Great Western Coffee Shop

From the December Timetable change ALL hourly SWT Salisbury-Southampton services will now call at Dean and Mottisfont & Dunbridge Mondays-Saturdays.

SWT Salisbury-Southampton Timetable:
http://www.southwesttrains.co.uk/SWTrains/pdfs/TimetablesDecember2008/25Dec08.pdf

Have these stations ever had a better service than this I wonder?

Indeed, Timmer: a remarkable service for those two stations!  I believe the stations themselves are looked after by First Great Western - and they will soon have an hourly train service provided by South West Trains.  To benefit from such a combined level of commitment from two rival TOCs is quite an achievement!

in the 1960s they had an hourly service provided by the Salisbury to Portsmouth semi-fast.

i thought FGW handed them to SWT to look after? i might be wrong though

Both shown as managed by FGW, according to National Rail:

http://nationalrail.co.uk/stations/den/details.html

http://nationalrail.co.uk/stations/dbg/details.html

As of last month, both were still managed by FGW ... we met with some senior FGW managers and were discussing the whole Southampton - Salisbury - Swindon - Didcot corridor, and it was confirmed.  Also thought to be unique (binique?)  where one TOC looks after a station but doesn't provide even a single service there.  Will it be changed?  Perhaps at some stage, but it's not seen as a priority issue.

It's interesting to see the comparison between the service FGW provides to its own station (Dilton Marsh) and that SWT is providing to FGW's stations. Of course, I appreciate that the nature of the services that don't stop at DM, and do stop at the others is different (the Cardiff - Pompey trains are long distance, whereas the SWT ones are local).

As you can see from the figures below, they are all much of a muchness in terms of footfall. Wonder how much more DM would be with an hourly service?  Maybe time to resurrect the idea of extending the SWT services to Swindon, Graham?


                06/07   05/06   1 Yr Growth    04/05   2 Yr Growth
Dilton Marsh   15,359   13,456   14.1%               12,191   26.0%
Dean                12,103   12,697   -4.7%               12,087   0.1%
Mfont & Dunbridge   14,028   13,261   5.8%               10,611   32.2%

There would be such huge logic in doing that.

* With the layover that the Romsey - Southampton - Romsey - Salisbury service has at Salisbury at the moment, a single extra unit could give a two hourly service whereas a dedicated unit running just Salisbury - Swindon could only manage once every 3 hours

* The unit would be based actually on the line [Salisbury], and would be a semi-long distant 2 car that would be very suitable for the service as it grew.

* I've been amazed at just how many TransWilts passengers carry on to Southampton, so the through service would be a real plus.  And indeed the onward link to Southampton airport every 2 hours would be great.  Think of it, even off the Melksham section - benefits such as a train service from the County town of Wiltshire to an International airport

* Under current ORCATS arrangements, an FGW service would be of limited earning power to FGW and indeed it would mean they had to pull a unit off an ORCATS raid elsewhere at a financial detriment which they are reluctant to do.  In contrast, an SWT service would fit well for them with the distorted accountant's model.

SWT crews already know the line up to Trowbridge anyway ...

Presumably it would be highly advantageous of SWT to do it. Think of all that ORCATS revenue. A fair proportion of every ticket sold from Cardiff/Bristol to Soton and Portsmouth, and even a tiny slice of the Bristol - London revenue by virtue of the Chippenham to Swindon service.

And how could FGW object given their continuing reluctance to provide a service???