10 years on - what improvements has a privatised railway brought to the west?

[whole diary]

[paul7575]

The SWT^▸ (South West Trains) Reading - Basingstoke extension services ran until December 2007.

Paul

[IndustryInsider]

Thanks for clarifying that, Paul.

[IndustryInsider]

I'll skip route 7 as we all know there is, and always has been, a pretty much turn up and go fast service between Reading and Paddington. There's a few more train than there were 10 years ago and more of them are formed of HST^▸ (High Speed Train)'s, but apart from that it's pretty much status quo.

Route 8: Paddington-Reading local services (in which I'll include Heathrow Connect and Greenford incorporating routes 9, 10 and 11)

There have been several changes to the pattern of services on this route, mostly due to the introduction of Heathrow Connect services about three years ago.

Ten years ago the basic off-peak pattern out of Paddington was as follows:
2tph at xx:22 and xx:52 on the Paddington-Greenford route calling Acton Main Line, Ealing Broadway and West Ealing before leaving the main line.
2tph at xx:12 and xx:42 the 'Slough stoppers' calling all stations to Slough (except Acton ML)
2tph at xx:28 and xx:58 stoppers to Reading calling at Ealing Broadway, Southall, Hayes, Slough, Maidenhead and Twyford (xx:58 only). The xx:28 trains usually carried on to Bedwyn.
2tph at xx:08 and xx:38 stoppers to Oxford calling at Ealing Broadway, Slough, Burnham, Taplow (xx:38 only), Maidenhead and Twyford.
2tph at xx:18 and xx:48 fast trains which called at Slough en-route to Reading.

Because of Heathrow Connect's introduction the stopping services to Slough were withdrawn, and services for West Drayton, Langley and Iver had to be absorbed into the longer distance Reading or Oxford stoppers.

The pattern is now:
2tph at xx:15 and xx:45 on the Paddington-Greenford route calling Acton Main Line, Ealing Broadway and West Ealing before leaving the main line.
2tph at xx:03 and xx:33 Heathrow Connect services calling all stations to Hayes (except Acton ML) before going on to the Airport
2tph at xx:12 and xx:42 stoppers to Reading calling at Ealing Broadway, Southall, Hayes, West Drayton, Slough, Burnham, Taplow, Maidenhead, Twyford and Reading.
2tph at xx:27 and xx:57 stoppers to Oxford calling at Ealing Broadway, Hayes, West Drayton, Iver, Langley, Slough, Maidenhead, Twyford and Reading.
2tph at xx:21 and xx:51 fast trains which call at Slough en-route to Reading.

It's a very similar pattern in the opposite direction. So, at a glance, there's the same number of trains operating, but if you delve a little deeper into the calling patterns there's some clear winners and clear losers compared with 1999 travellers.

The winners:
Some stations now have an enhanced level of services to and from London; Hayes and Harlington gets six trains to London every hour - this used to be four. West Drayton's service has doubled from two trains an hour to a service every 15 minutes. Taplow's service is now twice as frequent at every 30 minutes, and Twyford gets an extra train to London to make four trains an hour now.

Some stations now have a quicker service from London. Langley and Iver are the clear winners here as there journey time from London and Ealing has been reduced by 5 minutes. West Drayton also benefits with a 5 minute reduction in journey time of half of its trains. The others could also be that quick but for a seven minute schedule between Southall and Hayes for pathing reasons. The actual journey time is 3m30s.

Also, more through journey opportunities have been created as you can now travel direct from West Drayton, Langley and Iver to stations west of Slough.

The losers:
Unfortunately there's plenty of areas where the service has got worse in the last 10 years. Principally stations west of Slough who's trains have got a lot slower due to the additional stops and 'slack' that's been added to the timetable.

Maidenhead is probably the starkest example of this. It's a busy station ranked well within the top 100 used stations on the network, yet it's four direct trains to London take 44 minutes to reach the capital. It's only 24 miles by train so that's a very disappointing average of 32mph. Back in 1999 those trains took between 31-35 minutes to do the same journey at a much more competitive average of 46mph for the fastest ones. I really do think that Maidenhead deserves a better service than that!

Similar journey time increases have hit Slough, Burnham, Taplow and Twyford - though at least in the case of Twyford and Taplow there are now more trains an hour to choose from.

Less significant losses include the removal of through trains from Ealing, Hayes, Southall, Slough and Maidenhead to Kennet Line stations including Newbury, Hungerford and Bedwyn.

Peak hour service
The outer stations service has undoubtedly got better in the last ten years. The three main commuting stations of Tywford, Maidenhead and Slough now enjoy HST operated services on some trains (biased more inbound than outbound). There are now 13 fast trains (no more than one stop) from Maidenhead to Paddington during the morning peak up from 9. Slough and Twyford have seen more modest improvements.

The inner stations haven't done quite as well, with slightly fewer services for a few of the stations. The biggest loser is clearly Hanwell which enjoyed roughly 4tph into London during the peak hours, but this has been reduced to just two. It's worth noting that many of the peak hour services have much more seating capacity than they used to though as all Heathrow Connect trains are 5-car and many of the FGW^▸ (First Great Western) services have now been strengthened to 5 or 6-car following extra resources becoming available now they are not used on as many fast services and the Bristol trains have been removed. Overall, the number of seats available in the peak hours has increased for all stations, except perhaps for Hanwell.

Late night services
The stopping service from Paddington to Reading used to run throughout the night every hour calling at Twyford, Maidenhead, Slough, West Drayton, Hayes, Southall and Ealing Broadway. Two of these trains have now been removed to still give a service at least every two hours. Having seen the type of passenger that wants to travel at 3am from West Drayton to Ealing Broadway I can't really blame FGW for thinning out the service - particularly as the trains are Driver Only Operated.

On a slightly separate note, why routes 8, 9, 10 and 11 in these new pocket timetables have been split like that is difficult for me to grasp. They repeat the information that each one of them carries in such a way to make them confusing. The good old Table 117 in the GBRPTT is a far better way of presenting the information.

[Btline]

Perhaps the Bedwyn services should stop at Maidenhead to give it a fast train per hour.

Journey times could be kept constant through removing slack.

[IndustryInsider]

Perhaps the Bedwyn services should stop at Maidenhead to give it a fast train per hour.

Journey times could be kept constant through removing slack.

That would be the obvious choice, as I suggested in some depth a while ago before the Adelante's were given away. Sadly the Bedwyn trains have very little slack between Paddington and Reading, so to avoid further pathing constraints 125mph stock is really needed to allow it to happen.

[eightf48544]

As far as Taplow is concerned we are worse off since privatisation since all our servcies to London take longer and have more stops. Also we still don't have a Sunday service although I'm not sure when that ceased whether it was pre or post privatisation.

I used to commute regularly on the 07:23 Taplow arrive Padd 07:56 (33 minutes) on 13/14 just in time to catch the 08:00 Hammersmith.

Now it's 07:29 with arrival at 08:14 or 46 minutes. So I would have to be on the 06:57 to be in Padd by 08:00.

Even with the 33 minute timing I reckoned there was 4 minutes slack to Ealing although the 7 minute sprint from Ealing to Padd could be exhilarating. Now all trains seem to be booked 10 to 15 minutes for the 7 minute journey. e.g 08:44 to 8:54 - 09:03 09:18.

So in general terms privatisation hasn't bought any benefit to Taplow. The only benefit it did bring was that I paying less for an  annual season ticket in 2005 than in several previous years,  due to the regular 5% discount for poor performance. But then you had to count on being late on around 2 journeys a week. My wife spent many happy hours waitng in the South Car Park before mobile phones allowed me to pre warn her of late running.

[IndustryInsider]

Routes 11, 12, & 13: Slough to Windsor, Maidenhead to Marlow and Twyford to Henley (incl. London services)

Route 11: Slough to Windsor services have broken with the long-time tradition of running at 30 minute intervals (every 20 minutes during peak hours) to now run every 20 minutes all through the day. Total weekday trains were 44 back in 1999, but there are now 54 thanks to this increased frequency. Connections for passengers to/from Paddington suffer slightly as the fast trains on this route run every 30 minutes so they don't connect as well as they have done, but it's still much quicker than the direct route from Waterloo to Riverside station.

A through train which ran in one direction only from Paddington to Windsor at 10:21 was withdrawn around 2003 I think. The ease of connection onto the branch at Windsor doesn't make this a great loss though. First and last trains of the day are virtually identical 10 years on.

Route 12: Maidenhead to Marlow services continue to operate on an hourly off-peak basis, which the 'Marlow Donkey' set being locked in section during the peak hours to provide a shuttle at roughly 30-minute intervals between Bourne End and Marlow, thus allowing a more intensive peak service between Maidenhead and Bourne End. There is no scope for any increases to this service without additional infrastructure.

There are two through trains between Bourne End and Paddington in the morning and returning in the evening. This was also the case back in 1999, but the time gap between them has been increased a little and they generally take longer - a pattern that seems to be prevalent on most peak hour routes:

1999: Up and Down services (time to reach Paddington in brackets)
07:25 (39 mins), 08:09 (49 mins), 17:36 (40 mins), 17:52 (55 mins)

Now:
07:28 (49 mins), 08:17 (53 mins), 17:42 (50 mins), 18:42 (50 mins)

Empty stock moves have been changed into passenger trains to provide an earlier morning service from Maidenhead to Marlow and a later evening service from Marlow to Maidenhead.

Off-peak journeys from Marlow, Bourne End, Cookham and Furze Platt to/from London take an average of 5 minutes longer, mainly due to extra stops on the connecting trains from Maidenhead to Paddington.

Route 13: Twyford-Henley On Thames
Similar to the Slough-Windsor route, service frequency off-peak has now increased from the long established hourly service to a train every 45-minutes. This increases the number of trains from Henley to Twyford from 24 to 27. I remain unconvinced about the merits of this change though as the regular hourly pattern that shoppers and day trippers had got used to is now all over the place.

45-minute interval trains just don't sit nicely on a timetable when compared with 15, 20 or 30 minute intervals that divide nicely into the hour. Compare 1999 departures from Henley at 11:06, 12:06, 13:06, 14:06 and 15:06 - nice and easy to remember. Their modern-day equivalents are 11:39, 12:24, 13:09, 13:54, 14:39 and 15:24. An extra train, yes, but you really have to have a timetable to hand, or access to the web, or a bloody good memory! Off-peak travellers to/from London now have around 5 minutes extra added to their journey due to extra stops on the Twyford-Paddington trains.

Through trains to London operate as they do on the Bourne End branch in the peak periods. There has been an increase from 1 up train to 2 per day and from 2 down trains to 3 a day, although one mid-morning through train from Henley to Paddington has since been withdrawn. Again, through trains from/to Paddington take a couple of minutes extra on average - in fact it's quicker to catch one of the fast trains to Twyford and change on to the shuttle service that it is to catch a through train in some instances - you can do the journey in as little as 37 minutes that way, compared with between 45-61 minutes on the direct service!

Services run around 40 minutes earlier in the morning in both directions, but the late evening services stop about 20 minutes earlier too.

The other notable change is that back in 1999 (and up until about 2005 I think) the majority of the off-peak Henley trains ran to/from Reading whereas they now all terminate in the bay at Twyford (with the exception of one train each way per day). Although the connections at Twyford for Reading are fairly swift and easy, the change of train typically adds between 5 and 10 minutes to the journey and must be more off-putting for mothers with pushchairs and shoppers. This will be partly alleviated later in the year when work to replace the old station footbridge with a new one including lifts will be completed.

[Boppy]

I did a walk along the Thames from Marlow to Henley on Saturday so used both the Maidenhead to Marlow and Henley to Twyford branches as I live in Reading.

I'm quite a regular user of the Henley branch line and agree with your views regarding the 45minute timings requiring a timetable to remember!

I do think that the removal of the Reading to Henley direct services has helped though.  I used to live in Twyford and I was continually fed up with the London service being held up by the preceding train occupying the platform to turn around for Henley.  The Henley train would often sit there on platform 4 waiting for the train from London to arrive on platform 3 to provide a connecting service even if the train from London was late.  This had the knock-on effect of holding up the London bound train outside of Twyford.  A bizarre case of the London bound train being delayed by the train from London!

The only way Reading to Henley direct services would work without causing other delays is if the track layout was different so that a train from Reading could pull into the bay at Twyford.

In regards to the Marlow branch - Saturday was my first ever experience of it and a very pleasant line it is too - especially the Bourne End-Marlow section.

Boppy.


Boppy.

[FarWestJohn]

An article here on how the 26 metre coaches for the SET^▸ (Super Express Train (now IET)) could reduce services on the fringes of the Great Western area. Basically it may not be worth increasing the clearances for these vehicles to operate on lesser used routes in Cornwall and West Wales etc.

http://www.railnews.co.uk/news/business/2009/05/08-super-expresses.html

[John R]

Diversionary routes used occasionally by IC125s, such as Cardiff-Barry-Bridgend and Swindon-Kemble, would also need modifications for Super Express.

Hmmm, disappointing to see that Rail News is about as accurate as the general press in its reporting of railway matters.

[Btline]

Diversionary routes used occasionally by IC125s, such as Cardiff-Barry-Bridgend and Swindon-Kemble, would also need modifications for Super Express.

Hmmm, disappointing to see that Rail News is about as accurate as the general press in its reporting of railway matters.

Beat me to it!

But this is a disgrace. The whole point of NOT building dedicated High Speed routes, was to run new trains on existing infrastructure, because they could reach more places.

But now they are going against their own aims. The cheap option. Again.

If you want bigger trains, build high speed lines with a European loading gauge! Don't destroy the British InterCity network, which must be one of the best in the world.

[IndustryInsider]

Routes 14 and 15 (covering Paddington to Didcot/Swindon) have been discussed earlier in the thread, so I'll skip them.

Routes 16 & 16: Paddington-Oxford (both fast and stopping services)

Fast services:
Oxford-London fast services continue to operate at 30-minute intervals off-peak, just as they did in 1999. There have been some changes though. In 1999 virtually all trains were operated by Turbos, roughly half of which originated from the Cotswold Line or Stratford-Upon-Avon/Banbury. Now, around 2/3rds are operated by HST^▸ (High Speed Train)'s, some of which originate on the Cotswold Line but the others start at Oxford following the transfer of Stratford services to the Chiltern route into Marylebone.

They call at Reading and Slough en-route usually taking 56-59 minutes to complete the journey. Back in 1999, half of them also called at Didcot Parkway and the use of Turbos meant the journey used to take a couple of minutes longer. There used to be a few Cross Country services operated to Paddington, but these were withdrawn around 2003. The half-hourly service continues later into the night than it used to, so overall roughly the same number of fast services operate.

Peak hour services omit the stop at Slough, but sometimes have extra stops at Didcot Parkway, and there are some 'semi-fast' trains that call at places like Slough, Maidenhead and Twyford operated by either Turbos or HST's. Between 06:00 and 09:00 the total number of fast trains from Oxford-Paddington (70 minutes or less) is now 8. In 1999 there was one extra. Journey times on the fastest of peak trains has increased - three trains (two to London and one from London) used to run non-stop and the fastest completed the journey in 46 minutes. Now the quickest you can do the journey is in 53 minutes.

Start up of services and last trains of the day remain virtually identical.

Stopping services:
They also run at 30-minute intervals off-peak as they did back in 1999. Stops at Didcot Parkway, Cholsey, Goring, Pangbourne, Tilehurst and Reading before carrying on via Slough, Maidenhead and Ealing to Paddington. The overall journey time has increased as there are now more stops between Reading and Paddington, and longer layovers at Didcot and Reading (especially in the Up direction). This means typical journey time increases of 15-25 minutes on the total through journey. That's not so important though as nobody would deliberately get one of them all the way, but some intermediate flows by direct train are now disappointing lengthier than they were 10 years ago, for example:

Oxford-Cholsey: Now 30 minutes (was 18-25 minutes)
Oxford-Maidenhead: Now 70 minutes (was 55-63 minutes)
Didcot-Ealing Broadway: Now 78 minutes (was 68-69 minutes)

The service to/from Radley remains hourly off-peak, but from this timetable, services to/from Culham and Appleford have been cut back drastically from every two hours throughout the day, there is now a 6 hour gap in services from the end of the morning peak until mid-afternoon. True, passenger number are low, but I have said on this forum that there should be one train stopping to plug that gap and make it a more reasonable 3-hour gap. The peak hour service to these stations has actually increased, thanks to the increasing number of commuters travelling to the Science Centre near Culham station.

The popular service between Oxford and Didcot has seen a reduction in the number of trains throughout the day, due to the withdrawal of the Oxford-Bristol services, a reduction in the number of fast Oxford-London trains which call at Didcot, and the removal of Didcot stops on a few XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise)) services. There are now 48 trains a day from Oxford to Didcot Parkway, this is down from 60 ten years ago.

Peak hour services between Cholsey, Goring, Pangbourne and Tilehurst to Paddington remain a combination of local trains with connections at Reading, or faster limited stop services through to Paddington provide these stations with a service at (very) roughly 20 minute intervals. Services were at a similar level in 1999, but now these commuters have the chance to travel direct on HST operated services on occasions (two Up and one Down train per day). Previously these were all Turbo operated.

[mjones]

Routes 14 and 15 (covering Paddington to Didcot/Swindon) have been discussed earlier in the thread, so I'll skip them.

Routes 16 & 16: Paddington-Oxford (both fast and stopping services)
...

The popular service between Oxford and Didcot has seen a reduction in the number of trains throughout the day, due to the withdrawal of the Oxford-Bristol services, a reduction in the number of fast Oxford-London trains which call at Didcot, and the removal of Didcot stops on a few XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise)) services. There are now 48 trains a day from Oxford to Didcot Parkway, this is down from 60 ten years ago.

...

And sadly, although the Didcot to Oxford service is still a respectable 2 per hour, the timetable is such that usually only 1 per hour northbound connects with the half-hourly XC service at Oxford; and quite a few eastbound services from Swindon are timed to just miss Oxford services. I don't know what could be done to improve the situation, presumably capacity and pathing constraints limit the ability to time the stopping services better for connections- any prospect of this being improved with proposed Reading and Oxford developments?

[Btline]

Hopefully, journey times will fall with the Reading re-build.

[Chris from Nailsea]

Hmm.  Some parts of that Reading rebuild now seem rather uncertain ... see http://www.readingchronicle.co.uk/news/reading/articles/2009/04/23/37851-nervous-wait-for-station-funds/