Right, having put on some soothing music and taken a deep breath, may I bring a little local knowledge to bear on this. Apologies in advance if I go on a bit.
1. The announcement from Network Rail on what options it favours for more double track is imminent. In my professional capacity (journalist), I inquired about this last week and was told they were confident it would be in February.
2. Why are there so many stations? The Old Worse and Worse (Oxford Worcester and Wolverhampton for the uninitiated, the company that built the line in the 1850s) did not open all the stations. Combe, Finstock and Wyre Halt (in the Vale of Evesham, closed in the 1960s) were opened by the
GWR▸ in the 1930s.
With the exception of Evesham, there isn't anywhere of any great size between Oxford and Worcester, so the
OWW▸ and the GWR aimed to serve as many of the small towns and villages as they could. That so many survived (or later reopened in the case of Honeybourne) is down to the fact that
BR▸ 's closure proposals in the early 1970s were consistently rejected by the Ministry of Transport, probably because many journeys the line makes possible take longer by road and many of those roads were and still are unsuitable for buses.
At one point I think they tried to close every intermediate station except Evesham and Moreton-in-Marsh. Astonishing when you look at traffic levels today at Charlbury (see near start of this thread), for example, but there it is. Also bear in mind that the (almost) all trains through to and from London service is a relatively recent development, from 1993. Most trains from the end of steam until then were two or three car
DMUs▸ operating all-stations stoppers (plus halts in the peak), with the pairs of Hereford peak trains and the odd midday London-Malvern/Worcester as the only express-type services. No-one really got too exercised about express v all-stations arguments, as most of the day there was only the stopper and you had to change at Oxford.
3. Halts. Should they stay or go? Some of what has been said betrays a lack of knowledge of local geography. Combe and Finstock may look close on a map, but no-one would travel from one place to the other to get a train. The roads are awful and the River Evenlode is in the way. The alternatives are Charlbury for Finstock passengers and Hanborough for Combe. Finstock village and the Wychwood villages are linked much of the day with Charlbury station by a taxibus that connects with the trains. As for car parking at Combe and Finstock, come off it. The first is perched on an embankment, the other in a cutting at the bottom of a valley, both sites which cost the GWR nothing to build on. Back in December, I wrote the following on the halts. Nothing has happened to change my mind. There is a loyal, but small peak trade and that's it.
As for custom at these stations, Combe and Finstock are both about a mile from the villages and Finstock is at the bottom of a steepish hill as well, so not great scope for extra numbers, I'd say, even with more trains... Ascott's problem is that while it is convenient for the village itself, it is so close to Shipton it would be hard to justify lots of trains calling at both points, so maybe an extra peak stop or two here. I don't think people here would be too aggrieved if they only had a short drive to Shipton for more frequent services the rest of the day.
4. Suggested semi-fast/stopping trains service. Sorry, but outside the peaks, there just isn't the traffic on offer to justify anything like this level of service.
It is a longstanding goal of the
CLPG» (and every major council along the line from Oxford to Hereford, through the Cotswold and Malverns Transport Partnership) to get a regular hourly interval off-peak service to and from London, for the precise reason that this is a realistic, sustainable frequency. In the peaks the consensus is that there should be a 30-minute interval in the direction of the main flows, towards Oxford and London in the morning and in the other direction late afternoon and early evening. And a two-car Turbo (to operate the morning halts train into Oxford) is plenty of capacity for the last train of the day from London and Oxford to Worcester at the moment.
We also seem to be returning to the realms of penalising Hanborough, Honeybourne and Pershore. You seem to be suggesting that Turbos and changing at Oxford off-peak are fine for them - and presumably Chipping Campden, because more double track being laid would put this reopening proposal back on the agenda at Gloucestershire County Council. As I have said before, the trains stop at these places (and with increasing frequency in recent years) because people use them, and because they ease pressure elsewhere - eg at Evesham, where car park expansion is impossible, as all the adjacent former railway land has been sold off, never mind negotiating the town's dodgy road system. These three are Parkway stations for wider areas, as much as serving the places they are named after.
It may not be gee-whizz and exciting, but what I would like to see off-peak is a boring, reliable Swiss-style regular interval service, every hour, calling at Hanborough, Charlbury, Kingham, Moreton-in-Marsh, Evesham and Pershore. And maybe a two-hourly interval at Shipton and see how traffic develops and something similar at Chipping Campden if that is reopened, with some Honeybourne stops dropped to keep timings fairly consistent.
In the peak, something similar to today's service levels would make sense (with the odd train skipping Honeybourne or Hanborough, plus another London-bound train calling at Shipton), though reshuffled to get as near to a regular 30-minute interval between trains as possible. The halts train inevitably throws a spanner in the works, but that can't be helped and a two-car Turbo is still pretty fleet of foot, happily thrashing along Kingham-Moreton at 90mph most of the way. Double track would also allow a welcome extra service or two into Worcester in the morning peak from the Vale of Evesham stations.
In the morning an extra southbound service that reaches Oxford at about 9.30 (London 10.30) would be popular, while in the afternoon an extra train to even out the gaps between the 16.49, 17.31 and 18.16 from Oxford would be welcome, along with the 17.51 ex-London going back to leaving Oxford at 18.45-ish, giving a 30-minute interval between the two Hereford trains.
After all that we have endured on the Cotswold Line in the past few years in terms of unreliability, hours of disruption triggered by one late-running train and all the rest, what this line and its passengers need is a period of stability and reliability, where people know that the train will turn up at the same time every hour, all day, every day, or half-hourly in the peaks.
If there is more double track, and some boring reliablity can be achieved and passenger numbers stabilise and start to grow again, by all means look at running more trains, but let's get the basics right first.
