Great Western Coffee Shop

Take a look at this - $8bn to be invested!

<http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/01/28/president-obama-delivers-american-high-speed-rail>

Seems unfortunate that a number of these projects would only be described as Inter City in the UK, a number of these flagship schemes are 125mph max, and the politics behind the money, will see far too many stops to make the others true HSR.

The $8Billion won't go far either, one report suggests that some of this money will go to around 40 states so the spread really will be thin.

Give them a break. In the land of the car and airliner, this is ground-breaking stuff.

Even in places where the distances between cities meant trains could still have been more than competitive with air or road over the past 40 years - like California, Florida, or radiating from Chicago - with investment in the track and the right sort of trains, most of the US railroads just threw in the towel in the late 1960s.

Everyone's got to start somewhere and there's a small island off the coast of Europe I can think of that's no great shakes in the high-speed rail stakes either.

Fully agree with your last point willc. Ireland does indeed have some of the slowest inter-city services, as well as Europe's slowest 'international' express! ;)

Some 33 years ago when the HST made its debut its 125mph top speed and coupled with some gung -ho running made it only the second fastest train(DIESEL OR ELECTRIC) in the world after the Japanese "Bullet" trains.However times have moved on and 125mph is no longer the worlds definition of "High speed" and Britain has been left behind in the domestic speed stakes.Certainly First Great Western really has not moved on since those heady days of the 1970s  speed wise and seems to be going backwards if anything.Unfortunately on todays railway performance statistics are everything  not improvements to journey times.Certainly in my own back yard many of the regular journeys I make between Plymouth and Exeter which once took 50/55 minutes now takes 60/65 minutes.In real terms FGW is going backwards certainly in my neck of the woods,I am not blaming First as there is only so much you can do with 33 year old trains(even refurbished ones) and Victorian infrastructure.

It's less to do with the trains and infrastructure than the vast increase in people actually using the railways. Put in simple terms, trains are stopping in more places than they used to and more people are getting on and off, increasing the station dwell times. This situation is not entirely without benefit though: bear in mind that not everyone wants to travel to London or make the "end to end" journey on an intercity service, and for those people who are joining or alighting at the extra stops their journey is much easier and more convenient.

I suppose in the far South west much improved Road/Air links to London are now a good alternative for everyone who wants to travel to London or make the "end to end" journey on an intercity service.Leave the railways for the short haul commuter types seems to be FGWs motto now in the 21st century(confirmed by the commuter style layouts in their Mk3s).Funny how every other longer distance main line is still trying to speed things up to take on the the competition.ie Chiltern,West Coast,East Coast,even Anglia is under pressure to do something about journey times.Has FGW thrown the towel in here?

Are you able to drive from Central London to Plymouth in 3hrs at legal speeds? The train does it twice a day. Both examples of the recent cutting of slack.

So does the plane from Plymouth(London City} and in a lot less time than the train and there is also the door to door aspect of motoring.Dont get me wrong I am all in favour of the train but its not where we are now but where we are going that concerns me.A 3hour rail journey time is not as competitive to Plymouth as it was a quarter of a century ago and will be less so in the future.The transport world will keep moving on even if FGW does not.

Probably explains why all the trains to the west are empty... ;)

Trains to the West are packed as ever with long distance passengers on FGW, woody you must never travel by rail if you think the airlines have seen off the trains because it's rubbish! 4 75 seat planes a day to London vs around 11 direct 550 seat trains per day, even if all their planes were full it's only around the same loading as 1 train!

Oops sorry devon metro/Vacman did not mean to sound pro air/anti rail,in fact the complete oposite is true.in fact I have just got back from Exeter on the 1457 Paddington/Plymouth a trip I do at least once a week and have done for many years.I was just pointing out that over the years FGW dont seem to have placed the same emphasis on journey time improvements that the other former Inter-city franchises do.
 To put matters straight regards Vacmans comment about train capacity compared to air capacity I totally agree with you Vacman in fact you have virtually paraphrased similar comments I made in my local rag in reponse to a local man who waxed lyrical about Air South west Plymouth/london Gatwick flights and kept refering to our "ricketty old railways".Indeed I said to him that Air South West only really cater for a niche market compared to the much wider appeal of rail.

I don't buy this argument that all other intercity franchises have speeded things up. East Coast journey times are pretty much the same as they were with the arrival of HSTs in 1978, largely as a result of the route having been progressively improved from the 1960s to get the most out of the Deltics' capabilities, so there wasn't much else to be gained, other than the 125mph running delivered by the HST.

And how exactly do you propose that FGW should speed up Plymouth services, unless it involves a whole new railway from Exeter to Plymouth and/or an extensive rebuild of the Berks & Hants route.

It takes just over two hours for the fastest services to reach Exeter, covering something like 170 miles, maybe five minutes more than the best times when I lived in Exeter 20 years ago and most of that extra time is presumably courtesy of ATP operating between London and Reading.

The remaining 50 miles to Plymouth up and down and round the coast and hills consume just under an hour, so it's clear enough where the problem is and no-one is rushing to pay for the solution.

And that's if you accept there is a problem. If you stick to the speed limits on the motorways, you might make Plymouth from London in a shade under four-and-a-half hours by car, and longer using the A303, a time which even trains calling Taunton and Tiverton beat by an hour. As you observe, the plane is a niche market and hasn't exactly decimated rail traffic since Brymon launched the service all those years ago.

Just wondering how this topic drifted back across the Atlantic?

Not quite true. The electrification of the ECML resulted in a significant improvement in journey times, from those post HST. Though much of that has since been lost to result in overall journey times that are only a shade better than in (say) 1980. However, that is still better than the significant increase on the GWML to Bristol over the same period.

Since 1980, the ECML underwent a further modernisation in 1990, and thus has more frequent and longer services, with more coming as soon as the various parties can stop arguing about how to fit them all in.  

The MML has undergone various fleet renewals and now runs 5 services ph as far as Kettering (4 to Leicester), vice 2 as little as 12 years ago, with a further improvement last December with 2tph to Sheffied. Thus a vastly improved service on 1980.

The WCML clearly has loads more services than it did in the early 1980s, and much faster too.

Meanwhile the GWML has stagnated, with only 33% more services, (4tph as far as Bristol vice 3), and journey times extended by around 20%. A few Adelentas were thrown at it as a sop to First Group buying out the previous management led franchise, subsequently replaced by HSTs bought by First Group.  But hardly a great step forward in 35 years.



    




 

While the original point was somewhere across the Atlantic, the point about Plymouth was quite clearly  about journey times, not frequency, train length or anything else.

I was talking about ECML times as they are now, not what they were in the late 80s and early 90s. Electrification was not as much of a step change as you seem to suggest, certainly nothing like the impact of 125mph running from 1978, fully exploiting the earlier route improvements. Same as FGW fastest times aren't what they were 20 or 30 years ago. London-West Yorkshire times now are scarcely any different from 1978 - I ought to remember, I lived in Yorkshire then. And it certainly doesn't suggest any striving to speed things up as suggested above.

National Express East Anglia London-Norwich times are not what they were post-electrification either but then they are trying to cope with a doubling of passenger numbers in the past decade, a similar situation to that facing FGW. What do you suggest they actually do, beyond moaning about longer journey times, when much of that is down to added stops to cover rising demand?

And how do you propose to achieve a great step forward, with the same trains operating on the same infrastructure as the late 1970s, including a London-Reading section far more heavily used than it was then? No-one will be doing any leaping forward until Reading station is rebuilt, wires go up and new trains arrive.

And even then, I'm not sure that the possible journey times quoted by Hitachi for the Bristol and Swansea routes will be what's reflected in the actual timetable. Not unless/until 140mph running is introduced on suitable sections of the route.

Interestingly with the East coast back under direct government control I see that they want to re-introduce a sub 4 hour Kingscross/Edinburgh service and reduce the standard KingsX/Newcastle journey time to 2 hours 50 minutes and the standard KingsX/Edinburgh time to 4 hours 20 minutes in order to take on the airlines on that route.Likewise on Anglia Liverpool street/Norwich route there are now calls by for a headline 90 minute journey time.The need for speed has always been a precursor of economic development generally and the Westcountry is no different.Any region that does not keep up with the pack ultimately looses out.

I thought the slowest Intercity grade service was this bundle of fun ;D

http://www.glacierexpress.ch/theglacierexpress.php (http://www.glacierexpress.ch/theglacierexpress.php)

*edit* - Open for correction of course ;)

Agreed, trout. However my response was in answer to willc suggesting there was an island off the coast of Europe with a not too great inter-city service. (I think he was thinking of somewhere other than the Emerald Isle!)

Switzerland is just an island of sanity within Europe!  :P ;) :D

Reference Forthcoming improvements on the East Coast check this link out.
http://www.eastcoast.co.uk/travel-information/Eureka/
 As i have repeated said the world keeps moving on even if FGW is not.

And Virgin made many bold promises about Operation Princess on XC routes in 2002 - compare the network then with what XC runs on those routes now, or, in a number of cases, doesn't - moved, yes. Backwards.

Many of these changes on East Coast are to allow for extra trains, not necessarily notably faster ones, including open access services, which don't exist hereabouts. And they are pulling out of Glasgow. 'Moving on' perhaps, but in a positive direction?

The EC speed-up is being achieved by removing padding that has been added in, just like FGW, to make punctuality figures look better. If it all goes wrong, like Operation Princess, what will happen? They will bring back the padding. Come to Oxford some time and watch northbound XC trains sit in the platform for five minutes at the top of every hour, courtesy of their timing allowance.

With Reading rebuilding getting under way, Crossrail and electrification, is it realistic for FGW to do the same as EC in the next few years? I doubt it. And if they did, then what would surely follow, with that amount of major engineering work and resignalling going on, would be a pattern of late running, doing nothing for the railway's reputation just when they most need to keep passengers on side.

And what practical suggestions do you have for speeding up Plymouth services. No-one is queuing up to build the new line that would be needed through Devon to make any significant difference to times to Plymouth. You keep banging on about speed - that's the easy bit - but how do you actually propose to go about it? Do tell us.

You might also note Brompton Rail's post here  http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=6138.0

We sometimes forget that speed isn't just about how fast the mainline trains go.  The passenger is concerned with door to door speed.  For some journeys you could increase door to door speed by:

1) better connections or ore "though trains".
2) modest line speed increases on the branch lines
3) improved travel to the station (more reliable buses, easier and quicker parking for drivers, bike racks, opening access to both sides of the station for pedestrians)
4) faster ticket selling or Oyster type arrangement or allowing purchase of tickets on the train.

All of the above things would be cheaper to do, but the trend is in the opposite direction in many places.  - for example there are plans to re-develop Bath station which involve removing the pedestrian gates from the car parks and the South of the station so to require all passenegers to enter through the single gateline and use the stairs or lifts to the platforms, for many passnegers this will add a minute or two to each journey - longer if with luggage, pushcahir, wheelchair).  To my mind this is as stupid as adding a minute or two in padding to the timetable.  I realise that revenue protection is an important issue, but it needs to be done properly.  If FGW doubled the number of ticket barriers at BTM for example so as to eliminate delays in the peaks, it would save many "passenger minutes" and it less cost I would have thought than electrifcation or line speed upgrades. 

Speeding up Plymouth services is certainly not a national priority and I agree there is little FGW can do about the infrastructure especially between Exeter and Plymouth.Faced with a similar dilema Virgin West Coast went for tilting trains,perhaps the Berks and Hants route could also benefit from tilt or would that be too expensive as well.While aviation is a niche market now in the far south-west that may not always be the case. 

With the exception of the sea wall, line speeds are not too bad as far as Newton Abbot.   West of there however you are down to 55/60 mph all the way to Plymouth except for an 80 mph section around Hemerdon.  FGW though run trains on infrastructure owned by Network Rail so there is very little FGW can do to speed up services short of removing calls on some trains.

It certainly strikes me as a pity that when you consider our three main routes out of London, the WCML, ECML and GWML that the two former operate trains that are designed for 140mph running and the latter is so well engineered that it has the potential to operate at over 125mph for large sections.  Signalling issues not withstanding, hopefully better use can be made of this potential over the next 35 years!

MML GEL BML PML four more main routes out of London