Berks and Hants services are a very interesting study.
Today, there's a though train from London to Bedwyn every hour, a Reading to Newbury train every hour, and West of England expresses about every hour with some extras and some being not-quite-express. All have been diesel, though some of the West of England trains are starting to run under electric power from London to Reading.
Come the new year and planned timetable changes, there will be a though train from London to Bedwyn every hour, a Reading to Newbury train every hour, and West of England expresses
about every hour with
some extras
and some being not-quite-expresses
every two hours. Note strike through and underline changes.
Agreed - not ideal. But then many service from London load heavily from the termini and get thinner further out - I remember in my youth riding between Knockholt and Dunton Green on stoppers that weren't exactly crammed, even though the 10 car program had been put into place to add the two extra carriages on the line. You see the same thing of buses that go out from town centres to boondocks - you can't remove the final bit from the run; not only do you get a lot of flack and really upset people's livelihoods, but you also slice off bits of the inner traffic too and render the next bit uneconomic too ... and so on until you have no bus left.
Idea.
At present, 5 trains every 2 hours head west from Newbury. Reduce that to 4. The two West of England Expresses remain - an hourly service for the businesses of Plymouth who, as we all know, would shrivel and die if the train takes a minute over 3 hours
... and the other two from London and Reading then Newbury, Hungerford, Kintbury, Bedwyn, Pewsey and Westbury, continuing on (hourly, I would hope!) to Castle Cary, Taunton and Exeter St. David's.
Hungerford and Bedwyn get a proper service west. The quite trains you forecast west of Newbury to Bedwyn have other flows using them. Pewsey - very much a growth station is up to hourly and there are decent connection from the Kennet Valley and Vale of Pewsey to Trowbridge, Bath and Bristol. Traffic connecting westward at the Westbury hub has an hourly service in a high quality train (sorry Broadgage - no buffet, just a trolley) where at the moment there are four hour gaps. Oh - and you release one slot every 2 hours between London and Reading.
The planned electric shuttle between Reading and Newbury, if I have my calculations right, will require 2 units; that would only go up to 3 for a half hourly service, making proper use of all that expensive electrification and allowing some work with intermediate stopping patterns.
Like I say - "idea". I too have a tin hat - not sure whether or not I'll need it ...
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