Great Western Coffee Shop

This has just been published, the significant proposal that affects the South West is to extend most Man Picc to Bristol services through to Exeter St Davids to provide 2 XC tph on that route section.

The flip side of the proposal is to reduce the number of through services to Paignton, so that the Man Picc to Exeter "core route" can be run with the same number of units as used before.

Oh and the Bath early morning starter will be withdrawn.

https://www.crosscountrytrains.co.uk/media/1470/crosscountry-future-timetable-consultation-document.pdf

Hope this is of interest.

Paul

With regard that, they say:


Hmmmm ... strikes me as an inaccurate comment as far as the Bath train is concerned.

a) What is the train going to be doing instead - where will its capacity be redeployed?   Strikes me that at 06:10 in the morning from Bath - to become an 06:30 Bristol starter - this is nothing today with moving capacity to somewhere else.

b) The 06:09 has allowed a Plymouth arrival at 08:33 (change at Temple Meads).    What "alternative journey solutions or services are available" to give a Plymouth arrival from Bath in time for the working day?   As far as I can see, the next journey from Bath to Plymouth (to become the first journey of the day from Bath to Plymouth won't arrive there until 10:33.

Shift times may be changing to allow staff to start at Exeter, for example. May not be the train but the crew.

Indeed, but the consultation suggests that the train (and it's train resources they're talking about using better) is going to start at Bristol.

Interestingly, also puts back the first train arriving into Bristol Temple Meads from Bath by nearly half an hour - if these changes come into effect on the current GWR timetable (as is suggested), no arrival into BRI at 06:20 any more - the first one will be after quarter to seven.  Not sure what the alternative is for early shift workers who catch it at the moment because the next train's too late for them!

How long has it been in the timetable?

The one remaining up train from Paignton will be the 0702 to MAN.

The Guildford starters/terminators will also be withdrawn under these proposals.

The move would also see the longest single train journey in the UK (0821 Aberdeen to Penzance) cut to start from Edbinburgh

This wont mean an increase in Bristol to Exeter services. From December 2017 it is proposed that fewer Westcountry to London trains will go via Bristol, with nearly all going Berks and Hants. XC are filling the gap.

The XC HST maintenance seems to be moving from the depot near Edinburgh to the one near Newcastle, with Newcastle origin/endings for HST all services.

The Bath starter has only been in the timetable since 2010. Introduced solely as an ORCATS raid and not to provide improved journey oportunities. I guess the finances of this have been marginal.

Unlike the Paigntons and Guildfords, the Bath starter isnt a franchise commitment so won't require DfT approval to remove.

[Bath XC] It was started in May 2010, but didn't appear in a track access application until a little later, the same one that extended the alternate Reading - Southampton services.

Paul

It may not have been introduced to provide improved journey opportunities (how cynical of you to suggest that it wasn't introduced to provide an improvement though!  :D ) but it does provide an earlier arrival by nearly half an hour into Bristol, and no less than two hours earlier into Plymouth.   It seems ironic to me that at a time the people of Plymouth are campaigning for earlier arrivals, CrossCountry are proposing to make the first arrival possible there from Bath Spa (big place - 6 million rail journeys a year and in the South West) 2 hours later; I still don't see what my alternative that they say is available in their consultation document actually is (I use this service sometimes). Travel down the night before and stay in a hotel?  Drive?

Difficult to tell, as no other TOC will release their Dec17 timetable for about 11 months!

It also means that the first train will not be a high speed but a local service which is already getting pretty full. My partner uses it every day to get to work (she catches it because it is the only train that she can get a seat on, anything later is too packed). It used to be fairly quiet, but in the last few years it has become much busier. The thought of it also taking extra passengers from the 06.09 is deeply worrying.

The phrase 'rearranging the deckchairs' springs to mind.  Though it's a complete waste sending a voyager to and from Guildford every day for a handful of passengers, so if the franchise isn't going to do a 'proper job' like it used to of connecting places like Portsmouth and Brighton, concentrating on providing the core stations and journey legs with a few more seats a day is better than nothing I suppose.  No substitute for a proper increase in capacity with new trains which will be desperately needed come the new long term franchise.

An opportunity for GWR to use the path by introducing a new service from 21017, perhaps starting back at Westbury.

Could utilise rolling stock from the Thames Valley cascade.

Oh, wait a minute...

I didn't think the cascade had been delayed that much  :o

Ahh. I of course meant 2017. But the government definitions of 'paused' and 'deferred'...

It does maintain a significant chunk of route knowledge for regular diversions, because it runs directly from/to Eastleigh depot via Fareham and Havant.   If they still have to regularly practice that for the few weeks it happens every year, it may still need to run through empty?

Paul

Good point, Paul.

It was introduced shortly after XC appointed a new production director, who lived in.... Bath! Nice through journey to Birmingham and the office! Has been for the chop for a few timetable changes now being a once a day in one direction only service.

Richard Gibson, Director of XC communications spent the morning at Railfuture's conference listed elsewhere. Other than highlight the consultation, there were no questions public as he wasn't speaking

So the director of communications wasn't speaking...?  ;)

The way they have paragraphed it is a bit misleading in places eg:

This would suggest that the removal of the Guildford stop makes way for this new 06:52 service. Incorrect, the 06:52 is simply the 08:45 from Bournemouth doing an additional early trip, with the former 06:02 from Guildford starting at Reading instead. As Paul has suggested this could still run ECS via Guildford, and/or possibly run as a double unit from Eastleigh to Reading forming both the 06:45 & 06:52. Bit disappointing the 18:08 arrival from Newcastle cant then continue on southwards or do something more useful than running ECS to Eastleigh.

I was equally puzzled by this, because on the face of it the withdrawal of the Guildford calls doesn't directly provide for anything else to happen.  The morning change doesn't allow for much else, other than perhaps another very early Winchester to Reading off-pattern service - for which there may be very little demand, and of course the train crew other than the driver might be an issue.

Extending the 1808 arrival through to Southampton (or even Eastleigh) via Basingstoke and Winchester would have an obvious benefit in maintaining the 2 hourly pattern of Southampton extensions similar to the rest of the day, but the problem may well be line capacity at that time between Basingstoke and Southampton.   For a couple of timetables before it was diverted to form the early evening Guildford terminating service, it did run to Eastleigh in service, and before that you may recall it ran to Southampton via Andover and Romsey which delayed it so much very few used it - staff used to recommend changing at Basingstoke.    But all in all the current plans suggest a unit spare for about 6 hours - it could even run a Reading to Southampton and back to Reading, then empty to depot and all in the usual timings.

Originally the southbound Guildford extension was much later at night (and presumably had even less passengers), I think the empty unit didn't get back to Eastleigh until after midnight.

Paul

I guess a salient point is that this isn't a XC route, they tried (for whatever reason) an early morning service, but now want to drop it (for whatever reason).  If there is a demand for an earlier first service between Bath and Bristol then it's really the responsibility of GWR to provide it.  Actually having the service enables there to be clear evidence to demonstrate over the next year whether or not such a service is justified by looking at passenger numbers.

The numbers they have for Paignton services are laughable. The 1007 has routinely been busy/full and standing for as long as I've used it (about a decade) rain or shine, February, August or November

It's the first off-peak fast service to Exeter and Bristol for us - it's virtually impossible for it not to be busy!

88 my left wossname!

How many are travelling beyond Exeter though?  The consultation suggests that anyone travelling from Paignton who still wishes to travel on this train to destinatioins beyond Exeter can use a GWR metro service and change at Exeter.

It dumps half at Exeter, and reloads with similar numbers in my experience.

The Metro is slow, reliable and gets delayed by high speed services getting delayed on the Banks - hence why people jump on one of the very few high speed services available to us without changing. The Paddington services are also stoppers so.... XC get the lions share of Bristol bound pax.

I travelled on the evening service they are saying has an average of 12 passengers. my coach alone was 80+% seats full. I don't believe the rest was empty.
Its easy to manipulate stats to look how you want them. Do the head counts on a Tuesday and Wednesday in winter and its probably empty in the evenings. Do them on a Friday In summer and its full.
The service I used saw no ticket check, I was travelling on a return portion so would have gone unacknowledged with no ticket purchased just before travel, as I imagine most passengers are on an evening.

Operationally, occasional daytime off-cycle services are a darned nuisance.  Extending a train from Plymouth to Newquay or Penzance, or from Exeter to Paignton, Reading to Guildford or Bristol to Bath or Cardiff means that during the day there's no train left at Plymouth / Exeter / Reading / Bristol to form a clock-face return working, then a bit later when the extension has been run and returned there are two.   

At the tail end (or head) of the day, it may be a bit different and there could be useful depot facilities at the end of the line (Penzance) ... with continuity of journey late in the day attracting passengers, the train filling in gaps in a fading evening local service.  First think in the morning, when there's no incoming train to worry about, a though train to distant places will attract long distance peak fares, and be operationally convenient.

Finally, if you have a capacity issue in your "core" territory, cutting out the daytime occasional extensions releases the train(s) involved for use through the core at times the capacity is needed / included in statistics, so you can announce a further timetable enhancement story of more seats through XXX without the need for and more physical seats on your stock.

This may read a bit anti-XC, but should they be providing the gap-fillers with these occasional trains, or should such be run locally?  As they're mostly non-peak service concerned, this is perhaps a question for the writers of the SLCs at the DfT.

Note - to take into account too, the huge loss of traffic between "X" and "Z" if people have to change at "Y" on the way - I have seen 40% to 46% quoted.   And it follows that where the same stock is routinely used from X to Y and from Y to Z, consideration should be given to running through services, even where it means different TOCs working together.

I've said as much in the past regarding the GWR Brighton services.    One of the RUS consultation points a few years ago suggested that using a longer DMU (3 vice 2 car) would help with peak capacity into and out of Brighton, so I wrote to DfT and suggested that using a 4 or 8 car Southern EMU all the way to and from Southampton would be even more use...

Regarding the evening Guildford extension that currently runs to Eastleigh depot fairly early, and looks as if it might run to a depot (assumed to still be Eastleigh) a bit earlier next December, at least there is still a northbound train from Reading in the normal pattern half an hour later which would be the last northbound from Southampton (to York) through Reading at about 1840.   So that unit going off to Guildford doesn't actually cause a gap in the northbound service.

Paul

I notice that one of the reasons given for its withdrawal is "consistency with the Saturday schedule".  That seems bizarre for a couple of reasons, firstly, it appears to be the tail wagging the dog in terms of which one should be made consistent.  Secondly, has it occurred to them that the markets might be slightly different, in particular, business travellers may need to get to their meetings earlier than Saturday's travellers might want to travel?  And as has been pointed out, the train serves another early XC service, down to the South West.  Given comments elsewhere about loadings on the Paignton services, (which given those quoted appear to have been taken on a wet Tuesday in November), I'd also be suspicious as to the loadings quoted for the service.

Elsewhere I note the comments about the additional Exeter services broadly offsetting GWR services via Bristol.  I do wonder whether the plans to run HST's on Penzance to Exeter and Cardiff might make those services (albeit slower) the preferred choice for some if they come to fruition. 

See also a new petition topic, at http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=17716.0

I quite regularly catch the 1242 Teignmouth to Paignton Cross Country service.
Certainly on a Monday to Friday, the train is relatively empty by the times it leaves Newton Abbot.

Not usually being an advocate of cutting services, it seems with the limited stock available to train operating
companies the decision could be beneficial to passenger's. Bearing in mind services between Newton Abbot and
Paignton are well served at this time of day.

AIUI, ORCATS raids only work because the allocation of revenue between operators is driven by a model that does not conform precisely to reality.  An operator spots the mismatch and exploits it.  But the ORCATS model is constantly being refined and so the loopholes do sometimes get closed.  In theory ORCATS raids ought not to last for too long.

A very interesting discussion on that yesterday at the TWSW AGM ... and it comes down to a number of considerations such as:

a) Should XC really be providing 'filler' services on their long distance trains to overcome the shortcomings of a local operator / local franchise SLC?

b) What is the effect on traffic that is currently making use of direct services if services are  amended such that a change is needed?

In the case of the Bath Spa starter, there is a strong argument to suggest that it would be more suitable if GWR were required to provide a Westbury starter at around 05:30 which could then feed into the path of the 06:09 at Bath Spa and continue from Bristol in one of the diagrams that starts there at around 06:30.   Such a service using a sprinter or turbo could also build traffic by serving intermediate stations.

The case of Paignton may be a bit different, with (educated guess) statistically significant numbers of mature leisure passengers with substantial luggage who would be seriously put off by having to change trains (or having to leave just after 7 a.m.).

Surely its about time that the government looked into adding say a fleet of 10 to 15 IEP 8 or 9 car sets to Crosscountry services, I mean even if the HST's get powered doors, they'll only have another 10 years left I would say, and its not like XC's passenger numbers are going to shrink anytime soon!

An inter-changeable fleet common to several operators now there's a thought.......... 

Totally unscientific and unedited (some TLCs guessed!) ... journey notes I made in coach F (rear car from Cheltenham, front car from Birmingham) on the 09:12 yesterday.   Around 50 seats in the car / numbers noted are in the main carriage section.   I suspect other carriages may have loaded more fully .

cc only on catering
10 min delay at BMH / "problem an BMH"
Signal problem ahead @ SHD - in a Q of trains - became 26 late
Wakefield Westgate - Bridge strike ahead
30 late into Leeds; compensation due saya annoucnement
27 late onwards
38 late into Darlington; compensation due announcement made
still 36 late into Motherwell

4 car voyager
The first train manager said "it had only been busy from Taunton to Bristol and that was only commuters".
ex CNM few off;  => 6
BMH -3 +8 => 11
TAM -0 +3 => 14
DBY -3 +8 => 19
CFL -4 +2 => 17
SHF -4 +25 => 38
WWG -0 +12 => 50
LDS -29 +6 => 27
YRK -14 +8 => 21
DAR -0 +1 => 22
DRH -2 +1 => 21
NCL -2 +9 => 28
ALN -0 +1 => 29
BWT -0 +0 => 29
EDH -18 + 18 => 29
HAY -0 +0 => 29
MTH -11 +2 => 20 on to GLC
Child traffic - perhaps 10% / 20% with adults [ 4 of 29 / 7 of 29 @ end]
16:28 for 15:52

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/xclate.jpg)

Really only "full" from Wakefield into Leeds; also busy from Sheffield to Wakefield.   Apart from these two stretches, the 07:20 off Melksham was busier per coach (and that's the 2 car pre-peak train!).    Note use of word "only" by train manager when describing commuters. from Taunton to Bristol.

I would suggest Alnmouth and Berwick figures distorted due to late running / I suspect another train mopped up the traffic - that's a guess based on ORR station usage as the figures yesterday were weirdly low.

Huge amount of middle distance traffic; after mine, next longest I noted was Sheffield to Glasgow. Quiet week weigh regard business journeys; 'lots' of families header home prior to school starting next week. So a really poor sample, but worthy of learning / perhaps comment from other members?

Edit - added train times image

It'd be useful if you added the times (either scheduled or actual - probably need both here) at the various stations.

Unusual for it not to recover some of the lost time. This timetable has so much padding in it - this train is given 7 minutes at Leeds, 9 at Newcastle and 5 at Edinburgh.

My experience on this route is that there's big commuting flows into and out of Birmingham, Leeds and Newcastle. I rarely go as far as Edinburgh (West Coast is usually quicker and cheaper for me). Plus a lot of inter-peak traffic as you saw between Sheffield and York. Indeed, I always aim for one of the via-Doncaster trains so as to avoid the Leeds traffic.

The via-Doncaster trains omit the Tamworth / Burton / Chesterfield stops, which I have always thought should be on the Newcastle short workings rather than the Edinburghs. The Edinburghs get the slower route round through Leeds - swapping the Tamwworth / Burton / Chesterfield stops would give a better headway betweeen York and Newcastle. Looking at your numbers, one wonders if it's worth bothering.

I am reminded of an announcement from several years ago : "Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your Train Manager. I'd like to welcome on board the passenger who joined us at Chesterfield".

I have gone back to realtime trains and found the log ... added it to the previous post.


Felt slow - got held up, I suspect, behind local trains once it was out of path.

On a west coast service headed south again now - much quicker!


I don't think I experienced a particularly usual run; different traffic metrics (returning -after-christmas families rather than business) - and we missed out Burton.

Wicked!  ;) :D ;D

This hits the nail on the head for me.  In an ideal world the answer would be "yes", but given that XC has limited stock, the strategy of thinning out less well used trains and using the stock (and the extra set formed by reforming 2 five-car sets plus virgins 2 spare driving units into 3 four-car sets; and the extra 2 sets provided by diagraming an extra HST each day) to run mostly 8-unit trains or 7 coach HSTs on the core route seems sensible. 

Of course the stock XC has is terribly inefficient.  An 8-car set only has about 300 standard class seats less than a 4-car 158 or turbo.  Some IEP bimodes (or similar) for XC would be great and if a use can be found for the Voyagers elsewhere, I would not be surprised if a business case could be made for replacing an 8-car double 220/221 with a 5 car class 800-type bimode which would have lower fuel costs as well as slightly more passenger capacity (and the option to lengthen if the business case is to be based on higher passenger numbers).  I predict that we will see proposals along those lines in the next XC franchise.