Great Western Coffee Shop

Hearing mixed reports on how things are going with the new timetable and service patterns. Hopefully its more sortable than certain bits of the South East London grimness.

Mark

Some comments on the new timetable.  There are not that many changes to the actual timetable outside of the Valleys/Metro sercices but there seems to be lots of changes to what is booked for certain services.

Nearly everything West of Cardiff now is booked for a 197 (aside from the HOWL which is to remain as 153s long term).   Pembroke Dock appears to still be Sprinters but due to switch to 197s anytime now I hear.   Even the daytime fishguard boat train and all Swanline services seem to be 197s as of this week according to whats been on RTT and these were regular Sprinters (not including the 2 Swanline that go to Chester which have been 197s for a while)

A shame so many 197's are still 2 or 3 cars when we were told there would be 5 cars on Swansea-Manchester at least.  The 1700 service from Milford Haven is now running all the way to Manchester. A much later through service for passengers West of Cardiff.  However in the other direction 1630 is the last service running West of Cardiff and that is the daily MK4 service only going as far as Swansea.

Ive read several complaints online about services from Merthyr etc no longer being direct to Barry Island however to be honest its not that much or a burden to change at Cardiff Central. Ive likewise seen people comment that its good to have a direct service from Caerphilly to Barry Island.

On the ground things seem to be working reasonably well, and in some ways demand is better spread.

The Pontypridd and Caerphilly 'extras' are quite useful crowd-busters. Aside from changes to service patterns - which I agree are hardly insurmountable - the only real losers are Cathays and Llandaf (Cardiff Central sacrificed for the Bay journeys), and that's hopefully temporary. (The extras to be added later are to the Bay but hopefully the Central journeys will be spread better in the final recast.) In a way it's nice having Treherberts so close behind the Merthyrs - there is a certain satisfaction sitting on the near-empty CDF-TRE at CDF watching the scrum trying to squeeze onto the Merthyr - but better spacing would be a better 'metro' provision in the long term.

Odd that Energlyn remains half-hourly. The recast was a chance to fix that. Not being served by all trains is simply a matter of it being added into the existing timetable, and not lack of demand! The opportunity should have been taken to do the 'metro' thing and stop everything there! Even Trefforest Estate is now well-served.

On social media people keep saying "we were promised xyz" without really grasping that these things must be phased - would it have been better to keep with Sprinters on the old timetable and then one day switch everything over? Of course not, but I doubt many people in Cardiff paid much attention to the Thameslink fiasco!  (The 'by 2022' or whatever it is signage in Queen Street really should have be removed long ago though!) Also so many comments along the lines of "why only Cardiff Metro"... yes, other areas are in great need of improvement, but not everywhere needs a "metro" service, and improvement there was needed. I just hope other areas see some benefits soon - especially with the most recent main line draft scaling back on improvements. (Not without reason, but frustrating all the same.)

Now the Cardiff Bay cycle is something like PPD-CDB-CDQ-CDB-PPD - so if the PPD-CDB leg is late, the following shuttle has to be cancelled. Understandable, but it means a long wait compared to the old days of the captive 12-minute shuttle. Again, this should be temporary - once the full tramway setup is in place and everything runs through, the shuttle will no longer be a sacrificial piece in the plan.

Similarly, the new Caerphilly-Penarth services (interworked with Corytons) are probably going to be sacrificial journeys when things go awry - but with frequent other trains serving CPH this is probably a useful safety valve.

I've seen publicity saying Pontypridd will have trains towards Cardiff every 3 minutes or so, which is incorrect - the plan as I understand is 12tph, i.e. averaging every 5 minutes.