SWR - Further Timetable Reductions from 17/1

[43096]

Looking open train times earlier there were to two out-of-service trains between Ascot and Bracknell so these could have provided an hourly shuttle - or half-hourly with extremely tight turnaround times.

There was also a set or two at Reading, so plenty of resources to run a shuttle. But SWR being a low grade WorstGroup operation couldn't be bothered.

 

[Sean Emmett]

Was planning to take 09 43 ex Ascot to Reading, but on reaching Ascot at 09.30 was told by staff there was a broken down train at Virginia Water.

There was a pair of units in P2 at Ascot, and on arrival at Reading (by taxi) there were further pairs of EMUs in both P4 and P6. So could easily have covered half hourly service.

I did ask staff organising taxis at Ascot why trains couldn't run Ascot - Reading, but they didn't really know.

Fortunately made my connection at Reading for Exeter, 802 105 on 3 engines struggled a bit., Then 150 219 to Okehampton.

 

[HamworthyGoods]

Was planning to take 09 43 ex Ascot to Reading, but on reaching Ascot at 09.30 was told by staff there was a broken down train at Virginia Water.

There was a pair of units in P2 at Ascot, and on arrival at Reading (by taxi) there were further pairs of EMUs in both P4 and P6. So could easily have covered half hourly service.

I did ask staff organising taxis at Ascot why trains couldn't run Ascot - Reading, but they didn't really know.

Fortunately made my connection at Reading for Exeter, 802 105 on 3 engines struggled a bit., Then 150 219 to Okehampton.

Trains don’t run themselves, there may have been EMUs in the platforms but no crews.

 

[boiledbeans2]

I was checking tomorrow's timetables (Saturday, 22/1) for engineering works.

Seems like the Guildford stopping service (via Effingham) is down to 1 tph on Saturday, i.e. 1 tph between Guildford and Raynes Park.
From 4 tph pre-covid to 3 tph post-covid to 1 tph this Saturday. No SWR services to Dorking either.

Surprisingly, this is worse than the Sunday engineering timetable (23/1), which has 2 tph on the Guildford stoppers (which is also the usual non-engineering works frequency)

So I'm expecting the Southern services from Epsom/Dorking to London to be rammed this Saturday, especially the pre-lunchtime period, i.e 10am-12.

 

[Bessie]

Six services are being reinstated. It’s a start! Copied from SWR news release link on Twitter

Latest update​

Having seen an increase in staff availability over recent days, we’re pleased to be able to reintroduce the following key services from Monday 24 January:

Morning peak​

• 05:55 Weymouth to Southampton.
• 06:50 Farnham to London Waterloo.
• 07:30 Shepperton to London Waterloo.
• Additional calls at Weybridge (07:25) and Walton-on-Thames (07:28) for service into London Waterloo.

Evening peak​

• The 17:20 London Waterloo to Salisbury service will run through to Exeter St David’s.
• 17:41 London Waterloo to Basingstoke service, with calls at Surbiton and Farnborough.
• 17:43 London Waterloo to Shepperton.

 

[Goldfish62]

Trains don’t run themselves, there may have been EMUs in the platforms but no crews.

I wonder where the crews went then.

 

[TEW]

I was checking tomorrow's timetables (Saturday, 22/1) for engineering works.

Seems like the Guildford stopping service (via Effingham) is down to 1 tph on Saturday, i.e. 1 tph between Guildford and Raynes Park.
From 4 tph pre-covid to 3 tph post-covid to 1 tph this Saturday. No SWR services to Dorking either.

Surprisingly, this is worse than the Sunday engineering timetable (23/1), which has 2 tph on the Guildford stoppers (which is also the usual non-engineering works frequency)

So I'm expecting the Southern services from Epsom/Dorking to London to be rammed this Saturday, especially the pre-lunchtime period, i.e 10am-12.

1tph to Raynes Park is unusual when this engineering work happens. Would usually expect 2tph through Epsom. Instead tomorrow 1tph is running Chessington South to Raynes Park which is very unusual, usually the Chessington line just gets served by buses through from Clapham Junction.

 

[HamworthyGoods]

I wonder where the crews went then.

PNBs or out of hours so pass home is quite a possibility around 10.00 when it all happened, just wondering if that might be behind the reason!?

 

[swr444]

PNBs or out of hours so pass home is quite a possibility around 10.00 when it all happened, just wondering if that might be behind the reason!?

I think quite a few people had to get taxi's today because of that exact reason

 

[43096]

PNBs or out of hours so pass home is quite a possibility around 10.00 when it all happened, just wondering if that might be behind the reason!?

Given the incident happened with the first up from Reading at around 0620 there was plenty of opportunity to get crews in place using taxis or bus replacements. Given there was zero effort to run any sort of train service it all rather smacks of SWR giving up and not being bothered.

 

[Goldfish62]

I think quite a few people had to get taxi's today because of that exact reason

Maybe a more productive use of the taxis would have been to get staff to and from Ascot/Reading to run shuttles.

 

[swr444]

Maybe a more productive use of the taxis would have been to get staff to and from Ascot/Reading to run shuttles.

it's not as easy as you're making it out to be, lots of staff displaced by the problem

 

[Goldfish62]

it's not as easy as you're making it out to be, lots of staff displaced by the problem

But they've managed it before.

 

[43096]

it's not as easy as you're making it out to be, lots of staff displaced by the problem

Excuses, excuses, excuses. The railway just look stupid when it cannot react to something like this and put a basic shuttle service in. It’s pathetic.

 

[Meglos]

1tph to Raynes Park is unusual when this engineering work happens. Would usually expect 2tph through Epsom. Instead tomorrow 1tph is running Chessington South to Raynes Park which is very unusual, usually the Chessington line just gets served by buses through from Clapham Junction.

Last weekend was 2tph from EPS to RAY, and bustitution only from CSS. For those of us on the Chessington branch, 1tph from CSS to RAY is a definate improvement from last weekend. Twenty minutes from CSS to RAY hourly, as opposed to around 45 minutes on a bus despite it running twice hourly makes better service for most.

 

[nw1]

No worries! I agree it’s not good for Poole which usually has 2tph to London and for somewhere in London & South East you would expect it to!

Why do they not just run the trains which do serve Poole through to Waterloo? It must surely be possible to path one train per hour through from Weymouth to Waterloo even with reduced train crew.

Same goes for the lack of through trains through Salisbury. Could they not keep the through services (even at half normal frequency) with a crew change at Salisbury and Bournemouth, respectively, if that makes things easier?

(Sorry if this is a silly question!)

A caller has just rung into Nick Ferrari, on LBC, to mention that the first three trains from the Hounslow loop have been cancelled which isn't helping people. Nick was aware of this but didn't have time to discuss it in more detail.

So he passed them back to one of his production colleagues to take more details. I expect a story on this at some point. Theyvssifvfirstvtraun from Isleworth was only 6:49.

Guildford has had its very early train cancelled but there is still one at 5:14, which is the earliest I've ever caught a train from the station so not everywhere has a poor service in the morning.

Is that still the 0400? I remember the existence of that throughout the 80s (though obviously never used it). The pattern for the stoppers used to be 0400, 0520, 0600 then generally half hourly but with some missing journeys in the peak to allow paths to be used by services from Portsmouth.

 

[HamworthyGoods]

Why do they not just run the trains which do serve Poole through to Waterloo? It must surely be possible to path one train per hour through from Weymouth to Waterloo even with reduced train crew.

Same goes for the lack of through trains through Salisbury. Could they not keep the through services (even at half normal frequency) with a crew change at Salisbury and Bournemouth, respectively, if that makes things easier?

(Sorry if this is a silly question!)

There’s always options you could do to the timetable like above, however you need people to work up those plans and there wasn’t the resource available to do that when timetables were needed quickly so the only timetable which reduced numbers was the strike timetable.

 

[swr444]

Excuses, excuses, excuses. The railway just look stupid when it cannot react to something like this and put a basic shuttle service in. It’s pathetic.

Let’s hire you to come solve the problem then!

 

[Juniper Driver]

it's not as easy as you're making it out to be, lots of staff displaced by the problem

They were displaced all over the place.I had no relief at Staines and had to take the train to Windsor and back to Waterloo.When I got to Waterloo it was missing train crew and the return was cancelled.Allegedly.

 

[JonathanH]

Why do they not just run the trains which do serve Poole through to Waterloo? It must surely be possible to path one train per hour through from Weymouth to Waterloo even with reduced train crew.

It avoids the need to have traincrew to cope with the splitting and joining needed at Bournemouth. Instead, a 10 car can run from London to Bournemouth and a separate 5 car train can run from Bournemouth to Weymouth.

 

[Juniper Driver]

PNBs or out of hours so pass home is quite a possibility around 10.00 when it all happened, just wondering if that might be behind the reason!?

I was on 0622 Weybridge and when I got to Virginia Water there was a five car on the down Reading platform and a ten car on the up from Reading platform.When I got back from Weybridge to Virginia Water I was told not to hang around for the booked 8 or 9 mins but instead wait till time at Egham as they wanted to to shunt the five I guess to provide the assistance.Seems like it didn't go too well.

 

[RPI]

I wonder if it's anything to do with the planned Devon Metro and GWR's aspiration to run through from Barnstaple or Okehampton to Axminster. Perhaps SWR thinks it can hand over the service west of Salisbury, keeping just a handful of peak services for London commuters, if there still are any. Sorry that's speculation!

From May I belive there are two GWR services per day between Exeter and Axminster, extension of Barnstaple services, one morning peak one evening, crew been told they'll be route learning soon is where I've heard it. Though they all learnt to Pinhoe last year and that didn't happen.

 

[dk1]

From May I belive there are two GWR services per day between Exeter and Axminster, extension of Barnstaple services, one morning peak one evening, crew been told they'll be route learning soon is where I've heard it. Though they all learnt to Pinhoe last year and that didn't happen.

Sounds about right as the forerunner of the half-hourly Axminster-Exeter plan.

 

[infobleep]

Why do they not just run the trains which do serve Poole through to Waterloo? It must surely be possible to path one train per hour through from Weymouth to Waterloo even with reduced train crew.

Same goes for the lack of through trains through Salisbury. Could they not keep the through services (even at half normal frequency) with a crew change at Salisbury and Bournemouth, respectively, if that makes things easier?

(Sorry if this is a silly question!)



Is that still the 0400? I remember the existence of that throughout the 80s (though obviously never used it). The pattern for the stoppers used to be 0400, 0520, 0600 then generally half hourly but with some missing journeys in the peak to allow paths to be used by services from Portsmouth.

It is one around 4 am. I can't remember the precise start time.

The earliest I've ever travelled is on the 05:14.

 

[pompeyfan]

From May I belive there are two GWR services per day between Exeter and Axminster, extension of Barnstaple services, one morning peak one evening, crew been told they'll be route learning soon is where I've heard it. Though they all learnt to Pinhoe last year and that didn't happen.

Very interesting. Hopefully the AM down working will be around the same time as SWRs 1L93, which apparently regularly causes carnage on the single line sections.

 

[RPI]

Sounds about right as the forerunner of the half-hourly Axminster-Exeter plan.

Maybe, that obviously can't happen fully until another loop is added between Pinhoe and Honiton though

 

[PTR 444]

It avoids the need to have traincrew to cope with the splitting and joining needed at Bournemouth. Instead, a 10 car can run from London to Bournemouth and a separate 5 car train can run from Bournemouth to Weymouth.

If so, why couldn’t they split the temporary service at Poole instead so you have the 10-car Waterloo - Bournemouth service continue to Poole, and the Bournemouth - Weymouth cut back to Poole - Weymouth. I expect demand for Poole - London is greater than Bournemouth - Weymouth, and of course Poole can take 10-car trains so is really a waste to just have one 5-car train every hour.

 

[pompeyfan]

If so, why couldn’t they split the temporary service at Poole instead so you have the 10-car Waterloo - Bournemouth service continue to Poole, and the Bournemouth - Weymouth cut back to Poole - Weymouth. I expect demand for Poole - London is greater than Bournemouth - Weymouth, and of course Poole can take 10-car trains so is really a waste to just have one 5-car train every hour.

I don’t think there’s any operational reason, yes it would require an extra 10 car in circuit and possibly an extra couple of drivers and guards (there’s also an ongoing dispute regarding PTI at Poole) so extra platform staff.
I imagine it comes down to the fact the DfT says and SWR does as it’s told.

 

[Goldfish62]

I imagine it comes down to the fact the DfT says and SWR does as it’s told.

DfT: "We want you to make train travel so inconvenient that it justifies us slashing services permanently."
SWR: "OK then."

 

[dk1]

Maybe, that obviously can't happen fully until another loop is added between Pinhoe and Honiton though

Let’s hope it gets the go ahead soon.