Dilton Marsh - platform, services and incidents (merged posts)

[whole diary]

[grahame]

Success!   As from December, there is a permanent extra "request" call at Dilton Marsh at 08:04 in the morning, filling the southbound gap between 06:57 (to Southampton) and 09:54 (to Warminster).  This extra call on a train that passes through has been requested for many years, as it will allow school pupils from Westbury Leigh (close to the station) and Dilton Marsh to use public transport both to and from school, ending the current situation in which children are taken to school by car and come home on the 15:30 from Warminster.

In the past, GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) have been concerned that the extra stop would damage timetable robustness, but a 3 week trial this spring (rather forced on them because the 06:57 was suspended) showed it working well every day, and even though unadvertised locally up to 10 passengers joined the train southbound each day.   It is also going to be a useful service for people who want to commute to Salisbury, or have the day out in Salisbury and beyond without having a very early start indeed.  Thank you GWR - a small change that will make a big difference

(Written for RailFuture newsletter / old news on the forum ;-) )

[grahame]

Follow up at http://www.passenger.chat/26809 - I have split the topic which has gone a lot further than Dilton Marsh.  Looking at the whole issues of the future of the Wessex Main Line's services and rolling stock.

[grahame]

With Dilton Marsh's anniversary coming up "on this day" today, it's opportune to record the success ⁽¹⁾ of the extra stop added there last December at 08:04 in the morning to take young people to school.  Something "we" had requested for many years. 

How has this been achieved? By working together.  Our community has
(*) a deep local knowledge of flows, including those not using public transport because they weren't suitable services,
(*) some analytic skills to understand what is practical and the consequences of a request,
(*) an understanding of what motivates the key decision makers, and
(*) a continuing demonstration by the community to the public transport industry can work with us - that we are here for the long term, that we will support their sensible though sometimes tough decisions, that we know our community, and that they can trust us as we work together.

Sometimes it comes down to taking advantage of unexpected opportunities to ratchet services in the right direction; in mid-May, the Metro-West service from Bristol to Keynsham and Oldfield Park increased from 1 to 2 trains per hour.  That's totally a totally correct change from WECA^» (West of England Combined Authority - about), and I expect to see passenger numbers going "through the roof".  But where to turn those extra trains?   It turns out that the chosen option is Westbury, Frome, Warminster or Salisbury.  The extra services - now 3 trains an hour - to Bradford-on-Avon, Trowbridge and Westbury are more than welcome.  The lack of a track at "platform 0" at Westbury limit that station's operational capacity to turn trains, and so they go on.  A big consequential advantage to Dilton Marsh and Warminster ... and now there's a service that's frequent and complete enough for that station to be the start / end point of choice for people to leave and join the rail network - especially for journeys such as commutes / day trips to Trowbridge, Bath Spa and Bristol Temple Meads. 

Are passengers going to "offer" at Dilton Marsh?  The people are there.  As well as Dilton Marsh, the suburb of Westbury Leigh is in easy walking distance of the little station, whereas those residents would have a trek or need to get their cycles out to get to the main Westbury station.   But crucial in the choice of "do I take the car" or "do I walk / cycle / get a lift to Westbury" is reliability and information systems. Will the train actually be running?  Will the information be correct and complete if the train is delayed?  What will happen if a connection misses?   

We are in a heartbreaking phase at present. Not just Dilton Marsh but all over West Wiltshire and indeed across much of the UK^▸ (United Kingdom), with reliability in tatters through a combination of frugality of provision, adaption to changes brought about by such as covid, Brexit and technology, the ongoing battle (it seems) between government, unions and train operators, and more extreme climate and environmental events. 

However - this heartbreak should be just a glitch - we still have our community strength.  We still have our local knowledge. We have climate, and congestion-busting rail use on our side.  We have really good professionals in the rail industry with whom we can work, and indeed experts on "our team" who ave retired from a life in public transport and who know a thing of three.  It all sounds a long way from Dilton Marsh, but yet that's just part of a story.

A huge "Thank You" to Bryony Chetwode from TravelWatch SouthWest who came to the West Wiltshire Rail User Group's meeting last night to talk to us on what (as passengers) we have to look forward to on public transport over the next decade, and how we (as a user group) can help tune that for the mutual benefit of the passengers, the environment, the paymasters and the operators.  Unusually, I have put passengers first in that list - at times, it feels like the passengers aren't exactly top of the list when so many other businesses have a "customer is King" mantra.

 ⁽¹⁾ - By "Success", I mean not only in getting the train to stop there without impacting journey times for through passenger, but also in getting a significant number of passengers joining it on a daily basis, and also in getting their business on trains home later in the day which were already running!

[grahame]

Further writing inspired by that - http://grahamellis.uk/blog882.html

Today - 1st June - marks the anniversary of the opening of the station at Dilton Marsh in 1937. Incredibly, no other new railway stations have opened in Wiltshire in the 86 years since, though the station at Melksham was closed in 1966 and reopened 19 years later.

Dilton Marsh and Melksham stations have a great deal in common. Both offer limited passenger facilities, and both have suffered since they (re)opened from a sporadic service. Neither has a decent bus connection, and passengers using the station tend to walk or cycle there. Both have a significant local catchment and their rail use (passenger numbers per head of population) are way lower than other stations in the area - so they represent levelling up opportunities.

[grahame]

Delighted to arrive at Dilton Marsh at 09:35 this morning ... update my photo library ... and leave again on the 09:55.  Several people off when we arrived at 09:35, and 11 got on at 09:55 so neither was a special stop made just for me.   Good to see it busy - perhaps busier than I've seen it before except for the afternoon school train.  Most of the joiners on the way back stayed on the train beyond Westbury (from observation)

P.S. Reports are that the new morning school train is doing rather well too.

[grahame]

Two cheers for Dilton Marsh - THANK YOU GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway). Three cheers reserved for the days that the regular trains don't get cancelled and there's no need to add "stop" orders.

08:23 Portsmouth Harbour to Cardiff Central due 11:46

08:23 Portsmouth Harbour to Cardiff Central due 11:46 will call additionally at Dilton Marsh.
This is due to the train making extra stops because a train was cancelled.

08:28 Cardiff Central to Portsmouth Harbour due 11:52

08:28 Cardiff Central to Portsmouth Harbour due 11:52 will call additionally at Dilton Marsh.
This is due to the train making extra stops because a train was cancelled.

Dilton Marsh was an unlikely survivor of the "Beeching" Era but these dsys a station set beside a village in pleasant rolling fields has residential developments on a all sides.  Sporadic services over many years - long gaps and many trains only going one stop (to Westbury or Warminster) limited its use, as has the reliability issue of the local service.

[grahame]

Should Dilton Marsh be a request stop?

Passengers report that most trains they're on that have an optional stop there actually end up stopping, and nearby residents talk of most of the trains stopping too.   The West Wiltshire Rail User Group put in a request to GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) to remove the request nature and have all the trains that might call actually do so.  We were very surprised that GWR came back telling us that only a third of trains in the timetable actually call, adding that they have other busier request stops.  A whole load of questions spring to mind ...

1. Timetabled trains - 33% call - so why don't the other 67%?  Could it be that some of them simply don't run at all, so of course they can't call.  Looking at on time trains on another matter, Dilton Marsh was reported as the station being 2599th out of 2619 for performance, and reporting 20% cancellations on the metric I was looking at (Weekends over six months). Could it be that a third of the trains that don't call at Dilton Marsh are not calling there because they're not running at all?

2. When trains are full and standing, there is a tendency for them to miss out stations where the rear of the train sticks out from the platform because the train manager can't get through. In our area, that applies to Avoncliff and to Dilton Marsh.  There are also occasions when trains are running late and stops are skipped - even Trowbridge and Bradford-on-Avon get left out sometimes. Could it be that some of the trains not calling at Dilton Marsh are due - well - not too few passengers, but too many?

3. Engineering works are not uncommon, and within the period that's probably been used to work out the "only a third call" there have been planned train losses from those engineering works and from industial action where (typically) trains are withdrawn days of weeks ahead, so don't show up in the cancellation figures that relate to on-the-day changes for the most part.  Could it be that some of the trains not calling at Dilton Marsh are because the line or GWR's service is closed?

4. From time to time (and I don't know the proportion of time or logic) when a train is cancelled we hear of a stop order being added in onto a through (Cardiff - Portsmouth) service.  Good - but - the information about the extra stop often appears in a different place to the cancellation and the train that stops is 15 to 30 minutes later. People probably don't know about the extra even when they have heard of the cancellation, so it's likely to get only minimal or no use.  Could it be that such a situation is reported as "there was no-one for Dilton Marsh".  And when I was last there, there was no live screen on the platforms that would have alerted me to the extra train.  Could it be that people who turn up at the station for a train give up before the unadvertised extra arrives?

5. Automate systems such as the trackers sometimes show "no report" for Dilton Marsh, although local passengers report that the train HAS stopped. Could it be that such "no report"s are taken as erroneous "no stop"s?

6. As is not uncommon elsewhere too, there are travel flows to and from Dilton Marsh which are ticketless. Sadly, DMH^» (Dilton Marsh - next trains) probably has a significantly higher proportion of these due to [redacted]. Could it be, as I suspect, that GWR's "busier request stops" assertion is based on ticket sale numbers and not on numbers of passengers,

I am aware that trains run from early in the morning to late in the evening and passengers at some times of day are thinner than others.  And that the busy times are the times the trains will stop and also the times that people will report as seeing them stopped. So passenger reports will tend to have a bias towards thinking more stop than actaully do. On that basis, I would find "only a half stop" believable, but "only a third stop" stretching it unless some or all of my concerns above are valid.

A couple of further points:

A. GWR talk of "some busier request stops". Do they measure on passengers per train, or passengers per month? If it's passengers per train, I can quite believe that there are more passengers per train at stations which have very few calls even optionally. And if it's passengers per month, we should bear in mind that on a frequent service line where many more trains may stop, the request status may remain valid because of those more passnegers being spread over a much larger number of trains.

B. Would removal of the "request" status give people more confidence and help boost numbers, and/or is it a bit of a red herring and we should be asking more for ... a reliable servive ... real time information about the trains ... ticket machine to inspire confidence ... a better timetable (read that as "even" better, because it has improved)

[Hafren]

Is the main reason or benefit (or at least a significant factor, for in the real world things don't come down to single reasons) in this case the short platform – so the need to request the stop means passengers are more alert to instructions to reposition themselves, and the conductor is aware of passengers planning to alight. But this doesn't really add up as there are other such stations in the region that aren't request stops - in fact Avoncliff stopped being a request stop because of other operational needs.

I wonder how much fuel and break wear are actually saved by the final segments of braking and accelerating. The time saving is 30 seconds or whatever. It seems to me that the benefits of it being a request stop are marginal, at least when compared to the disadvantages of having a 'one off' case. Also being so close to Westbury means the conductor may not make it through the train after the previous 'main' stop, and therefore sometimes it might have to stop because they haven't had time for a full check, and passengers may worry that they won't have time to inform the conductor in those 2-3 minutes.

It strikes me that request stops work best where there are several of them on the same line – as seen on many more rural routes. There the time recovery benefits are greater, train crews aren't having to deal with a non-standard case, and passenger awareness is higher. This gives greater benefits both for routes where individual stations have low stop rates (as seen on the Scottish highland routes) and in cases where the stop rate is actually high (as seen on many GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) & TFW routes) as it will be a different one or two non-stops each time. I do wonder if it's really worth it where there's just one request stop, unless it's a super low-use station, which DMH^» (Dilton Marsh - next trains) isn't.

[grahame]

 

Mon, 2 December 04:50 Fratton to Bristol Temple Meads due 07:28
Mon, 2 December 06:01 Portsmouth Harbour to Cardiff Central due 09:45
Mon, 2 December 07:02 Salisbury to Bristol Temple Meads due 08:24
Mon, 2 December 08:23 Southampton Central to Bristol Temple Meads due 10:28
Mon, 2 December 09:51 Warminster to Gloucester due 11:56
Mon, 2 December 11:12 Salisbury to Bristol Temple Meads due 12:31
Mon, 2 December 12:12 Salisbury to Bristol Temple Meads due 13:31
Mon, 2 December 13:07 Salisbury to Bristol Temple Meads due 14:28
Mon, 2 December 14:05 Salisbury to Bristol Temple Meads due 15:30
Mon, 2 December 15:30 Warminster to Bristol Temple Meads due 16:29
Mon, 2 December 17:30 Warminster to Bristol Temple Meads due 18:29
Mon, 2 December 18:29 Warminster to Bristol Temple Meads due 19:30
Mon, 2 December 19:13 Salisbury to Bristol Temple Meads due 20:34
Mon, 2 December 20:11 Salisbury to Bristol Temple Meads due 21:32
Mon, 2 December 21:23 Portsmouth Harbour to Westbury due 23:30
Mon, 2 December 22:11 Salisbury to Bristol Temple Meads due 23:32

02/12/24 22:11 Salisbury to Bristol Temple Meads due 23:32 will no longer call at Dilton Marsh.
This is due to a problem currently under investigation.

Further Information

Due to a fault with the station platform at Dilton Marsh, this train is unable to call there today.
Road transport has been requested to depart Dilton Marsh at 2238 to Westbury and return from Westbury at 2248.

If you require further information please speak to station staff, use the Customer Help Point, message us on X @GWRHelp or call National Rail Enquiries on 03457 484 950. Please allow more time for your intended journey.

[grahame]

I wondered in public last night ... more follow up

If you aren't aware the Westbury bound platform at Dilton Marsh is currently closed because the platform disintegrated when a guard was getting back on a train last night.

Guard not seriously injured, I understand.

No indication yet of the length of the closure.

[grahame]

Due to a problem currently under investigation at Dilton Marsh:

Train services running through this station will be running non stop between Warminster and Westbury. Disruption is expected until the end of the day.

Customer Advice

At Dilton Marsh, Platform 1 is closed while repairs are made to the platform. Train services from Portsmouth Harbour or Salisbury towards Bristol Temple Meads/ Cardiff Central and Gloucester won't be calling here. If you're travelling on one of these services, please change at Westbury for a taxi to Dilton Marsh. If you're travelling from Dilton Marsh for services towards Westbury, a taxi will leave the same time of the train to Westbury for train connections.

[CyclingSid]

If you aren't aware the Westbury bound platform at Dilton Marsh is currently closed because the platform disintegrated when a guard was getting back on a train last night.

Was this a new platform? Any others built the same way?