Great Western Coffee Shop

Over the past few months, I have had the pleasure of standing from BTM <-> BPW, and on a few occasions from BPW to Cheltenham.

I appreciate that over many of the long routes that CrossCountry operate, they may be very busy over short stretches, but they have no wish to carry 'air' round the country.

Is it time that GWR or CrossCountry ran extra trains from Bristol To Birmingham? At the moment Bristol has 32 carriages of capacity, per hour, to London, but only 8 carriages to the Midlands and North?

Surely an hourly service from Taunton, Temple Meads, Bristol Parkway, Cheltenham, Worcester Parkway(when ready), Birmingham Snow Hill?

No terminating space at Snow Hill.....why snow hill?

XC would need a addition rolling stock to either increase their frequency beyond half hourly between Bristol and Birmingham (& also Bham to Manchester / Sheffield / Oxford etc). The other solution is longer trains (I.e. New ones).

Neither will happen unless HMGovernment compel the new franchisee to get more and longer trains. A subsidy would probably be needed, too!

Birmingham New Street is very busy, and Snow Hill was the GWR station prior to British Rail, so I thought it might be suitable

I have no idea what the occupancy rate of CrossCountry trains, but many of them in the Bristol Area are >100%. Adding a few longer trains, 8 carriages, would certainly help but the cost implication of a run from Exeter to Glasgow may be negative.

Adding a train, or two, to improve connections from Bristol to Birmingham would be provide capacity where its is needed.

There is a new XC franchise on its way - indeed, there is a thread running on this vey board about it started by grahame. But I can't see an increase above 2tph frankly, along with the odd GWR service towards Worcester every other hour.

Thread is at http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=18422.0

North from Cheltenham, you currently have 3.5 trains per hour (2 from Bristol via Birmingham, 1 from Cardiff via Birmingham, and 0.5 to Worcester and usually Malvern).   Minimum 10 carriages per hour to Birmingham spread over 3 trains - could go up to 24 carriages if they were all 7 cars without taking any extra paths.  And the GWR franchise map mentioned above and comments with it suggested that all regular services should be at least hourly.  There's a good case for that 0.5 GWR service to Worcester to step up to a 1.0 service.

I recall being told that the current franchise for XC did not require the company to run anything longer than the current 4-car trains. So they didn't, and weren't given the rolling stock to do any more. This was on the basis of historic passenger numbers, which quickly looked inadequate.

I have stood BRI to BHM.

What route would you take to get to Snow Hill ?   That's a good one to work out

Interesting question, phile, because the obvious route is via Stourbridge. And that does invite the question: would there be a market for a direct service from the South-West (Bristol/Cheltenham) to Worcester, Droitwich, Kidderminster, Stourbridge, Smethwick Galton Bridge and Birmingham Snow Hill? Fairly prosperous Black Country towns and few of them with good inter-city connections.

Crayonista stuff, of course, and probably inconvenient for franchise boundaries, but an interesting possibility.

And for the onward journey, currently involving a change at New Street?

Should MetroWest deliver a significant part of what is envisaged, some pressure will be taken off the XC trains currently used for BRI-BPW trips.

Fascinating aside thought on how people distribute themselves along a train ... case in point today, 4 car
* Front carriage around 75% of seats taken; no-one standing
* Second carriage - full and a few standing
* Third carriage - full, standing all up the aisles
* Fourth carriage - so full people were having trouble boarding at intermediate station.

Train in question?  11:52 (? my timetable shows 11:48) St Erth to St Ives which was carrying many passengers who had been planning to be on the 10:18 and on the 11:18 - disrupted journeys due to yesterday's signalling failures in the Reading to London area.

True, but that is still a while off. Once Filton has been four tracked, it will have capacity, but I am not sure what extra trains will actually run and when.

There is still a need for extra capacity to Birmingham, and connections onto other areas.

Has XC thought about running 8xcarriage trains from Bristol to Birmingham, and split at New Street as needed?

Don't forget the additional two services per hour between Paddington and TM calling at Parkway (starting next year?)

Or re-open the line between Cheltenham and Stratford on Avon much of which forms the Gloucester and Warwick Railway.    This was the route to Snow Hill in the Golden Years.

I think many of the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway folks would have something to say about this!

But I do agree.  If only BR hadn't been allowed so conveniently to shut the route in 1976.

There is already a plan being advanced, the 'Midlands Rail Hub', which could allow this.

Such a scheme would reinstate the fourth platform at Snow Hill, freeing up the bays at Moor St for new and re-routed services via the Camp Hill line accessed via new chords at Bordesley. Not a new idea but Moor St's proximity to HS2 at Curzon St makes this especially attractive now.

See pages 58-60 of the West Midlands & Chilterns Route Study (https://16cbgt3sbwr8204sf92da3xxc5m-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/West-Midlands-and-Chilterns-Route-Study-Draft-for-Consultation-1.pdf)

Which is pretty close to being out of date & superceded soon.

No one wanting More BRI-BIrmingham services won't want a slow journey, so going via local Birmingham stations to Snow Hill will not be sensible use of a paths

Almost without doubt. They will have also wondered where to get the extra stock.

The overcrowding between Bristol (& further west) and Birmingham is replicated between Birmingham and Yorkshire (Sheffield, Doncaster, Leeds and York) and Birmingham and Oxford /Reading, and probably Birmingham and Stoke / Manchester too.

The overcrowding is intense at morning and evening peak times. XC's plan for December 2017 which uses most of their HSTs and turns back Torbay services at Exeter is an attempt to go some way to alleviate the problem with the rolling stock they have.

The acquisition of more rolling stock for a future letting of the franchise would be a matter for the DfT, but could lead to the TOC paying a lower premium, or even require a subsidy.