Watching the trains go by - Salisbury

[whole diary]

[Network SouthEast]

It isn't a proper circular service, it's often referred to as the figure of six service. Trains run Salisbury-Romsey-Southampton-Eastleigh-Romsey and return, so they do have two terminating points.

Fair point.

[paul7575]

The Salisbury - Romsey loop service is an interesting one, as it uses 3 units - would only be two if it terminated at Romsey.  So, what is the benefit of extending it to Salisbury? Clearly with only around 25,000 entries and exits each per year Dean and Dunbridge would not justify the extension, but that seems to be the only flow it serves, as it doesn't provide an alternative between Salisbury and Southampton. However, by operating a unit hourly from Salisbury to Romsey, I'm guessing that SWT^▸ (South West Trains) pick up a share of every fare from north of Salisbury to south of Romsey. So maybe it's an ORCATS^▸ (Operational Research Computerised Allocation of Tickets to Services) raid, disguised as providing a service to Dean and Dunbridge.

I don't quite understand your point about the service not providing an alternative between Southampton and Salisbury. The running times are not too different due to the extra stops, and certainly northbound the services leave Southampton almost half an hour apart.  NRES^▸ (National Rail Enquiry Service) certainly shows it as a 2 tph service.

I also don't believe you can realistically view it as an 'ORCATS raid'.  That would apply when a TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company) made its own unilateral decision to add an extra service, or extra calls in an existing service.  Whereas in this case an 'informed' decision was made by DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) (in SWT's 2006 SLC2 valid from Dec 2007) to extend the SWT service and transfer the intermediate calls to SWT, IIRC^▸ ('if I recall/remember/read correctly') in order to speed up the FGW^▸ (First Great Western) longer distance service.  The proposal first surfaced in the Mar 2006 SWML^▸ (South Western Mail Line) RUS^▸ (Route Utilisation Strategy), apparently in response to stakeholder requests.

Then the additional calls at the two minor stations to make them hourly (during most of Mon - Sat) were later additions in an attempt to grow passenger numbers, originally SWT made no more calls at Dean and Dunbridge than FGW had done.

Paul

 

[paul7575]

Making Salisbury a nodal interchange between the Exeter London and SW Southampton South Coast is an interesting idea.

When you have two main routes crossing, unless one of them has an increased dwell timetabled for overtaking I think you could normally only have one optimised connecting route.  However in this case, going back a fair while, I think the 'reasonable connection' that they have tried to sustain IS that for the Portsmouth/Southampton to Exeter via Yeovil (and vice versa).  To the best of my recollection that has usually been the case since the late seventies.

Therefore by default, Waterloo towards Westbury changing at Salisbury (and vice versa) is not the intended priority.

Paul

[paul7575]

Yes, agreed.  It's more the 2 car Romsey train which sits there for 41 minutes that I wonder at ... the 41 minutes doesn't quite give it time to get to Westbury and back, but 2 hours and 41 minutes gives alternate trains time to get to Swindon and back with just one extra set.

My proposal in the past was to run the Romsey service on as far as a reopened single platform at Wilton. I guess Warminster would be just too far to go and have a reliable hourly timetable

Paul

[steves]

When you have two main routes crossing, unless one of them has an increased dwell timetabled for overtaking I think you could normally only have one optimised connecting route.  However in this case, going back a fair while, I think the 'reasonable connection' that they have tried to sustain IS that for the Portsmouth/Southampton to Exeter via Yeovil (and vice versa).  To the best of my recollection that has usually been the case since the late seventies.

Therefore by default, Waterloo towards Westbury changing at Salisbury (and vice versa) is not the intended priority.

Paul

The problem with the Portsmouth/Southampton to Yeovil/Exeter connection is that the timings are a bit tight (about seven minutes), and passengers have to change platforms.   If the train from Portsmouth arrives on time, the connection works well, but it doesn't take much delay to cause problems.   And I assume that holding the Exeter train for more than a few minutes is difficult, because of the knock-on effects on the single-track beyond Wilton.

If the timetables could be tweaked to give an extra five minutes between trains, the connection would be more reliable - and it might be possible to make it a same-platform interchange.   And passengers making the "other" westbound connection (Waterloo to Westbury) wouldn't have quite so long to wait at Salisbury.   But that's easy for me to say - I'm sure that actually doing it would be far from straightforward.

The eastbound connection is much more comfortable - fifteen minutes, and a same-platform or cross-platform interchange.

Steve

[John R]

The Salisbury - Romsey loop service is an interesting one, as it uses 3 units - would only be two if it terminated at Romsey.  So, what is the benefit of extending it to Salisbury? Clearly with only around 25,000 entries and exits each per year Dean and Dunbridge would not justify the extension, but that seems to be the only flow it serves, as it doesn't provide an alternative between Salisbury and Southampton. However, by operating a unit hourly from Salisbury to Romsey, I'm guessing that SWT^▸ (South West Trains) pick up a share of every fare from north of Salisbury to south of Romsey. So maybe it's an ORCATS^▸ (Operational Research Computerised Allocation of Tickets to Services) raid, disguised as providing a service to Dean and Dunbridge.

I don't quite understand your point about the service not providing an alternative between Southampton and Salisbury. The running times are not too different due to the extra stops, and certainly northbound the services leave Southampton almost half an hour apart.  NRES^▸ (National Rail Enquiry Service) certainly shows it as a 2 tph service.

I also don't believe you can realistically view it as an 'ORCATS raid'.  That would apply when a TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company) made its own unilateral decision to add an extra service, or extra calls in an existing service.  Whereas in this case an 'informed' decision was made by DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) (in SWT's 2006 SLC2 valid from Dec 2007) to extend the SWT service and transfer the intermediate calls to SWT, IIRC^▸ ('if I recall/remember/read correctly') in order to speed up the FGW^▸ (First Great Western) longer distance service.  The proposal first surfaced in the Mar 2006 SWML^▸ (South Western Mail Line) RUS^▸ (Route Utilisation Strategy), apparently in response to stakeholder requests.

Then the additional calls at the two minor stations to make them hourly (during most of Mon - Sat) were later additions in an attempt to grow passenger numbers, originally SWT made no more calls at Dean and Dunbridge than FGW had done.

Paul

 

Fair comments. I misread the timetable and thought the services from Salisbury ran via Eastleigh. Which they don't, so making my post a load of tosh.

[Chris from Nailsea]

... But that's easy for me to say - I'm sure that actually doing it would be far from straightforward ...

Nevertheless, thanks very much for posting your informed view, steves - and may I offer you a warm welcome to the Coffee Shop forum! 

[Chris from Nailsea]

Fair comments. I misread the timetable and thought the services from Salisbury ran via Eastleigh. Which they don't, so making my post a load of tosh.

Thanks anyway, John R - it all adds to the interesting discussion here, and encourages constructive debate. 

[JayMac]

so making my post a load of tosh.

Don't be so hard on yourself. If one of the UK^▸ (United Kingdom)'s major train operators can describe a lot of their on board announcements as 'tosh' then you can be forgiven for thinking the same of one of your posts. 

I've learnt something as a consequence of this thread. There's a way to legitimately manipulate through fares  because of the figure '6' (nearly) loop SWT^▸ (South West Trains) service between Salisbury and Romsey via Southampton.