all is Cross Country's Sunday 0901 Plymouth-Newquay which has a staggering 15 minute wait at Goonbarrow Jn awaiting an FGW service from Newquay.

That's about average on the Cotswold Line.  ;)

But think of the retail opportunities (thinking back to the compulsory Swindon refreshment room stop).