Recent content by Tom125

Cost primary factor, my car does 500 miles plus to a £50 tank, Ebbw Vale is 2 hours 15 mins one way and 200 mile return, A valley lines station return cancels out the cost of parking in Cardiff, reliability of the Cambrian second factor- long waits at Tallerdig if trains are late, reliability...

That’s exactly what I do from mid Wales- I drive from Aberdyfi to Ebbw Vale or Abercynon depending on my mood and take the train to Cardiff. (Abergavenny is too expensive)

Disappointing for those in rural Wales. Loss of Cardiff to Liverpool direct is shame- TfW would have been better cancelling Cardiff to Holyhead and replacing it with Cardiff to Liverpool. I bet there is far more demand Cardiff to Liverpool than there is Cardiff to the north Wales coast.

Lovely news for 158 fans on the Cambrian (of which I am one) - they have a one final summer swan song.

Seems like a sensible idea to me- easy access off the A470- saves drivers who don’t live near a station that hassle of driving into Cardiff.

I don’t know what the hatred is towards a tram/ train that no passenger has rode on in Wales yet! I lived in Bern for years and I’d take a Swiss tram over a noisy class 150 any day!

Quite! I won’t hold my breath until Monday.

I just asked the TfW twitter team and the reply was “Hi Tom, we are expecting the Ebbw Vale - Newport services to start on the 29th January, thank you for your patience ^Gwen” . There has been no advertising about it starting online which isn’t great for attracting passengers!

I completely agree with you. TfW is a farce. Last week I had my Manchester train cancelled at the last minute and had to drive to Manchester Airport- I will never use TfW to get to north again- so unreliable and completely tin eared to the suffering us passengers are going through. Passengers...

I assume we are also talking about an unpublished interim timetable as well? So we don’t know the connection times at Radyr?

I think that fare upgrade and dining option is reasonable for the customer they are targeting- they’ll get business and leisure travellers at those rates. The only thing TfW have to do is get these trains purring like a kitten so that premium customers know that the product they want turns up...

Why are they introducing 756s and not the tram trains originally planned?

You’re correct about the service gaps for Tower Colliery coal trains but I’m sure the service gaps were plugged south of Abercynon by trains terminating at Pontypridd running empty to Stormstown loop before running Abercynon to Cardiff in passenger service with the coal train occupying the Cynon...

Trains it was. It was always 3 trains allocated to the line to run a reliable and resilient timetable under Arriva. Nowadays there are only 2 trains allocated which causes a timetable that is neither reliable nor resilient. 1701967986 Arriva certainly weren’t perfect but you did know that if...

Except for those of us who use the miserable service in the valleys it is a daily occurrence of failure. 2/3 trains allocated for Ebbw Vale to Cardiff services and frequent delays because there is no slack in the turn around times. Under Arriva 3 trains were allocated and the line was so...