Insufficient capacity - Oldfield Park and Keynsham

[whole diary]

[grahame]

From Bristol Live

Great Western Railway (GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway)) has apologised after train guards refused to let passengers board the service from Bath to Bristol.

Footage of the incident this morning (November 12) shows the two guards on board the train stopping commuters from getting on.

Despite protests from angry passengers that there was enough room, the guards refuse to stand aside.

"There was a row between guards and customers at Oldfield Park who were not allowed to get on the train because the guards said it was too full.

"Frankly they could have got more on.

"They also announced that the train was not going to stop at Keynsham because it's too full.

"On the same service yesterday (November 11), they made people wanting to go to Oldfield Park and Keynsham get off at Bath because the train was too full and it wasn't going to call at these stations."

What GWR said

GWR apologised for the inconvenience and added the safety of its passengers is its priority.

“We are very sorry that some customers were unable to board the 8.13am service from Oldfield Park to Bristol Temple Meads today," a spokesman said.

"The safety of our customers and staff is our priority and sometimes that may mean preventing people from boarding should there not be enough room.

"Customers with single or return tickets who were delayed by more than 15 minutes are entitled to a refund and we encourage them to get in touch.

 The company added: “We do everything we can to run our services with the planned number of carriages, however, sometimes it is not always possible.

“With the introduction of Intercity Express Trains we are providing more than 6,000 more seats between Bath and Bristol every day than we did in November 2017; as well as increasing a number of the three-carriage trains (Portsmouth to Cardiff services) to five carriage.

"So for example – the preceding 8.01am service is formed of a nine or ten car Intercity Express Train, and there is another booked five-carriage train 12 minutes later."

[plymothian]

And here we have the exact s**t-storm that is caused by maintaining the party line "our staff are trained to refuse boarding if a train is overcrowded" response to many a complaint of overcrowding.

[JayMac]

What use is the IET^▸ (Intercity Express Train) service GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) mentioned in its apology?

It doesn't call at Oldfield Park.

[grahame]

What use is the IET^▸ (Intercity Express Train) service GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) mentioned in its apology?

It doesn't call at Oldfield Park.

I wondered that too.  I suspect there may be some "lateral transfer" with Bath to Bristol passengers electing to move off the (over)crowded stoppers onto the now-more-spacious expresses.   However, that's probably hard to measure, limited in the numbers who change, and darned hard to sell to the people at Oldfield Park and Keynsham who see the trains with extra seats whizzing past them to be followed by a stopper with standing room only.

I confess to also thinking that the spin in this was interesting.

The company added: “We do everything we can to run our services with the planned number of carriages, however, sometimes it is not always possible.

Totally agree that even with an adequate buffer of trains set aside to stand in when things go wrong, there will always be occasions when trains are short formed or cancelled.  I'm not convinced, though, that there is an appropriate buffer and short trains run on too many occasions.  Hot spares at Westbury, Gloucester and Plymouth wouldn't solve every issue but would certainly help to make things a lot better, be it the end of 2 cars on summer Saturdays to Weymouth, or half length peak trains along the Avon Valley from Bath.   No doubt readers will wonder just where GWR would get these trains from, as 150s and 158s are like gold dust;  I suspect there may be a couple of stored HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train) that could be used as "Castles" and release 3 x 2 cars from other diagrams.  And, sure, it's a business case / decision; I'm sure that the staff on the ground do everything they can to run the services - but the text "within the business case set" (by GWR or DfT^» (Department for Transport - about)?) should perhaps be added to complete the comment?

[JayMac]

To be fair to GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway), the IET^▸ (Intercity Express Train) service that was mentioned does call at Keynsham. That particular call from an 'intercity' service toward Bristol has been in the timetable for some years I believe.

[Timmer]

Provision is made at Oldfield Park for HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train) IETs^▸ (Intercity Express Train) to stop there when required if the scheduled local services are delayed, cancelled, shortformed etc.

[froome]

Provision is made at Oldfield Park for HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train) IETs^▸ (Intercity Express Train) to stop there when required if the scheduled local services are delayed, cancelled, shortformed etc.

It didn't happen yesterday. I went to catch an off peak train from Oldfield Park (10.11) to Temple Meads, and found it was cancelled when I got there. So I had to make my way to Bath Spa, 2 miles away, and catch the IET there. It didn't stop at either Oldfield Park or Keynsham, and I found that the 'cancelled' train was actually running, but just very late so not stopping at those two stations either.

The effect on me was that I had to make an extra 2 mile journey that I wasn't expecting to have to do; paid an extra fare (as the fare from Oldfield Park is cheaper) and arrived at my destination much later than I wanted to. Not a good service at all.

[rogerw]

More bad news for them this morning.
07:23 Warminster to Great Malvern due 10:31
07:23 Warminster to Great Malvern due 10:31 will no longer call at Oldfield Park and Keynsham.
This is due to a fault on this train.
Will be formed of 2 coaches instead of 3.

[grahame]

More bad news for them this morning.
07:23 Warminster to Great Malvern due 10:31
07:23 Warminster to Great Malvern due 10:31 will no longer call at Oldfield Park and Keynsham.
This is due to a fault on this train.
Will be formed of 2 coaches instead of 3.

but it does look like attention is being heeded ...

06:30 London Paddington to Bristol Temple Meads due 08:18 will call additionally at Oldfield Park.
This is due to overcrowding because an earlier train had fewer coaches than normal.

[Celestial]

I wonder whether short forms on those services are now happening because of Mark Hopwood's promise to look at reducing TransWilts cancellations. So instead of a unit failure meaning that service is cancelled, now it's a short form into Bristol.  (Though if the service was reduced from 3 to 2, that can't be the only reason, unless there was more jiggling of stock elsewhere.)

[ray951]

I wonder whether short forms on those services are now happening because of Mark Hopwood's promise to look at reducing TransWilts cancellations. So instead of a unit failure meaning that service is cancelled, now it's a short form into Bristol.  (Though if the service was reduced from 3 to 2, that can't be the only reason, unless there was more jiggling of stock elsewhere.)

More likely this is a knock on from the cancellation of electrification to Oxford and the Thames branches, all those services are still be operated by 165/166 which would otherwise have been reallocated. It wouldn't surprise me if GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) has the bare minimum of 143/150/158/165/166 they need to maintain a service and as soon as there is a cancellation already overcrowded trains become rammed, we have seen the same on the Didcot - Oxford services where people have been unable to board after a cancellation. This is anecdotal, but I also wonder whether 165/166 are also becoming more unreliable as I have seen a lot more cancellations recently due to train failures than I seem to remember from the past. Hopefully if the 769 ever get delivered the 165/166 that run on those services can be reallocated and the cancellations and overcrowding can be reduced.

[Celestial]

I wonder whether short forms on those services are now happening because of Mark Hopwood's promise to look at reducing TransWilts cancellations. So instead of a unit failure meaning that service is cancelled, now it's a short form into Bristol.  (Though if the service was reduced from 3 to 2, that can't be the only reason, unless there was more jiggling of stock elsewhere.)

More likely this is a knock on from the cancellation of electrification to Oxford and the Thames branches, all those services are still be operated by 165/166 which would otherwise have been reallocated. It wouldn't surprise me if GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) has the bare minimum of 143/150/158/165/166 they need to maintain a service and as soon as there is a cancellation already overcrowded trains become rammed, we have seen the same on the Didcot - Oxford services where people have been unable to board after a cancellation. This is anecdotal, but I also wonder whether 165/166 are also becoming more unreliable as I have seen a lot more cancellations recently due to train failures than I seem to remember from the past. Hopefully if the 769 ever get delivered the 165/166 that run on those services can be reallocated and the cancellations and overcrowding can be reduced.

I suspect that's the underlying cause, but was speculating that whereas up to now the first casualty would be the TW, now there's a different approach being taken.  Pure speculation though.

[Robin Summerhill]

What use is the IET^▸ (Intercity Express Train) service GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) mentioned in its apology?

It doesn't call at Oldfield Park.

In both 2018 and 2019 I had a 14-day all-line railrover, and often started out on the 0745 Chippenham to Bristol (0630 PAD^» (Paddington (London) - next trains)) which was (and still is) booked to call at Keynsham.

On two occasions in that total four week period a Special Stop Order was issued for Oldfield Park because of delay/ cancellaton of another train booked to stop there.

Was an SSO issued in this case or were they really just talking about Keynsham?

[PhilWakely]

07:23 Warminster to Great Malvern due 10:31
07:23 Warminster to Great Malvern due 10:31 will no longer call at Oldfield Park and Keynsham.
This is due to a fault on this train.
Will be formed of 2 coaches instead of 3.

07:30 London Paddington to Penzance due 13:13
07:30 London Paddington to Penzance due 13:13 will call additionally at Oldfield Park and Keynsham.
This is due to a fault on a train in front of this one

[Timmer]

Good news if anyone from Oldfield Park or Keynsham is heading to the SW today a direct service with no change required at Bristol.

Whilst on the subject of the 7.30 Paddington-Penzance that currently runs via Bristol. I dare say this train will be missed by Swindon, Chippenham and Bath passengers when it moves over to running on the Berks and Hants at the December timetable change but I understand the reason for it moving over to the faster route.