Much improved London Midland services at Hereford/Colwall/Ledbury on Sundays

[whole diary]

[IndustryInsider]

The journey opportunities from Hereford towards Worcester and Birmingham on Sundays have been dreadful for many years.  Believe it or not, the first train out of Hereford towards Worcester is FGW^▸ (First Great Western)'s HST^▸ (High Speed Train) to Paddington at 13:32!  That's all changing this December as operator London Midland finally wakes up to the fact that Sunday morning is becoming a more and more popular time to travel.

New services depart from Hereford at 10:06 and 12:00 for Birmingham New Street via Worcester.  They both connect (with a not-ideal-but-better-than-nothing) 45-minute wait, into FGW services to Oxford and London at either Great Malvern or Worcester.  There are also two other extra service increasing the number of Sunday trains from 7 to 11. 

Similar extra trains will also be running in the opposite direction, meaning an 09:47 arrival into Hereford will be possible, instead of the current earliest at 12:54.  These services also have the added benefit of increasing the Sunday service at Bromsgrove, where currently the earliest train to Birmingham is 15:10.  An early morning service starting at Worcester Shrub Hill at 09:02 will be routed via Bromsgrove to Birmingham New Street arriving at 09:44 and will be followed by a 2-hourly service until late-afternoon when it becomes roughly hourly - note some weekends in January/February will see a bus operating instead between Droitwich, Bromsgrove, University and Birmingham New Street.

Good work, London Midland.  I have no doubt these trains will prove popular and correct a terrible gap in services that has operated for decades.  Along with improvements to the Trent Valley line service from the timetable change and shiny new Class 172s replacing many of the old Class 150, it's such a shame that these good points have been overshadowed by LM^▸ (London Midland - recent franchise)'s recent driver shortage and the negative press that's resulted.

The new timetable for the Hereford route can be downloaded from:  http://www.londonmidland.com/download/72153.9/hereford-worcester-bromsgrove-birmingham/

[Andrew1939 from West Oxon]

I think II should be thanking the Cotswold Line Promotion Group for the provision of Sunday morning trains, in particular CLPG^» (Cotswold Line Promotion Group - about) Worcestershire committee members. CLPG has been plugging this issue for years, ever since FGW^▸ (First Great Western) restored Sunday morning trains on its services on the CL. FGW used to say there was no demand for Sunday morning trains on the CL and the evidence from FGW that its Sunday morning trains are now well used has been thrown back in LM^▸ (London Midland - recent franchise)'s face until it has responded.

[RodC]

While these new services from Hereford to Birmingham on Sunday mornings are greatly to be welcomed, and congratulations to all those who have exerted pressure on London Midland over a considerable period of time to improve Sunday morning services and have brought about an excellent result, how depressing it is to hear that, evidently the TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company)'s are still not liaising with one another, resulting in a 45 minute wait for connections to Paddington.  No doubt the companies concerned will, as usual, make excuses about potential congestion at New Street and the need to keep to the clock-face arrivals and departures at Paddington, even on a Sunday, but the truth is surely, that there will be no real and measurable benefit to passengers until the rail network is re-nationalised and all services are properly co-ordinated.  Other European countries seem to appreciate the necessity of doing this, but not the UK^▸ (United Kingdom), apparently. 

[IndustryInsider]

...but the truth is surely, that there will be no real and measurable benefit to passengers until the rail network is re-nationalised and all services are properly co-ordinated.  Other European countries seem to appreciate the necessity of doing this, but not the UK^▸ (United Kingdom), apparently. 

Well, if you ask anyone wanting a morning Sunday service from Hereford to Worcester/Birmingham,  or a decent Sunday morning service from Bromsgrove to Birmingham.  Or indeed a chance to get to Hereford from Worcester before lunchtime, and I guess that they would say that they will have a measurable benefit as a result of improvements from this Sunday?

Connections to London off of Hereford are always difficult to make perfect.  There has to be at least a 10 minute gap due to the infrastructure at Great Malvern, and you could argue that having a larger gap is beneficial to the quite large flow from Malvern to Worcester as it means the spread of services between the two points is far more even.  For every winner there is often a loser and vice-versa!  I honestly don't see how any nationalised organisation could or would improve everything - perhaps there are examples where joined up thinking could see improvements, but as a whole service frequencies have increased so much over the time since privatisation that many routes are operating to (or near to) capacity.

Let's look at the service from Hereford to Paddington via Worcester on Sunday before privatisation  (1994 timetable).  There were four trains a day, the earliest at 13:34 changing at WOS^» (Worcester Shrub Hill - next trains) and OXF^» (Oxford - next trains) to arrive at 17:25, or you could just change the once (with a connection of well over an hour) to arrive at 17:51.  The next was the only direct train a day at 16:34 arriving 19:40.  That was followed by a 17:34 or 19:38 changing at Great Malvern - the former involving a 35-minute wait at Malvern.  So much for proper coordination!

Even before this Sunday's timetable there were four direct trains and two others with a change at Great Malvern, from Sunday that increases to three others with a change.  An earliest arrival of 14:05 in London will be possible (it was around 5pm in the current timetable, or 17:25 back in BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)) days).  'Rose tinted spectacles' is again the phrase that springs to mind!

I think II should be thanking the Cotswold Line Promotion Group for the provision of Sunday morning trains, in particular CLPG Worcestershire committee members. CLPG has been plugging this issue for years, ever since FGW^▸ (First Great Western) restored Sunday morning trains on its services on the CL. FGW used to say there was no demand for Sunday morning trains on the CL and the evidence from FGW that its Sunday morning trains are now well used has been thrown back in LM^▸ (London Midland - recent franchise)'s face until it has responded.

Yes indeed.  Worth noting that the CLPG have are pleased to see that their suggestions have been taken on board, and then some.  From their latest newsletter:

We had recently proposed running a lunchtime Worcester-Birmingham empty stock
train in service and in conjunction with the Cotswold Line Partnership operating
dedicated bus services between Hereford and Malvern, linking with existing Sunday
morning trains to Birmingham and London as an interim measure and we are therefore
delighted that these proposals now appear to have been trumped!

Always nice to be trumped!

[grahame]

Very good news, I think, all around ... as ever, there's going to be a compromise on connections versus well spaced services where two services share a popular section of track in the middle of their journeys.  And in all but the most unusual circumstances, the likelyhood is that the regular service section (where you're looking at a flow that doesn't require a change) will be more significant than the journey-with-change flow.  So regular from Malvern to Foregate Street makes sense.

Sundays are, indeed, getting busier.   In my own neck of the woods, I'm delighted to see a requirement for Sunday trains including a morning service in priced option 1 of the ITT^▸ (Invitation to Tender).  Mind you, we 'proved' that Sunday morning services are rather popular in the summer of 2011 - not only with Swindon to Weymouth traffic, but also with the large numbers who were travelling on the 07:30 (Westbury), 07:35 (Trowbridge) and 07:45 (Melksham) to Swindon.  With limited publicity, traffic rose to the best part of 100 passengers into Swindon by the end of the 8 week trial, with many passengers using the train as the start of long distance journeys, and most being on journeys that would NOT have been limited to the summer season (i.e. year round traffic).

I'm not an expert on Malvernshire ... but the new services look like a sensible development to serve changing and growing requirements and I'm sure they'll do well.

[Andy W]

Of course if you were travelling on to London you could stay on the train to New Street & then you have various options on to London. I see at the moment Virgin are doing an advance purchase Birminham / Euston for ^7.50.

It is heartwarming that groups such as CLPG^» (Cotswold Line Promotion Group - about) do such sterling work, it is saddening that they have to!!

[swrural]

Perhaps worth pointing out that an earlier start on Sunday morning is useful all round, not just to London.  I cite the 10 09 from Hereford (just looked it up) which will get you to Fishguard (!) or buy a good change at Newport reaches Bristol  by 1200.

Did that need a campaign to get it running or is it Arriva /WG enterprise?