South West services via TransWilts

Quote from: smokey on July 09, 2012, 11:04:28

Indeed whilst I'm not a fan of FIRST, I will give credit that First run services on some Branch lines above the specified level, one example is that Plymouth-Gunnislake has a service of 9 trains a day Monday to Friday where as the MSL^▸ is 8 trains.
The logic is good the Train is Hired, the Train Crew being paid so might as well work rather than sit in a Mess room, so the cost of the extra train is Fuel and Train path, but more trains means more passengers, and the Extra Branch line trains, which generally run good to time help push up the Trains run to time performance figures. All very good business sense.

Yet at the same time I consider (and hope others will agree) that Melksham in Wiltshire has been very badly served by FGW^▸ , when First took over from Wessex, the almost decent level of service was to cut back to a level NOT fitting for a town of Melkshams size.
Yet it's an Issue FGW just ignored, I'm sure that it wouldn't have hurt if one or two of the daily Plymouth, Paington, Exeter or Taunton to London services (and vicky versa) were routed via Westbury and Swindon calling at Melksham.

Even on the TransWilts, First have provided one train a week above the minimum SLC^▸ requirement, which states there must be two northbound service on Sundays but has nothing required Southbound. So the ECS^▸ southbound between the two northbounds got turned into a passenger train about a year in. And very useful it is too - certainly that's the train that brings more visitors in to the place I work than any other single train in the week.

And - gosh - I'm going to give further credit to them for looking at options too. It's been highly frustrating to see a train sat in the bay at Swindon for 70 minutes in every 2 hours, others sat (within a much more complex pattern) at Westbury, and short Westbury to Warminster local trips. Problem is ... if you put in another middle of day round trip by swapping a unit at Westbury with a Stroud Valley unit, what round trip / commute markets are you meeting with that one extra service, and can you time it robustly so that works, and also so that the two trains pass away from the single line section?

Minimum SLC requirement for the TransWilts, alas, allows for a service that can be run in "marginal time" so there's no train on the line when people really want trains - both on the TransWilts and elsewhere, so it's not a case of slotting in extra trip(s) as with Gunnislake - there's no train to add the extras on top of. Interestingly, you add a train and on current timetables you COULD start doing regular swaps with the Stroud Valley meaning that you've actually got around 30 minutes in 2 hours of extra train, and there's the further advantage that such a scheme would help reduce contention for the Swindon Bay. But with an intermeshed service such as this, with new timetables at electrification including (I understand) the shuttle on the Stroud Valley becoming a through London train, the metrics will change again. We are in interesting times.

Routing South West services via Melksham? There are only a couple a day which call at Westbury then are fast to Reading - prime candidates for that if you like. It sounds attractive - until you consider that so much of the traffic on offer is for journeys such as Trowbridge to Swindon, and for Melksham to / from Bath / Bristol. A service that went Westbury - Melksham - Reading would add around 12 minutes; an HST^▸ that went Westbury - Trowbridge - Melksham - Chippenham - Swindon - Reading would add more like 25 minutes and really frustrate the further-west crowd. I can actually see one service a day where this would be very useful indeed, in association with a two-hourly service.

At times of engineering work, the story's rather different. If the Berks and Hants is closed, South West expressed pass along the TransWilts hourly each way anyway, and once there's a local train, it can be suspended in place of extra TRO^» / MKM^» / CPM^» stops on the express - alternate hours to match as closely as practical to the suspended times. And that gives us a really good marketing opportunity, publicising long distance opportunities. When Swindon to Bath is being wired up, goodness knows what will happen; it's not beyond the realms of possibility that Chippenham to Bath will run via Trowbridge sometimes, and if so it's just one extra stop on that diverted service to provide an adequate temporary replacement.

I appear to have been moved a long way from the M4 ... I'll split this off to its own thread if it gets followed up!