Great Western Coffee Shop

The jury might be out on whether we can have a train next Christmas (http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=8162.msg82178#msg82178), but Santa is struggling to deliver one to Melksham this Christmas evening.


Did these trains just sail through the station?

Track circuit failure on the single line means that these services diverted via Box, Bathampton and Bradford OA.

Yep ... 38 minutes rather than 19 minutes, Trowbridge to Chippenham  :o

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/doglegxmaseve.jpg)

There was some odd stuff going on last night too ....

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/verylate23dec.jpg)

And the first train back after Christmas hasn't happened either (this morning's trains weren't running either).  It's almost as bad as the 2007 timetable change when cancellations went over 30%. 


Christmas quiz ... a quotation: "An enormous amount of effort has gone in, over the last two years, to really change First Great Western. The biggest change I think has been that we're running the trains much more punctually. Cancellations are at their lowest level ever, and we're working hard to give customers a much better service and that's coming through in the results."

Who said it?

When?

To whom?

Mark Hopwood, September 2010 to BBC Wiltshire

Perhaps he wasn't referring directly to Wiltshire's service levels ::) :P

Yes - the comment was made by Mark Hopwood to Radio Wiltshire a couple of months ago, so clearly for consumption by those of us who live in Wiltshire, but it did cover things outside the county; we're far from being an island and indeed many journeys starting / ending in Wiltshire go way beyond - as seen by some of the other questioning:

Q: Why is Swindon to London, the most expensive rail journey, per mile, in the country?

A: Actually it's not the most expensive. There are higher price tickets elsewhere in the UK. [And he goes on to talk about average fares and some of the great deals on offer.]

He's right, of course, there <i>are</i> higher fares per mile. He didn't go into details, which is probably the right thing for a radio interview such as this - it's all too easy to get bogged down.

Full interview: http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/wiltshire/hi/people_and_places/newsid_8977000/8977230.stm

---

Higher fare - comparison / example - I couldn't resist looking!

Walkup fare is 54.50 single, peak, Swindon to Paddington (next year's price) and at 80 miles that works out at 68p per mile. 

I've been able to find another journey of about 40 miles that's going to be prices at 53.00 - that's 1.32 per mile.  Also on First Great Western in Wiltshire. 

I've checked out several dates in February on this one and not been offered any advanced tickets - I suspect there are none, though I can travel for 7.50 if I take a later service via a different route that always involves a change. I checked out the taxi fare at http://www.taxiroute.co.uk and that gave me a fare of 85 pounds - so for two people a taxi all the way would be cheaper.  You can also do it for 18.50 by splitting your journey into two tickets.  On one round trip a day, five days a week, a full class 150 train would raise 4 million pounds if everyone had a 53 pound single / 106 pound return fare ... what a crazy fare system we have!

So that's the entire service gone for the day  :-[

I was going to ask some question along the lines of "which station is having the longest gap in train services this Christmas", but I suspect that we would only come in third:

1. Pilning
2. Reading
3. Melksham

No it hasn't been a good first day back after the Christmas break with faulty trains and unavailable train crew being the main reasons coupled together with unusually large passenger flows making for some challenging travelling conditions in FGW land.

Yes it does make you think back to Christmas 2007 a bit which lead to the launching of the Current Running page which is still up and running to this day. Lets hope things are better tomorrow.

28th December ... as far as the TransWilts is concerned, it looks better ... our first train since for four whole days - 95 hours.  Let's hope that was just an exceptional glitch.

I always feel caught between a rock and a hard place when there are significant service breaks / strings of cancellations.

On one hand, there's a need to shout and say - "oy - you are not providing the service you should" - an individual cancellation - a crew member sick, a broken down train, bad weather is one thing. But when it's four trains in succession, and not all for the same reason either, I begin to look and wonder if the managers who run the railway and those higher up who decide on the resource levels to be set are really providing proper levels to cover all services at all times.

But on the other hand, more positively, we want and need to work with these very people to move this line back to an appropriate service from the current curtailed one.  And we do appreciate that they too have pressures - financial, availability of rolling stock, and a very complex system to work within - and (critically) we know that most of them are railwaymen at heart, customer service focussed, and would love to have a magic wand to solve the issues.

Very quite by line at taplow. Turbos are always quiter than HSTs so don't notice them.

With only 4tph each way they slip by unoticed.

Slough and Maidenhead seem to have  2tph fast and same 2tph stoppers as other stations.

If you look on Slough/Maidenhead live departures they've put the  buses on as well! Which I suppose is something.

Or not..

Combe, Finstock and Ascott-Under-Wychwood also have no train services scheduled between December 25th and 30th.  There's a replacement bus service running (despite the line being open) connecting them with a train at Hanborough - which I expect hardly any souls would want to bother with.  Shipton has a rail replacement bus for two up journeys, and a rail replacement bus for one down journey, and also two trains for down journeys, but none on the up!  Short platform lengths are the reason, as the replacement Turbos are all three-cars - but try explaining that to the average rail user!

It's pretty baffling for the average forum admin too.   Wasn't there a song "where have all the 2 car turbos gone - long time passing ..."  ;D .  Is the answer "Blocked up in Reading every one" by any chance?

How sad that we end up comparing places like Finstock (population 707) with places like Melksham (pop 24000).  Logic tells me that on a level playing field, a place with 30 times the population might expect to have at least 15 times the train service - that's allowing a 2:1 fudge factor for Finstock residents being (person for person) very heavy rail users.

You're forgetting the fact that Finstock also serves as a railhead for the hamlet of Fawler.  Population = Several.  :P

Graham, I don't see how you get the idea anyone was making a comparison. In the post to which Insider responded you mused about which places would go the longest without any trains over Christmas, Nothing more, nothing less. And nothing about population sizes.

There are some two-car Turbos outstationed at Oxford. There have to be to work the Bicester branch due to the length of the platform at Islip.

Will,  I'm not a trained wordsmith, so sometimes I say things a bit wrong.   

It's natural for me - when I see a handful of incidents / stations / places / packets of ham on the Tesco shelves to make a comparison.  Things like "what's the best value", "which is the bigger" etc. It helps me make choices, understand best value for money, and pick up on the relationship and relative treatment of people and communities.  And in my post I made the assumption, which may be false, that others do the same when they see a list. Thinking about it, though, I don't think my assumption was a poor one.  After all - we see the pop charts, the 20 worst films of the year, the most popular boy's names ... listed all over the place, so there's clearly a market for comparisons.

Sorry for any offence caused by my assumption of comparison in this thread thus far.  But actually it is quite a fair one' certainly the GWRUS suggested (if I may take the liberty of comparing) an hourly service each way from Swindon to Westbury, etc, giving a passenger train every 30 minutes over the Chippenham - Trowbridge length of track, with an intermediate stop at Melksham, and it had a far lower stopping level suggested for the smaller stations on the Cotswold line.

P.S.  I'm aware that I have been naughtily selective in the comparison, and that Reading is larger than any of the other places mentioned.  I understand that it usually has quite frequent trains  :D :D

Back "on topic" ... a request to Santa for a carriage or two may be found here:

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debate/?id=2010-12-21a.1406.2

And a very well worded request it is too.  Presumably this was just a debate statement rather than one to which somebody in the DfT had to provide an answer to?

And so true this too.  I'm sure other parts of the West would also benefit from one or two second-hand carriages, which I don't think is too much to ask for when millions is being spent on new high speed lines.

I've long had a theory that if trains don't call at London, they aren't considered important.  If the Portsmouth - Cardiff was a (hypothetical) London - Cardiff via Portsmouth service, then I believe it would instantly receive additional carriages.

In the meantime, perhaps Melksham's best chance remains the Go! Cooperative's (the rail arm of which is now known as GOCO Train) open-access service from Yeovil/Frome to the Midlands.

As recently as a month ago there is a statement on their website http://www.go-now.coop/info/ (http://www.go-now.coop/info/) saying that they expect (note the wording, not hope, not plan, but expect) to commence their service as at December 2011.  I have to say I'll eat my hat if it's up and running that quickly, but time will tell!

What's being a trained wordsmith go to do with it? The initial post was simply about which stations were going longest without a train over Christmas. No suggestion of population sizes, relative values, comparisons or anything else.

Frankly, if you are trying to make a case for more trains for Melksham to be written into the next Greater Western franchise - because that is clearly going to be the key moment in your fight, never mind what Go! are up to - making silly and spurious comparisons with halts in the west Oxfordshire countryside, which would probably have closed 15 years ago if BR had done its paperwork properly, will do Melksham no favours.

(Population) size isn't everything, especially when it comes to service levels and passenger numbers at particular railway stations. Apart from Evesham, which is about the same size as Melksham, every station on the Cotswold Line serves places with small populations, so should we be stripped of lots of the trains that generate large numbers of passengers and large sums of money for the railway?

Erm ... to be fair, willc, grahame has already apologised for any offence caused by his drawing his own comparisons from some of the subsequent posts on this topic.

Thanks, Chris.

If anyone's unclear, I agree (and I have for years) that the best way forward is to put a good case, and to celebrate other railway success stories, as they provide evidence of good practise and what's been proven to work. I'm baffled as to where I'm supposed to have said that services should be stripped / reduced elsewhere - there may be the very, very occasional one but I wouldn't know enough to confirm that;  I'm rather more of the view that the cuts of the 1960s / 1970s went over the top, and that around 30% of those lines / stations would running successfully if they were still with us.

In other words: Crikey, Will - cut the guy a bit of slack!

Sounds like the cancellation rate on the Melksham route has been horrendous.  It's one thing to advertise that trains are being removed from the timetable, but quite another to advertise them as running and cancel so many of them.

My first two pictures of the New Year ...

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/nohelp.jpg)

Help point, timed at 08:47 (we were planning a trip out to the Sales today).   I pressed the information button and asked what the alternative was, and was advised that the next train we would be able to catch will leave at 15:20. No other alternative was suggested / offered;  we're making plans that don't involve the train.

On our way back hope, I noticed this chap who I suspect was headed for the station; I'm guessing (judging by the size of his suitcase) that he's starting a long trip home after spending the New Year away ...

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/noservice.jpg)

Oh well, at least there appears to be a bus "alternative" to yet another TransWilts cancellation...

At no point have I disputed that:

a. Melksham has a lousy service to start with.
b. Is seen as an easy option for cancellations the minute there's a problem with rolling stock, staff or infrastructure.

But to trying to draw any parallels with the situation of a couple of badly-sited rural halts in west Oxfordshire, with a bare minimum 'Parliamentary' service and that the railway would happily be shot of if anyone was prepared to take the heat over a closure procedure, will never help make Melksham's case. I would be very worried if the RUS had not said that Melksham should get more services than such places.

As for


you wrote the following


Unless logic only works one way here, then logic would suggest that places that are one eighth the size of Melksham (Charlbury and Moreton-in-Marsh, to name but two) should, on your level playing field, whatever fudge factor you apply, expect to have far fewer trains than they do now, never mind their best-ever service from September.

But the playing field is not level and never will be. Logic (and population size) should dictate that from September it would be Shipton, not Ascott-under-Wychwood that gets calls by the lion's share of extra Cotswold Line services, but it won't, due to Shipton being stuck with one two-car platform and one three-car, when the extra workings will use three-car sets, but lucky Ascott will have one new three-car platform and an extension to the existing platform, courtesy of the redoubling project budget.

And there are a whole list of local factors that determine the use of every single station in FGW-land, irrespective of logic, population and playing fields, level or otherwise, such as useless timetables dictated by minimum service requirements drawn up by civil servants who probably had no idea where Melksham is, never mind its population.

Shouldn't logic dictate that from September the money used to lengthen Ascott's current platform should instead have been used to lengthen Shipton's short platform?  Ascott's 2-car platform is longer than Shipton's, but only by 4 metres.

I'm all for talking level playing fields so I'm with Will on this, there are a few stations closer to home I think that need to be compared with as well as places further afield, such as the service levels that BoA and Freshford get with their footfalls compared with similar stations, a quick check on the handy comparator at the top of the page always makes interesting reading.

Freshford (Pop 530) gets virtually an identical peak service as Trowbridge, where did that come from. I would hope that Finstock residents would be fighting to get a 20 min service in the mornings put into the RUS as well.

Perhaps, but then there are four fewer metres of new platform required, so probably quite a saving given the figures sometimes quoted for what seems like a pretty simple job - plus if you are going to encourage more people to use Shipton, you face the problem of people crossing the line to get to cars parked on the other side earlier in the day at a station lacking a footbridge, with the only legal option being a trek up to the road bridge and then all the way down the other approach road. No prizes for guessing what people sometimes do instead... Ascott's level crossing offers a no-cost solution there.

To be fair to Network Rail's redoubling project team, they are trying their hardest to identify savings within the overall budget or other possible sources of funding with a view to using any such money to deliver useful add-ons, with a Shipton platform extension and extra parking on the works compound at Charlbury top of the list.

Which is to their credit, and given the very tight budget anyway, no mean feat if they pull it off!

Thanks, IndustryInsider!  ;)

If I may make a gentle suggestion here: we seem to have gone off at a bit of a tangent from the original topic heading - and having already agreed that 'comparisons are odious', could we please keep future posts on this particular topic ... erm ... on topic?

Thanks,

Chris. ;) ::)