Great Western Coffee Shop

Had an afternoon out yesterday to take a friend who stayed with us to Basingstoke to catch a train back to Axminister as they were nervous of the two cahnges involved.

Some comments on the journey.

^8.60 return with Senior Railcard which I thought was reasonable. Isn't hard to buy 2 tickets at a time? You have to store the first then repeat the whole process for the 2nd.

New footbridge at Taplow. Very high quite large steps my wife choose to walk under the road bridge on the way back as she found getting over it quite hard.

15:20 a couple of minutes late only 2 cars but plenty of seats. mde connections at amidenehad and Twyford. On time Reading 13A stopped short of black triangle!

Reading quite busy very daunting for strangers difficult find where your train goes from as you have to know final destination. Tried 15:49 Voyager (platform 3)  walked theough one coah no set of 3 seats close together. Waited for 16:07 stopper. 150. Quite full reatively comfortable but 1 had three seats to myself.

Arrived Basingstoke on time platform 5.

Basingstoke has a board  at the top of the stairs to platfoms 2 & 3 with the next train to virtually every destination served directly. So easy to spot 17:07 To Axminister from platform 2. Lots of SW Trains. mostly  8, 10 and 12 car emus and 6 car 159s. SWT seem to have alot of stock! The 150 at 3 cars was the joint shortest.

!7:07 arrived on time friend found seat OK got to Axminister on time just after 19:00.

Saw two freights Freightliner 70 on Southampton bound liner train from Reading line. Colas 66 on an infrastructure train of balast cleanings (?) possibly from Woking to ?

Very hot cup of tea from Costa on platform 2.

Question why do SWT run a 159 from Long Valley sidngs into platform 1 to form the 17:24 all stations Southampton? Is it the Lymington unit changing over?

Returned on the 17:36 to Reading same 150 good crowd although everyone got seats. On time Reading. Had a look from new footbridge at festival/viaduct and feeder lines. Caught 18:18 from 13A 5 cars front quite empty. Quite a lot got on at Maidenhead. On time Taplow. Walked home arrived just before 7, slighly before friend arrived at Axminister.

Saw 165 131 first coach very badly gaffittied.

Guess what no ticket checks we could have got off Basingstoke station as the back entrance was open and unmanned!

Couple of points when rail works it's a very civilised way of travelling. Network Rail really need to improve the displays at Reading given the number who change trains there although that's probaly a thread on it's own.

So 5 trains all on time,seats on all.

 

Saw 165131 this morning on 0607 Banbury starter. Looked as though that coach had been through the wash on 100% bleach. Most if the vinyls removed plus quite an amount of paint.

For a mo, thought they'd accidently put bleach instead of water in the washer

Presumably just graffiti remover?  That's strong enough to wear away at the vinyl's and I know one set was badly tagged by the sad idiots over the weekend.

Simple explanation, it's just a peak extra, one of a handful that leave Basingstoke in a few xx24 slots in the late afternoon, to augment the service towards Southampton or Portsmouth.   Nothing to do with Lymington, that sees one 158 allocated for the 5 day period, running down on Monday and back to Salisbury on Friday night.

Complicated explanation.   ;D  The normal off-peak fast service on the route is xx05 and xx35 to Weymouth, with semi fasts at xx09 to Portsmouth via Eastleigh, and xx39 to Poole.  However, in the afternoon peak period for about three hours everything changes; the xx05 and xx35 run as 10 car but now split at Southampton (or Bournemouth) into fast and slow portions, the latter following behind the former at minimum headway.  This provides 4 tph west of Southampton, of which two are fast, and two are semi fast to Poole, up from the off-peak 3 train service. 

The normal xx09 and xx39 semi fasts from Waterloo now provide a half hourly Portsmouth via Eastleigh service for about 3 hours, up from the normal hourly service.   

With me so far?    What it does is use 4 departures from Waterloo to provide 6 services further west, IYSWIM.

The result of the above is therefore a gap in the normal semi fast pattern between Eastleigh and Southampton, and this DMU fills one of those gaps.  There are a few other DMU 'shorts' about that also fill gaps here and there, or double up an otherwise hourly service in the peak flow direction, but in an ideal world they should probably all be EMUs, and are expected to be once the 458/5 conversions are finished.   In the franchise bumph these extras are collectively the 'South Hampshire Locals'.

There's one caveat though, there's presently a Winchester to Totton stopper that is a 159 because it has to use the non electrified Totton sidings.

The usual follow up to this subject is that people question just how many spare DMUs SWT might have (for use in Wiltshire perhaps) if they didn't run all these short workings around the DC area.   Ignoring the Lymington shuttle, AFAICT these are all 158 or 159:


Hope this is of (slight) interest...

Paul

If it wasn't illegal I'd be tempted to put the graffiti "artists" in 100% bleach.  >:(

Considerable interest ... just looking at how they link, and to other services which are over non-electric lines

Very interesting - considering all complaints to SWT relating to overcrowding on 3-car 159s west of Salisbury after a 3-car unit is removed at Salisbury (and sometimes 2x3-car units!) are replied with 'we don't have enough stock'  >:( - and we'll lose even more after September with the introduction of the Salisbury-Frome-Yeovil service.

Thanks Paul not quite sure what purpose these trains serve are passengers expected to change at Basingstoke for Micheldever or Swathling for example.

As Phil says using DMUs on these services when there is an obvious need for them West of Salisbury is a bit odd.

That will be a lot to do with it.  Some of the stations such as Swaythling and St Denys get extra calls (normally Swaythling only gets calls by the Salisbury/Romsey, allowing slightly longer local commutes e.g. to Winchester, and I suspect it helps with frequencies at Shawford and Micheldever too, and may make origin destination pairs available that would otherwise always require a change off-peak.

I believe back in the early days of the 2007 franchise SWT explained that they had taken on various extra DMUs compared to what they really needed then so as to release some 450s to augment mainline services up to 8 or 12 car length.  There seems to be a known intention (announced in SWT press releases over the last few years) to replace some of these DMU operations with EMUs, which should have happened by now but the 458/5s are at least a year late.  There are also a few Salisbury route train length increases overdue, but I don't remember seeing any explicit mention of strengthening all the way to Exeter - there'll still be portions split off at Salisbury or wherever.

What I could find was:

0515 from Yeovil Junction (6 car to 9 car)
0543 from Salisbury (6 car to 9 car)
1620 to Exeter (6 car to 8 car)
1720 to Exeter (6 car to 9 car)
1750 to Exeter (6 car to 8 car)

... these were all supposed to have happened in Dec 14, (as announced in early 2012), I suppose they may now be Dec 15 or even next May.


Paul