On stopping (more) Cardiff - Portsmouth trains at Severn Tunnel Junction - yes, that came up. Just as discussed elsewhere (Heart of Wessex board) recently, we have a single service looking to perform multiple tasks and various compromises, with a suggestion that flow size and capacity of lines both mitigate against running each task as a separate train.
A point I've been making for a while particularly on the Heart of Wessex and possibly Transwilts.
It is interesting to compare attitudes of the Southern Railway and Great Western to clock face services, poor serving of intermediate stations and poor connections at junctions.
Having electrified much of the network by the 1930s
SR‡ had mostly a mostly clock face timetable imposed (even on some steam lines). with a relatively fixed stopping pattern. Thus as commuting developed certain towns, because of their good service became heavy commuter towns like Woking. This pattern has been followed with Kent Coast and Weymouth electrification, but the minor stations such as Micheldever, which seems to becoming a Parkway, are still mostly served by the stoppers. One of the few major changes to the Southern services is the introduction of the Javelin High speed Services into Kent from St. Pancras. The effect tha has had on the old lines is probabably a topic in it's own right and could be relevant in
HS2▸ v
WCML▸ .
Contrast this the
GWR▸ who had very limited commuter services into Paddington some from the Valley lines into Cardiff /Newprt and from Solihull and Shirley into Birmingham. Mostly non clock-face until the introduction of
DMUs▸ . Many intermediate and branch line stations were poorly served. Thus it could take hours to get from Calne to Malmesbury by train with changes at least at Chippenham and Swindon. Whereas it's 15 miles 32 minutes by Road the bus wins. Thus until recently places like these stayed much the same size, but now we have the growth of house building in these areas with the potential for more rail passengers but still the same poor services.
Problem, which emphasises Grahame's point.
That "we have a single service looking to perform multiple tasks and various compromises, with a suggestion that flow size and capacity of lines both mitigate against running each task as a separate train."
Unfortunately I don't have a solution. Unless it's to provide more capacity at Junction stations to allow stoppers to be overtaken by fasts and give easy interchange. Platform 4 at Westbury? Otherwise we'll have to build any new stations with platform loops, as the GWR did at stations between Taunton and Newton Abbot.
From Rhydgaled list of services in post above
Caerphilly - Machen - Newport
Did you mean Machen? If so are they going to open those favourite quiz question stations Fountain Inn Halt and Waterloo Halt?
Click on the map to explore geographics
