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Paddington to Birmingham services

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satisnek

satisnek

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Here we are, May 1988, Table 116, Paddington trains to/from Birmingham and beyond:

Departures
Mondays to Fridays
0600 Manchester Piccadilly
0702 Manchester Piccadilly
0940 Birmingham New Street
1240 Birmingham New Street
1750 Wolverhampton
Saturdays
0600 Manchester Piccadilly
0702 Manchester Piccadilly
0917 York
Sundays
0845 Wolverhampton
1747 Leeds

Arrivals
Mondays to Fridays
1121 Manchester Piccadilly
1720 Birmingham New Street
1957 Wolverhampton
2116 Wolverhampton
Saturdays
2209 Birmingham New Street
2333 Birmingham New Street
Sundays
1813 Wolverhampton
1951 Liverpool Lime Street
2337 York
0018 Liverpool Lime Street
 
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Taunton

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70014IronDuke said:
I have just never noticed any piccies of Warships on the former WR trains to Brum, neither in the early years (as first attested by Taunton) or later.
Click to expand...
http://www.warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/gwrbsh1164.htm

:)

The second paragraph of the caption to that picture, about Warships being originally designed for the Birmingham route, I have my doubts about. I notice it has been copied verbatim from the Wikipedia entry on the Warships. I can offer s string of rebuttals but which would be off-topic here, apart from there never having been a Hydraulic maintenance depot in the West Midlands.
 
A

alistairlees

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May 1970 (to May 1971) timetable

Departures from Paddington, Mon - Sat:
08.20 (via High Wycombe) - Birmingham NS 10.33
10.16 (via High Wycombe) - Birmingham NS 12.31
13.16 (via High Wycombe) - Birmingham NS 15.33
15.55 (via High Wycombe) - Birmingham NS 18.17
16.15 (via Reading) - Birmingham NS 19.20
17.36 (via High Wycombe) - Birmingham NS 19.56
19.35 (via High Wycombe) - Birmingham NS 21.52

Also only so far as Banbury, Mon - Sat
00.05 (via High Wycombe) - Banbury 01.29 (MO)
12.03 (via Reading) - Banbury 14.21
18.17 (via Reading) - Banbury 19.41 (SX)
23.15 (via Reading) - Banbury 01.07

Departures from Paddington, Sun:
08.50 (via High Wycombe) - Birmingham NS 11.25
15.05 (via High Wycombe) - Birmingham NS 17.27
16.58 (via High Wycombe) - Birmingham NS 19.25
17.35 (via Reading) - Birmingham NS 20.23
20.35 (via High Wycombe) - Birmingham NS 23.04

Also only so far as Banbury, Sun:
07.48 (via Reading) - Banbury 10.10
14.18 (via Reading) - Banbury 16.15
16.03 (via Reading) - Banbury 18.12
 
A

alistairlees

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May 1973 (to May 1974) timetable

Departures from Paddington, Mon - Sat:
06.53 (via Reading) - Birmingham NS 09.31
09.05 (via Reading) - Birmingham NS 11.37
11.05 (via Reading) - Birmingham NS 13.36
12.05 (via Reading) - Birmingham NS 14.36
14.05 (via Reading) - Birmingham NS 16.36
16.05 (via Reading) - Birmingham NS 18.40
17.31 (via High Wycombe) - Birmingham NS 19.59
19.57 (via Reading) - Birmingham NS 22.31

Also only so far as Banbury, Mon - Sat:
21.18 (via Reading) - Banbury 23.28

Departures from Paddington, Sun:
08.25 (via Reading) - Birmingham NS 11.29
14.40 (via Reading) - Birmingham NS 17.30
15.55 (via Reading) - Birmingham NS 18.40
17.05 (via Reading) - Birmingham NS 19.40
19.05 (via Reading) - Birmingham NS 21.40
20.30 (via Reading) - Birmingham NS 23.05

Also only so far as Banbury, Sun:
11.35 (via Reading) - Banbury 13.38

So you can see the big change from the Wycombe to the Reading route between those years.
 
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MotCO

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Taunton said:
This film on YouTube is of the Blue Pullman on the route at first dieselisatiion in 1962

Click to expand...

I was expecting the train to turn off at Reading - did it turn off the main line at Acton?
 
Andyjs247

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BanburyBlue said:
My reminisces from the late 70's....

When I first started going to Banbury Station (1976/77 I think - if you wanted to date it, it was after the HSTs were on the South Wales services, but before they were introduced into Cornwall and the West Country and the East Coast), the main pattern by then was Paddington, Reading, Oxford, Banbury, Leamington Spa, Coventry, Birmingham International, Birmingham New Street.

IIRC there were roughly 1 tph in each direction. I believe there was an early morning service that went via High Wycombe, and not sure about Northbound services, but assume the same? There was one service from Paddington that terminated at Banbury around 7 p.m. which I think was via High Wycombe. This was exciting because it was Class 50 hauled, and made a change from 47s. Again I think an occasional service went via Dorridge and Solihull, but perhaps only one a day?

Where I'm a bit more hazy is when Cross-Country services started. There was always a Newcastle train that went South around 10 a.m., but I can't remember its destination (Poole possibly?). Again I assume there must have been a corresponding Northbound service.

I do vaguely remember particularly Manchester and Liverpool to the South Coast, as we used to catch one to Crewe and back. Used to be electric to New Street, with a engine change there. I believe the North-West to South Coast services took over the Paddington to Birmingham paths, which I think ties in to some of the posts above?
Click to expand...
My grandparents lived in Solihull next to the railway. I can vaguely remember the first 50s beginning to appear on the route which would have been after 1974. Otherwise it was mainly 47s. Service was I think 2 hourly via High Wycombe and Solihull. I don’t remember when services started going via Coventry (and also Oxford) - it was after Birmingham International opened in I think 1976. Then just one train remained via High Wycombe (it was about 1740 ex Paddington), also calling Dorridge and Solihull to Wolverhampton. It continued at least into the 80s and was normally 50-hauled.

As to cross-country I don’t remember much in the way of non-London expresses in the 70s. I think it started with an incarnation of the ‘Pines’ express via Solihull to Poole and a also couple of Manchester-Brighton trains. As mentioned the normal route was via Oxford and Reading. The residual Birmingham Paddington service seems to have gradually morphed into a cross-country one. Fewer trains on this route went beyond Reading into Paddington, instead going to Poole, Brighton or other south coast destinations especially on a summer Saturday - I remember Eastbourne, Dover, Ramsgate at times. Going north services extended beyond Birmingham to Liverpool or Manchester; later to Glasgow/Edinburgh, or Leeds.

There wasn’t a regular pattern like we have now and the destinations changed year on year, in some cases quite randomly. In the 80s I remember there was a 1009 Birmingham - Paddington which was normally a 50 which you could take to Oxford. And a 1246 FO Portsmouth Harbour- Leeds back north which often produced a 33. There was a Paddington-Hull train at some point. Paddington stopped being served at the end of LHCS in I think 2002.
 
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MichaelAMW

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Andyjs247 said:
There wasn’t a regular pattern like we have now and the destinations changed year on year, in some cases quite randomly. In the 80s I remember there was a 1009 Birmingham - Paddington which was normally a 50 which you could take to Oxford. And a 1246 FO Portsmouth Harbour- Leeds back north which often produced a 33. There was a Paddington-Hull train at some point. Paddington stopped being served at the end of LHCS in I think 2002.
Click to expand...

A few more from the collection, in case you're interested...

Paddington labels.jpg
 
30907

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alistairlees said:
May 1970 (to May 1971) timetable

Departures from Paddington, Mon - Sat:
16.15 (via Reading) - Birmingham NS 19.20
Click to expand...

A delightful train, which was DMU throughout with a stopping portion detached at Reading - I opted for it the next year for a Uni interview, expecting an Intercity unit and got a suburban :(
 
Dr Hoo

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Taunton said:
http://www.warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/gwrbsh1164.htm

:)

The second paragraph of the caption to that picture, about Warships being originally designed for the Birmingham route, I have my doubts about. I notice it has been copied verbatim from the Wikipedia entry on the Warships. I can offer s string of rebuttals but which would be off-topic here, apart from there never having been a Hydraulic maintenance depot in the West Midlands.
Click to expand...
I commuted to school through Birmingham New Street in the late 1960s and remember the Paddington services from there quite well. The Warships replaced the Class 47s that had been used from Snow Hill as the trains were lighter again after the Euston line was electrified IIRC.
The Warships were quite unreliable, with a lot of failures leading to many accusations of ‘deliberately running down the service to allow complete closure’. Even Hymeks deputised sometimes. So the search was on for replacement traction quite soon.
 
DelW

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Chris Butler said:
Yes, I think it was introduced with the advent of Chiltern Railways. In a post about two different GWR main lines, I couldn't think of a better shorthand for the line.
Click to expand...
I think that in the GWR/BR era it would have been referred to as the Joint Line, reflecting the Great Western & Great Central shared construction of the line between Northolt Junction and Ashendon Junction. Of course that only worked in context as there were other joint lines in other areas of the country.
MotCO said:
I was expecting the train to turn off at Reading - did it turn off the main line at Acton?
Click to expand...
At that time Old Oak to Northolt Junction (and beyond) was a main line!
 
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Taunton

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You might have expected that Birmingham services from Paddington would depart along the Relief Lines on the north side out to Old Oak, but they invariably seemed to cross over, even if coming from platforms in the centre of the station, to the Main Lines on the south side, then slow down to lurch across the quite tight crossovers at Old Oak to the Reliefs, and immediately turn off. You can see the Pullman do it in the video linked above.

The route to Banbury had various internal names, Joint Line was one of them, it was also known as the Bicester Cutoff. In the division of responsibilities the GWR did the signalling, so it looked no different to a normal GW line.

A delightful train, which was DMU throughout with a stopping portion detached at Reading - I opted for it the next year for a Uni interview, expecting an Intercity unit and got a suburban
Click to expand...
Unusual in WR days - the Paddington and the Birmingham suburban units rarely got onto each other's territory. Of course, once Marylebone took over the Baanbury line it was all suburban units, as that was all they had. Anything other than the Pressed Steel suburban units was also unusual at Paddington, except for a couuple of peak hour (only) services from Henley etc, where a few of the WR's large fleet of cross country, and later inter city, units were specially provided; otherwise these units roamed all over the region, except in the London Division.
 
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davetheguard

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Andyjs247 said:
My grandparents lived in Solihull next to the railway. I can vaguely remember the first 50s beginning to appear on the route which would have been after 1974. Otherwise it was mainly 47s. Service was I think 2 hourly via High Wycombe and Solihull. I don’t remember when services started going via Coventry (and also Oxford) - it was after Birmingham International opened in I think 1976. Then just one train remained via High Wycombe (it was about 1740 ex Paddington), also calling Dorridge and Solihull to Wolverhampton. It continued at least into the 80s and was normally 50-hauled.

As to cross-country I don’t remember much in the way of non-London expresses in the 70s. I think it started with an incarnation of the ‘Pines’ express via Solihull to Poole and a also couple of Manchester-Brighton trains. As mentioned the normal route was via Oxford and Reading. The residual Birmingham Paddington service seems to have gradually morphed into a cross-country one. Fewer trains on this route went beyond Reading into Paddington, instead going to Poole, Brighton or other south coast destinations especially on a summer Saturday - I remember Eastbourne, Dover, Ramsgate at times. Going north services extended beyond Birmingham to Liverpool or Manchester; later to Glasgow/Edinburgh, or Leeds.

There wasn’t a regular pattern like we have now and the destinations changed year on year, in some cases quite randomly. In the 80s I remember there was a 1009 Birmingham - Paddington which was normally a 50 which you could take to Oxford. And a 1246 FO Portsmouth Harbour- Leeds back north which often produced a 33. There was a Paddington-Hull train at some point. Paddington stopped being served at the end of LHCS in I think 2002.
Click to expand...

I remember that Paddington to Hull train: I caught it one day from Didcot (which had a handful of direct Birmingham InterCity trains in those days) right through to Hull. I don't remember there being a return working; I wonder what the stock did next?
 
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BanburyBlue

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Taunton said:
You might have expected that Birmingham services from Paddington would depart along the Relief Lines on the north side out to Old Oak, but they invariably seemed to cross over, even if coming from platforms in the centre of the station, to the Main Lines on the south side, then slow down to lurch across the quite tight crossovers at Old Oak to the Reliefs, and immediately turn off. You can see the Pullman do it in the video linked above.

The route to Banbury had various internal names, Joint Line was one of them, it was also known as the Bicester Cutoff. In the division of responsibilities the GWR did the signalling, so it looked no different to a normal GW line.


Unusual in WR days - the Paddington and the Birmingham suburban units rarely got onto each other's territory. Of course, once Marylebone took over the Baanbury line it was all suburban units, as that was all they had. Anything other than the Pressed Steel suburban units was also unusual at Paddington, except for a couuple of peak hour (only) services from Henley etc, where a few of the WR's large fleet of cross country, and later inter city, units were specially provided; otherwise these units roamed all over the region, except in the London Division.
Click to expand...

There used to be one early morning departure from Banbury to Birmingham Moor Street that was a West Midlands unit. I think it used to leave around 7 ish from the bay on Platform 2. It must have been throw back from something. There was not a return working.
 
Fearless

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I well remember regularly enjoying the 50s on the Brum--Padd run in the late 1970s. Except for the day that I was coming back to Oxford from Wolverhampton, and the pantograph failed on the train that should have got me into Brum for the last Padd (2040, I think). Cue everything stopped for a couple of hours, and the Padd of course left without us. BR put on a DMU to get us home - didn't reach Oxford till nearly 0100. Apparently the pan had failed through metal fatigue, which they said was almost unheard of.
 
DelW

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edwin_m said:
But for the GWR London to Bristol was the main line...
Click to expand...
True indeed. But I suspect a number of younger enthusiasts don't really appreciate that OOC - Northolt was once quite a busy double track. There's maybe an analogy with the B&H, with most trains running via the shorter cut-off, but some still going via the earlier route - via Didcot for Birmingham and Birkenhead, via Bristol for Exeter and Penzance.
 
30907

30907

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Taunton said:
Anything other than the Pressed Steel suburban units was also unusual at Paddington, except for a couuple of peak hour (only) services from Henley etc, where a few of the WR's large fleet of cross country, and later inter city, units were specially provided; otherwise these units roamed all over the region, except in the London Division.
Click to expand...
By 1970-1 the IC sets had moved to OOC according to Wikipedia which explains why I was hoping for one!
 
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Taunton

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30907 said:
By 1970-1 the IC sets had moved to OOC according to Wikipedia which explains why I was hoping for one!
Click to expand...
They were however used on he Henley peak hour services, one return trip per day.

The WR never quite seemed to know what to do with those inter-city sets, goodness knows why they ordered them. When new in 1962, some of the last dmus built, an 8-car set was assigned to the daily Cardiff-Plymouth round trip, I used to see it growling out of Taunton mid-morning, full power but not a lot of acceleration, they had two extra trailers compared to the otherwise-comparable Trans Pennine units that preceded them off the Swindon production line. Not sure how well they handled the South Devon banks; next year and it was back to a Hymek.
 
30907

30907

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Taunton said:
They were however used on he Henley peak hour services, one return trip per day.

The WR never quite seemed to know what to do with those inter-city sets, goodness knows why they ordered them. When new in 1962, some of the last dmus built, an 8-car set was assigned to the daily Cardiff-Plymouth round trip, I used to see it growling out of Taunton mid-morning, full power but not a lot of acceleration, they had two extra trailers compared to the otherwise-comparable Trans Pennine units that preceded them off the Swindon production line. Not sure how well they handled the South Devon banks; next year and it was back to a Hymek.
Click to expand...

As I discovered, the hard way! They did make it to Oxford though.
They were 70mph top speed IIRC which even in 1970 wasn't helpful on the GW Main Line
 
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Taunton

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They were called "Inter City" units because they came from Swindon and that was an old GWR expression, for a key express on the very route we are discussing, Paddington to Birmingham. Strangely, the first and the last builds of traditional dmus, at Swindon works, were the only ones of this designation. Essentially they were normal Mk 1 express carriages above the frame, including some side corridor vehicles, and normal dmu mechanicals below the frame. The old ones were generally associated with the Edinburgh-Glasgow line, although several were used for their first couple of years in the 1950s on Birmingham to Cardiff runs. The newer ones as I described never seemed to find the right niche on the WR. The Henley to Paddington peak hour runs they did had a long tradition of being a main line operation up a relatively obscure branch; back in steam days a couple of Reading Halls worked over to Henley each morning fot the two through trains, and the branch was double track throughout and rated Red for main line locos.

I did once read it was the favoured area for old-school GWR directors to live on, let alone MPs, top bankers, and Writers Of Letters To The Times, as we once discussed here https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...m-nearly-sixty-years-ago.159751/#post-3301287 .
 
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Jona26

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Chris Butler said:
1988: Virgin Cross Country takes over the Paddington to Birmingham services and integrates it as part of its network. Trains continued past Birmingham to a range of destinations including Liverpool, Manchester, Scotland, Leeds and York.
Click to expand...

I think this should be 1997/98 - not 1988.
 
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