Class 387 coming to Thames Valley - ongoing discussion

[whole diary]

[ChrisB]

but they don't hold at Maidenhead either, for the same reasons

[IndustryInsider]

They will usually wait a few seconds at Maidenhead (which was all that was required last night) and at Twyford the connection hold policy is on the drivers diagrams and they will wait several minutes if necessary.  The principal difference with both of those is there are station staff on hand to advise the driver to wait if necessary.

At West Ealing it's difficult for the driver to see down the long platform and there are no station staff apart from someone in the ticket office.  I feel sorry for them as they must be taking a fair bit of flack!

[insider]

They will usually wait a few seconds at Maidenhead (which was all that was required last night) and at Twyford the connection hold policy is on the drivers diagrams and they will wait several minutes if necessary.  The principal difference with both of those is there are station staff on hand to advise the driver to wait if necessary.

At West Ealing it's difficult for the driver to see down the long platform and there are no station staff apart from someone in the ticket office.  I feel sorry for them as they must be taking a fair bit of flack!

Nothing on drivers diagrams with regards to holds at any station / branch line service. Its purely down to the driver or communication from station staff or control (via signaller).

[IndustryInsider]

Apologies if that's no longer the case.  It certainly used to be on drivers diagrams at Twyford for some of the later Henley services.  Last time I drove that branch was many years ago! 

My point still stands though, the train will usually wait a few seconds (more with authority from Control), at Maidenhead and Twyford so the situation I witnessed last night at West Ealing would be very unlikely to occur.

[eightf48544]

Connections with the branches has been and still is a problem. Now they've added West Ealing to the list.

One of the main problems is the lack of turnround time at the terminus in order for the train to get back to the junction and keep its onward connections.

To keep up the 20 minute service the Windsor line only has 4 minutes at each end. It is similar with the two train service on the Marlow branch with the turnround at Bourne End.

Currently there is a bit of slack in the Henley timetable with its 45 minute service it will be much tighter with the 30 minute service. So much so Wargrave gets an hourly service.

It looks like with its 30 service the Greenford branch is going to suffer.

One of the problems it seems to me is  the performance regime, whereby the the TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company) is punished for holding the branch and making it late.   

It's all down to John Watt MP^▸ (Member of Parliament) for Slough who was in the Ministry of Transport at Privatisation who said something like connections won't be held in the new sleek private railways. Forgetting that the sum of the parts is greater than the whole and connections a an essential part of the network.

[IndustryInsider]

Yes, we sometimes get so obsessed with delay minutes and charter figures that we forget why the trains are running in the first place - to serve the customer.  It's a shame a case-by-case system can't operate more often when a hold is of a clear benefit to the customer, and has little operational impact.

I note the connection was missed again tonight, though a 4 or so minute delay would have been incurred rather than the 1-2 minutes of last night.

[paul7575]

Six units now with GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) following two separate deliveries overnight Sunday and Monday.  Reported to be 134 and 136, although I have not sighted them personally.

Will be interesting if once three pairs are available they add some more services into the mix?

Paul

[IndustryInsider]

I'd imagine they'll stick with what they've got and use the extra units to ramp up the driver and maintenance staff training.

[ChrisB]

More services with the December timetable, I think

[IndustryInsider]

Yes, that's the current plan.  Replace all of the Greenford's from December with an all day Paddington to Hayes service, then let the 387s loose as far as Maidenhead next summer.  Until then, there's some serious amount of training to be done...

[paul7575]

Full (all day) service from January and extension to Maidenhead in May is as per GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway)'s announcement prior to last weeks startup, however there will surely come a time in the interim period when they'll have to increase the number of trips?   If they don't they'll end up with loads of trained drivers but not enough services to keep their competency up...

Here's the info GWR published, in case people haven't seen it yet:  https://www.gwr.com/travel-updates/planned-engineering/greenford-line-alterations   The Jan and May 2017 predictions are near the end.

Paul

[msealing]

Indeed - the easiest solution is to increase the station change time from 3 mins to 5mins & that connection would no longer be in the planners.

That would be really pointless as the 17:15 & 18:45 from Paddington only call at West Ealing in order to make the Greenford connections.

3 minute advertised connection times work at Twyford & Maidenhead no problem.

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That's a bit harsh about West Ealing.  There are 4 trains per hour to/from Paddington, and the Greenford service provides 2 of them.  A lot of people will get off the 17:15 and 18:45 at  West Ealing.  Remember that it's a station with about £1.3m passenger entries and exits per year

[grahame]

Welcome to the Forum, Msealing.

Yes - I would agree the wording looks a bit harsh; I would suggest that "the 17:15 only calls at West Ealing because of the connection it makes" would be more accurate.   The 17:15 is a semi-fast train to Maidenhead and is followed from Paddington by a much longer and more modern (nearly) all stations train at 17:18.   If it weren't for the connection to Greenford that's possible off the 17:15 but not off the 17:18, I suspect the 17:15 call at West Ealing wouldn't happen in order to distribute passengers - as you say there are a significant number of the too - into the following high capacity electric service.

Where a low capacity train is followed by a high capacity one just a few minutes later (I have other examples in GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) territory) it's really problematic to persuade people to wait for the high capacity train rather than crowd the earlier one and then (!) grumble at lack of capacity.   When we had the opportunity to make inputs in our area, we asked for the one coach local train to follow the 8 coach express rather than run ahead of it from Swindon to Chippenham - precisely to avoid these problems.  Good news (I think) is that the West Earling current situation is temporary until more trains become longer electrics and the Greenford turns into a pure shuttle, at which point it can routinely connect 5 minutes after the arrival of an 8 coach electric.

[Adelante_CCT]

Indeed - the easiest solution is to increase the station change time from 3 mins to 5mins & that connection would no longer be in the planners.

That would be really pointless as the 17:15 & 18:45 from Paddington only call at West Ealing in order to make the Greenford connections.

3 minute advertised connection times work at Twyford & Maidenhead no problem.

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That's a bit harsh about West Ealing.  There are 4 trains per hour to/from Paddington, and the Greenford service provides 2 of them.  A lot of people will get off the 17:15 and 18:45 at  West Ealing.  Remember that it's a station with about £1.3m passenger entries and exits per year

Wow, those passengers are a bit expensive! 

Sorry, I wasn't trying to belittle West Ealing in any way, as Graham has suggested perhaps I worded it incorrectly. Those additional stops made are for the passengers to connect with the Greenford service, which would make it silly to then have a 5 minute rule,,,, whilst these services are not aimed at West Ealing passengers they of course may benefit from the changes made. 

[IndustryInsider]

It's going to be a little awkward planning the Greenford shuttle service in the future.  As with the Twyford to Henley service, the running time is around 12 minutes, so that leaves you with four less-than-ideal possibilities:

1)  Use the one unit to provide a 30-minute frequency.  Has the benefit of saving a unit, but gives minimum turnround times, and if a connection is missed gives passengers a long wait.
2)  Use two units to operate a 30-minute frequency.  Has the benefit of making delay recovery easy, but is very wasteful of resources and is no improvement on the current service and if a connection is missed gives passengers a long wait.
3)  Use two units to operate a 20-minute frequency.  The benefit of an increased frequency, meaning less of a wait if connections are missed, and still robust turnround times, but more difficult to work those connections well as there is likely to be a 15-minute frequency on the main line.
4)  Use two units to operate a 15-minute frequency.  A really frequent service with easy connections off of main line services at West Ealing, but minimum turnround times again leading to a performance risk, and more difficult to path the other freight and ECS^▸ (Empty Coaching Stock) moves that use the line.

You could consider making options 1 and 4 work better by making every other train miss out some stops en-route, but unlike Twyford to Henley, where Wargrave and Shiplake provide a small percentage of total passengers with Henley providing the clear majority, the Greenford line stops all provide a similar number of passengers, and the linespeeds are very slow so the journey time saving smaller, so I don't think that is an option worth pursuing. 

Personally, I think the 20-minute frequency of option 3 would be the best compromise going forward, perhaps increasing that to a 15-minute frequency option 4 during a couple of hours in the high peak.