miklcct
On Moderation
My first thought was to incorporate Portsmouth - Southampton, and Romsey - Chandler's Ford - Southampton - Salisbury into the Portsmouth - Cardiff services, and increase the Bristol - Southampton section to 2 trains per hour giving mostly half-hourly service between Southampton and Bristol, which is spread evenly north of Salisbury.Nope, I'm suggesting that operational practicalities are considered above map-tidying. If GWR took over Southampton-Portsmouth, which depot and trains would they use? Do SWR have a diesel depot with drivers capable of covering the North Downs Line?
South of Salisbury, one of these trains will call at intermediate stations until Southampton, with the other running non-stop (taking 29 minutes). At Southampton, one of these trains, being a 6-coach train, will split into a Portsmouth and a Romsey portion, while the other only runs to Portsmouth.
The local calls between Southampton and Fareham is then transferred to one of the 2 Southern trains.
The end result is to improve connectivity at minor stations by having them having direct services to Bristol.
I think that GWR is too big. It operates local services from Cornwall to the Thames Valley. GWR and EMR are probably the only true long distance intercity operators which also operates local and branch services around the country, unlike LNER, Avanti, CrossCountry, etc. However, EMR is not big enough to be split into separate companies, but GWR is clearly too big.Why is splitting up operations further better for the passenger?
By splitting the company, each can specialise in provide the best service for the particular needs of the service group. My proposal is that, GWR only operates IET intercity services and the sleeper, Wessex Trains operating non-London local and regional services in Devon, Cornwall, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorset and Somerset, and Thames Trains operating the South East regional services including Paddington - Didcot Parkway, Thames branches, stoppers to Oxford, North Downs and Reading - Basingstoke, so that from Paddington, there will be 3 TOCs operating out of it, intercity by GWR, regional by Thames Trains, and local by Elizabeth line, like the current-day situation at Euston that Avanti operating intercity, LNR operating regional and London Overground operating local. The GWR intercity trains will drop the call at Slough with fast Slough services operated by Didcot - Paddington services which runs on the main line east of it.