Great Western Coffee Shop

http://www.cvent.com/events/heritage-and-community-rail-tourism-innovation-competition/event-summary-43c0a64176294c4fa8e0ad650021886f.aspx

How about a trial through service from Taunton to Bishops Lydeard?   Relatively easy to do, could utilise a unit off peak, maybe extending the Cardiff to Taunton service to provide good connectivity from those communities. Offer good value through fares that reduce the cost of the GWR leg of the journey but they win by getting fuller trains off peak.

Ambitious, but would First Group want to take patronage away from their buses?

Also permanent through fares would have to be the same as or more than to Taunton to prevent revenue implications. And the TSA only allows the lead operator of a fares flow to have promotional fares for a certain length of time. If a new fare flow to Bishops Lydeard is set up then CrossCountry will be entitled to a revenue share.

Then their are the operational considerations...

Can all be overcome but I think unlikely. The odd 'Special' is no problem. But a permanent service? I doubt it.

I was thinking of a packaged fare including travel on the WSR so no problem with existing fares as they would inevitably be higher. They could also be made GWR services only to prevent XC taking a slice.

I think the main problem would be the very short timescales for submission. It hardly enables a well thought out proposal particularly with the need to get different bodies together and work through the various operational considerations.

Packaged 'GWR Only' fares would be classed as 'temporary fares' for TSA purposes. These can only be used for a maximum of 34 weeks. Each period of temporary fares use has to have a 17 week gap before the next one can start.

So possible each year for the main operating period of the WSR from Easter to October Half-term, but no use for the other operating days such as off season Galas, Dunster by Candlelight, Santa Specials and the like.

GWR would not be allowed to introduce year round 'GWR Only' fares without a corresponding 'Any Permitted' flow.

Even if the did decide that the 34 week temporary fares were a goer that would be restricting the options for passengers to get to the WSR. One couldn't, for example, get a through fare from a Cardiff suburban station. Or use fast CrossCountry services to Taunton.

GWR, as lead operator, are allowed by the TSA to include other operators in the promotional fares ('GWR/XC/ATW Only' for example). They'd still be limited to a maximum 34 weeks with 17 week gap between promotions. Getting agreement with multiple operators to run, promote and sell such fares would be very difficult though.

Then the operational issues. Driver training for Norton Fitzwarren Junction to the WSR. I doubt that could be implemented quickly. Nor would using WSR pilots be feasible. It's a difficult enough logistic to sort just for the odd 'special'. Then timetabling. Extending the existing Cardiff-Tauntons would require a timetable recast and possibly changes to unit diagrams.

Good to see that things have moved on:

The fund was announced a long time (? about a year) ago and we have been awaiting the details of how it will work; TransWilts directors met last night to confirm our response.    There is also another fund mainly for cycling and walking as an LSTF follow up currently being bid on rather tight timescales.

Utilising rolling stock available off-peak is a nice idea for a trial, but what I'd like to see in the medium-long-term is something rather more integrated. Heritage railways don't tend to run many trains in January and Feburary, and the timetable often varies throughout their operating season too. My idea would be for national rail services to run a basic year-round timetable on the heritage railway, with workings replaced by heritage stock as and when the heritiage railways wants to run the services. The national rail units released by heritage stock would be available for strengthening other national rail services during such periods (which in touristy areas is probably the busy time for the national network too).

Of course there would be less time where the railway is closed, allowing maintenance, but that might be solvable if the government gave the heritage railway a maintainance grant, as they do for Network Rail, so they aren't as reliant on volunteers for maintaining the track. There could also be issues with the journey time being too lengthy because of the low speed limit required on most heritage railways, and bignosemac also makes a good point that this sort of thing would be very challenging to arange and hence probably couldn't be implemented in a hurry. But impossible? I doubt it. Not worthwhile (given the low linespeed, most likely)? possibly.

Very pleased to announce that the Chinnor and Princes Risborough Railway (http://www.chinnorrailway.co.uk), a local Great Western style heritage railway, is one of the winners of this year's competition.

The Department for Transport has announced the winners here (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/rail-tourism-winners-announced).


I am closely associated with the railway and this is great news for us. I am looking forward to receiving our first passengers directly from the National Network via the new platform 4 at Risborough. At the moment, we have to stop just short of our nominal destination.

Is this cash enough to get you there, or is it a case of needing matched funding?



(Edit by FT, N! to correct fonts in all above posts)

Matched funding which, through the kindness of our existing donors and generous friends, we now have.

This will (re)build us a platform, provide the loop in the station area and allow us to run passenger trains between Princes Risborough and Chinnor.

In the future, we will need to restore half a mile of currently redundant track to make us totally independent of Network Rail infrastructure. We will need to undertake further fund-raising for this project and all contributions are generously and gratefully accepted!

That sounds like a job that would cost ^75,000,000 on the national railway!

Thank-you.  You remind me that I must increase my volunteer pay rates this year by several hundred percent.

They are currently at a big fat zero!

Several hundred percent multiplied by zero still equals zero I'm afraid. :(

B*gg*r !  ;D :D

Same old stuff then? :)

If you think that's bad, look at the pension scheme!