Great Western Coffee Shop

Here's one for the railway experts - how much extra fuel does it take to insert a stop into a service that's passing through a station anyway? I'm thinking of 3 coach 158 / 159s on Salisbury - Bristol, and I'm interested (for example) in the extra carbon footprint of stopping a Waterloo service at Oldfield Park, the extra cost that's been incurred by stopping Portsmouth - Cardiff at B-o-A every hour.

Methinks maybe you are looking down the wrong end of the telescope.

TOCS probably do know how much extra fuel is used in inserting a station stop. However, you need to balance that cost with the extra revenue that you might derive from the stop. The problem with calculating the extra revenue is that you need to take into account things like would an extra train to and from A at a certain time generate additonal passenger journies because there is a train at that time or will some exisitng passnegers just transfer to it.

The general asunption seems to be that the more trains that stop at a station the greater the passenger numbers. eg Melksham where there was a steady growth as more trains were added.

Not only do you have to take into account fuel costs but also timetabling issues such as will you lose a following path will you get a junction when it's free etc.

You're spot on in highlighting those other key elements - but I can already guestimate them.   The information I'm looking for here is to fill a gap in my knowledge; it may turn out to be an insignificant element, but I would like to know!

A couple of years ago FGW withdrew stops at Appleford and Culham, citing lack of use and the cost of stopping. If I recall correctly, this was quoted as about ^15.

After protests, the stops were reinstated!

It's something that's quite hard to put an exact figure on.  To take Oxman's ^15 example (which may well be near the actual average), the cost of, say stopping from nearly 90mph to call at Radley and then accelerate up to 90 for the next stop at Didcot would be far more than stopping at Appleford (from 50mph) after a call at Culham before accelerating to only about 55mph before braking for the Didcot stop (well, the 40psr at Didcot North Junction anyway).

Also, some stations may require the train to slow down considerably for the prevailing line speed through the station anyway.  A good example of that (up until last week!) was Ascott-Under-Wychwood where all up trains had to slow to 40mph for the junction, so the additional cost of going from 40mph to a stop would have not been so great.

Isn't there also a charge levied for each station called at?  I am not sure if it applies to a FGW service calling at a FGW station though. I remember reading it somewhere.

A basket of station costs are shared out amongst the TOCs that use that station pro rata to the number of services they have calling at that station. If only one TOC uses a station, there is no saving or additional cost in varying the number of trains that stop.

If it was just down to cost this farce would have been stopped ages ago.