Great Western Coffee Shop

Hi, I was just looking at a 2003 timetable I have and I noted that there is a lack of calls at Newbury on services from the West to London.  In the 2003 timetable there were calls every 2 hours except one 3 hour gap.  Now there is a gap of over 5 hours from 08:30 to 13:47, then gaps of around 3 hours to 16:50 and then 19:44.  I note that many trains still call at Castle Cary, Westbury and Pewsey.  Newbury is the largest town on the Berks and Hants so why the lack of trains from the West stopping there?

Because most people travelling west don't want to have to stop at Newbury perhaps  ;)

Most people want to head east.

Plus the InterCity trains need to be quick.

Perhaps they should twin Newbury with Melksham.

Newbury has a good service to London direct or changing at Reading.  Also in 2003 Thames and Great Western were competing with each other.  So each call Great Western made meant they got more revenue.  Now they are one company that is no longer the case.

Yes but not everyone is going to or from London, I have been asked at Exeter "does this train stop at Newbury" so there is some demand for travel from the west to Newbury.

I think this is very important question and goes to the very heart of providing a rail services.

Namely what pattern of services do you provide to give direct trains to and from as many stations as possible.

East of Westbury you have Pewsey, Bedwyn, Hungerford, Kintbury and Newbury.

Now from the West, FGW can fill  a lot of trains from Taunton to London with only a stop at Reading. So FGW have no incentive to stop them a Newbury only for them to be crammed with Reading/London passengers. They could be set down only at Newbury but I doubt there would be enough passengers per train to justify the stop. Also that would just make the TMs job impossible sorting out the Newbury people who shouldn't have got on the train.

So you are looking at some kind of Taunton - Reading stopper, but there are too many stations to serve to give a reasonable running time from say Castle Cary to Reading/London. So perhaps what you have to do is run a semi fast from Taunton all staions to Westbury then Newbury Reading/London.

So that still leaves Pewsbury to Kintbury out in the cold. So perhaps the Bedwyn service could be extended to Westbury. However that adds another 112 miles per return journey (say at least 2 hours per train)  just to serve Pewsey and give people from the West a service to intermediate stations with a change at Westbury.

One possible way of doing it would be have have an hourly stopper Newbury to  Taunton with the same overall running times but with different patterns of stops odd and even hours. I'll leave it to cleverer people than I, to work out if you could serve all possible combinations every 2 hours.
 
So perhaps the current service is not so bad, at least there are now through trains from Bedwyn to Pewsey.

A couple of relevant ideas mooted for the future (links below.)
http://www.raildocuments.org.uk/gwfuture/londoncornwall.xls

http://www.canber.co.uk/?q=node/31

Thanks for the link, I think the fast services to the west though should stop at Taunton as by not stopping them there you are extending journey times to Taunton.

If you are referring to the 1006/1206 from Paddington, these services are in themselves much faster without stopping at Taunton. Around 10 minutes than you average stopping pattern. The trains are the first *fast* services into Penzance from London so are therefore fairly busy.

No, sorry I was talking about the proposed timetable Lee posted the link for.

In the real timetable though I think back in the early 1990s trains to Penzance used to be even faster, with stops only at Exeter and Plymouth.  It's also strange that there are two westbound services that run PAD - RDG - EXD - NTA - PLY but only one eastbound service that runs PLY - EXD - RDG - PDG.  I would also like to ask if there is any benefit in stopping the 10:06 and 12:06 at Newton Abbot as I think the station is about as important as Taunton and both trains I think are busy even without the stop there.

Personally as a user of Newton Abbot I will reject any removals of stops. One day I might choose to use those services even though i tend to leave early and arrive back late.

On another note isn't the saturday night service to Torbay awful  >:(

I think they should use the 180s to run a London to Westbury semi fast service to replace the Thames Turbo service to Bedwyn. London - M'head - Reading etc.

Then make occasional HST calls here and there to keep people happy.

Aside from the fact that 180s are needed elsewhere ;)

That's pretty much what IndustryInsider had in mind when he devised the proposal contained in the link below.
http://www.canber.co.uk/?q=node/31

Yes, I remember reading something similar on these boards a while back. And I agree.

You never know. FGW might keep the 3 180s....

I am sure that a good mix of fast/semi/stopping servce could be devised for Plymouth and West/Torquay to all intermediate staions to Reading via Westbury. However, whilst there is shortage of DMUS and electrification is still a dream we are stuck.

A possible solution is allegedly the 100 Mark 2 coaches in store although what condition they are in and how much it would cost to restore them I don't know. Also are there sufficient suitable locos to haul the say the 16 6 coach trains you could make?

But it's probably cheaper than buying 100 DMU new coaches. Ian Walmsley (head of Porterbrook Leasing) suggests, in a personal capacity, that the IEP will cost 3 million per vehicle making a 10 coach set 30 million where an electric  loco would be 4 million and a coach 1 million making 14 million for the same number of seats. Even if you make it two locos one electric and one diesel (to haul the set off the wires) that's still only around 20 million per set. So if you buy 50 IEP (electric only) then you pay 150 million, wheres  you could get 75 sets of coaches each with two locos. Also if you buy only electric IEPs you still have the problem of through trains into unwired territory.  Definitely more bangs for your bucks. Quote is from Modern Railways November.