Newquay Line Services

[whole diary]

[slippy]

St Ives still four car today. FGW^▸ (First Great Western) now acknowledging the existence of Bangface festival, so hopefully will strengthen on Sunday and Monday as well.

Was strengthened today and 2N02 Bristol to Newquay will be strengthened at Par tomorrow. Also standby buses at Newquay.

[Louis94]

St Ives still four car today. FGW^▸ (First Great Western) now acknowledging the existence of Bangface festival, so hopefully will strengthen on Sunday and Monday as well.

Was strengthened today and 2N02 Bristol to Newquay will be strengthened at Par tomorrow. Also standby buses at Newquay.

Bristol to Newquay?! That finished 2 weeks back!

[Southern Stag]

1303 Newquay-Par reported as leaving full with 150 passengers, so must have been a two car. A 50 seater coach was also required though, so perhaps 3 carriages would have been better.

[fatcontroller]

1303 Newquay-Par reported as leaving full with 150 passengers, so must have been a two car. A 50 seater coach was also required though, so perhaps 3 carriages would have been better.

We're lucky we had a second carriage to couple to the first - where would you like to get the third one from?

The problem faced, and we face it every year is that engineering can only postpone certain heavy maintenance to provide additional units for the summer months for a certain length of time.

After that, units would have to be stopped for heavy maintenance. If we didn't then we would have too many stopped at the same time (not being worked on as there are only so many staff) and customers (and coffee shop critizisers) would bemoan the lack of carriages on peak time trains into Bristol or around Exeter during Autumn and Winter.

Therefore Train Planning have to revert to a semi high summer/low summer timetable to gradually reduce the overall requirement of units expected each day. It then gives the distorted view of some branch lines with high summer unit provision whilst some revert to the low summer or winter provision.

This does then mean that Newquay struggled having reverted to a single 153, whilst St Ives still enjoyed 4-cars.
However, there were criticisms last year that St Ives dropped from four to two cars too soon and Train Plannning have this year kept the provision for longer.

Seems whatever does get done, and lessons from previous years HAVE been leartn there are just no pleasing some people!

Our Train Planning and Special Events teams knew nothing of either event at Newquay last weekend in order to be able to plan for it.

Can't spend all day at work trawling the internet to find out can we??!!

[bobm]

I understand there are only finite resources - not only in terms of stock but also crew - and you certainly cannot plan for events you do not know about.

However, as mentioned earlier, is any notice taken of advance ticket sales as a guide to how busy a service may be.  I assume as local trains on the Newquay line are unreservable the system would allow Advance Purchase on the mainline services to Par even if the number sold meant the connecting branch service would be oversubscribed.

[Southern Stag]

1303 Newquay-Par reported as leaving full with 150 passengers, so must have been a two car. A 50 seater coach was also required though, so perhaps 3 carriages would have been better.

We're lucky we had a second carriage to couple to the first - where would you like to get the third one from?

I understand that there are finite resources, and the difficulties in sharing them out, and I'd agree this year has been better. Four carriages on the 0935 Exeter-Penzance in the summer was a brilliant improvement, as that service is always very busy. The cut off from Summer to Winter does seem to be a bit arbitrary though, come the first week of September everything on the mainline goes back down to 2-carriages and suffers from overcrowding. I didn't know anything about the two events this weekend either, and it's good that FGW^▸ (First Great Western) strengthened the services once they knew about them.

[TonyK]

Seems whatever does get done, and lessons from previous years HAVE been leartn there are just no pleasing some people!

You're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't!

Our Train Planning and Special Events teams knew nothing of either event at Newquay last weekend in order to be able to plan for it.

Can't spend all day at work trawling the internet to find out can we??!!

Agreed. Do event organisers have any point of contact to be able to tell FGW^▸ (First Great Western) of forthcoming events? If that can be done without raising the expectation of an enhanced service, yet still allowing for it if it seems feasible and necessary, then everyone would win.

I once went to a Bristol City game in Cardiff - one of the finals at the Millennium stadium. It was a Sunday morning, and I had never before seen so many trains in one place. That obviously had a high profile at FGW, and it would have been chaos without their services. It shows what can be done with co-operation, although how many of the thousands on board had tickets, I wouldn't like to say.

[phile]

In BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)) days there would be people on the ground locally who would be aware of special events and inform the powers to be.

[JayMac]

In BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)) days there was a less intensive service, a surfeit of rolling stock and more manpower.

[Umberleigh]

I once went to a Bristol City game in Cardiff - one of the finals at the Millennium stadium. It was a Sunday morning, and I had never before seen so many trains in one place. That obviously had a high profile at FGW^▸ (First Great Western), and it would have been chaos without their services. It shows what can be done with co-operation, although how many of the thousands on board had tickets, I wouldn't like to say.

Ditto, in 2006, whilst coming back from Fishguard Hbr. There were a pair of class 50's, top and tailed on a 5 or 6 coach train, operating a shuttle service from Cardiff (I believe).

[fatcontroller]

Our Train Planning and Special Events teams knew nothing of either event at Newquay last weekend in order to be able to plan for it.

Can't spend all day at work trawling the internet to find out can we??!!

Agreed. Do event organisers have any point of contact to be able to tell FGW^▸ (First Great Western) of forthcoming events? If that can be done without raising the expectation of an enhanced service, yet still allowing for it if it seems feasible and necessary, then everyone would win.

I'm not aware of a point of contact for organisers to make FGW aware of the potential of larger than normal passenger flows.

I guess in the absence of one - Customer Services could always be informed and yesterday I was informed of a large group who had come to a ticket office to enquire about their journey options for 10 days time with a large group.

The member of staff had the fore thought to give Control the heads-up so arrangements (if possible) could be made.

[grahame]

I'm not aware of a point of contact for organisers to make FGW^▸ (First Great Western) aware of the potential of larger than normal passenger flows.

We had an area / station manager for many years who was an excellent contact on such things; the current one's pretty darned good too. However, some other members of the team in differing roles have proven to be more obstacles than assistance.   So I would advise organisers to start - in very good time - with their area manager.

[smokey]

1303 Newquay-Par reported as leaving full with 150 passengers, so must have been a two car. A 50 seater coach was also required though, so perhaps 3 carriages would have been better.

We're lucky we had a second carriage to couple to the first - where would you like to get the third one from?



Seems whatever does get done, and lessons from previous years HAVE been leartn there are just no pleasing some people!

Our Train Planning and Special Events teams knew nothing of either event at Newquay last weekend in order to be able to plan for it.

Can't spend all day at work trawling the internet to find out can we??!!

Where is the FOCAL group, they want to improve the Newquay services , I would guess they are locally based so should have a finger on Newquays events!

[Cornubian]

With so many festivals being organised these days, surely local Councils have a responsibility to inform rail companies that a licence application for a festival has been granted at what times and locations. This would enable the planning for additional units (etc) to be made.




 

[JayMac]

But then that begs the questions:

Who pays?
And where does the rolling stock and staff come from?

Weekend events, particularly Sundays, are easier to cater for because there is spare stock, but staff, track access charges and the like still have to be paid for.

Gone are the days, sadly, where a local manager could just rustle up stock and staff.

Unfortunately, TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) take a lot of persuading before they'll consider additional services. And then only when someone else pays the costs involved.

That doesn't then stop them the crowing about what they are doing, advertising the additional trains, but conveniently forgetting to mention it isn't because of their own altruism. Nine times out of ten it is someone else footing the bill.

And if an event organiser or local authority can't or won't pay for additional trains then the scheduled services have to cope as best they can.