GWR Dec 19 timetable

Horizon22 · 14 Jan 2020

mikeb42 said:
Hmmm. So far, the performance of these has been woeful when it matters (i.e. not at 2pm on a Wednesday) to customers who depend on them operating as advertised.

The 1725 BRI-PAD has run 13 times since the timetable change and has been on time as many times as it has been cancelled, i.e. once. Of 13 journeys, 7 have resulted in delay repay claims. If I understand correctly how it is calculated, the appropriate PPM metric for this service stands at 46% so far...

That's an interesting interpretation of "cancelled". Yes that service only currently has 36% of journeys within PPM, but 93% of the trains run (with one cancellation due to the overhead wire damage). It does seem a bad runner so interesting what forms the inward at Temple Meads and its booked turnaround.

As you've said though it seems most of the issues in the last month have been infrastructure related for delays out of Paddington.

https://www.ontimetrains.co.uk/journeys/BRI/PAD/17:25/18:45/GW;dayOfWeekRange=Weekdays;dateRange=12W

Edit: misread you did say only 1 cancellation.

RailUK Forums

Siemens Staines · 14 Jan 2020

The 1725 from Temple Meads should be a through train from Weston super Mare (departing at 1704). This should be formed off 1445 Paddington to Weston super Mare which is scheduled to arrive at 1641. I believe the 1445 is a set off North Pole

Horizon22 · 14 Jan 2020

Siemens Staines said:
The 1725 from Temple Meads should be a through train from Weston super Mare (departing at 1704). This should be formed off 1445 Paddington to Weston super Mare which is scheduled to arrive at 1641. I believe the 1445 is a set off North Pole

Thanks. Interestingly enough on the days I did look at it, it's RT from Weston Super Mare and Bristol, then runs into issues after Swindon. Last week has been much better though, so best to give the 1725 a few more weeks to see if its a continual issue.

HowardGWR · 14 Jan 2020

Horizon22 said:
Thanks. Interestingly enough on the days I did look at it, it's RT from Weston Super Mare and Bristol, then runs into issues after Swindon. Last week has been much better though, so best to give the 1725 a few more weeks to see if its a continual issue.

Yesterday was hopeless. It got stuck behind a late running Taunton to Cardiff and never recovered from that. See this https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/Y94354/2020-01-13/detailed

It would appear that it suffers from any delay to other services, there being no means for it to overtake them, it would appear.

Horizon22 · 14 Jan 2020

HowardGWR said:
Yesterday was hopeless. It got stuck behind a late running Taunton to Cardiff and never recovered from that. See this https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/Y94354/2020-01-13/detailed

It would appear that it suffers from any delay to other services, there being no means for it to overtake them, it would appear.

I can see that, but one day (or several around the Xmas / NY period) does not make a trend. I don't think you can do a realistic assessment of any Dec '19 timetable change until the end of January (especially one as dramatic as GWRs) to see if something is an isolated issue once or twice or otherwise.

jimm · 14 Jan 2020

Horizon22 said:
I can see that, but one day (or several around the Xmas / NY period) does not make a trend. I don't think you can do a realistic assessment of any Dec '19 timetable change until the end of January (especially one as dramatic as GWRs) to see if something is an isolated issue once or twice or otherwise.

In many respects, there was nothing that dramatic about the GWR timetable change, with a lot of incremental development on top of the basic patterns that have been in place since December 2006.

And there are some services where it is already perfectly reasonable to make a realistic assessment that there are obvious issues that need to be addressed by GWR and Network Rail, sooner rather than later. Such as one train delaying the following service just about every single day that they have both operated since December 17.

Horizon22 · 14 Jan 2020

True, but the more data you get the better with passenger loadings starting to equalise.

mikeb42 · 15 Jan 2020

Every day there seems to be some event that turns everything to crud. Tonight's joy is the semi-regular flooding between Bristol Parkway and Swindon, presumably in the usual cutting/dip. I thought this was supposed to have been sorted with major works not that long ago... At least chaos on the way back out of London makes a refreshing change. The 1735 was "only" 10 minutes late getting to London earlier.

Yes, it is too soon to draw reliable conclusions from the stats, but it doesn't look good.

On a practical level, the delay repay claims are getting tedious. 15 journeys, 8 claims. Only 5 journeys arriving acceptably to time at Paddington.

Maybe "When is a superfast train not a superfast train? When it's routinely slower than a not-superfast train" will turn out to be one of life's more pointless truisms.

Another few days of this and I'll be insisting that no further advance tickets are purchased for this service, reverting instead to the much more reliable but slower 1700. The cost savings from leaving Bristol 25 minutes later are being more than negated by the costs and aggravation of routinely arriving late at appointments at the other end.

Wilts Wanderer · 15 Jan 2020

mikeb42 said:
Every day there seems to be some event that turns everything to crud. Tonight's joy is the semi-regular flooding between Bristol Parkway and Swindon, presumably in the usual cutting/dip. I thought this was supposed to have been sorted with major works not that long ago... At least chaos on the way back out of London makes a refreshing change. The 1735 was "only" 10 minutes late getting to London earlier.

Yes, it is too soon to draw reliable conclusions from the stats, but it doesn't look good.

On a practical level, the delay repay claims are getting tedious. 15 journeys, 8 claims. Only 5 journeys arriving acceptably to time at Paddington.

Maybe "When is a superfast train not a superfast train? When it's routinely slower than a not-superfast train" will turn out to be one of life's more pointless truisms.

Another few days of this and I'll be insisting that no further advance tickets are purchased for this service, reverting instead to the much more reliable but slower 1700. The cost savings from leaving Bristol 25 minutes later are being more than negated by the costs and aggravation of routinely arriving late at appointments at the other end.

Without belittling any of your complaints which must be frustrating, this is entirely normal travel experience on the GWML (and many other routes nationally) at this time of year. Flooding particularly is very badly managed in this country. It isn't in any way connected to the timetable change - the same disruption (or worse) would have occurred under the old timetable too.

To further illustrate the point, the Cardiff-Portsmouth route is being diverted via Chandlers Ford this morning, further adding to the disruption around Bath and Bristol caused by Chipping Sodbury.

swt_passenger · 15 Jan 2020

Wilts Wanderer said:
Without belittling any of your complaints which must be frustrating, this is entirely normal travel experience on the GWML (and many other routes nationally) at this time of year. Flooding particularly is very badly managed in this country. It isn't in any way connected to the timetable change - the same disruption (or worse) would have occurred under the old timetable too.

To further illustrate the point, the Cardiff-Portsmouth route is being diverted via Chandlers Ford this morning, further adding to the disruption around Bath and Bristol caused by Chipping Sodbury.

Although diverting via Chandlers Ford, Eastleigh and Botley in itself doesn’t normally cause any increase in running time. Interesting that NRES described the incident as “flooding AT Romsey”. Presumably it was further towards Redbridge, where the railway isn’t actually on an embankment...

However, as you rightly point out, this has little or nothing to do with the timetable changes. Indeed even if they’d said that part of the GWML route modernisation was to improve weather resilience, I doubt that would have extended all the way down to Southampton...

HowardGWR · 15 Jan 2020

Horizon22 said:
I can see that, but one day (or several around the Xmas / NY period) does not make a trend. I don't think you can do a realistic assessment of any Dec '19 timetable change until the end of January (especially one as dramatic as GWRs) to see if something is an isolated issue once or twice or otherwise.

I totally agree, but one hopes there is a tactical level of operations management that is looking at constantly recurring holdups and see if there is an identical reason for them. I think patterns of this nature could show up very quickly, and with suitable software, analyses can be made far more readily and with minimum human effort. I understand, from MR's Roger Ford, that Didcot now has such sophisticated software.

Horizon22 · 15 Jan 2020

mikeb42 said:
Every day there seems to be some event that turns everything to crud. Tonight's joy is the semi-regular flooding between Bristol Parkway and Swindon, presumably in the usual cutting/dip. I thought this was supposed to have been sorted with major works not that long ago... At least chaos on the way back out of London makes a refreshing change. The 1735 was "only" 10 minutes late getting to London earlier.

Yes, it is too soon to draw reliable conclusions from the stats, but it doesn't look good.

On a practical level, the delay repay claims are getting tedious. 15 journeys, 8 claims. Only 5 journeys arriving acceptably to time at Paddington.

Maybe "When is a superfast train not a superfast train? When it's routinely slower than a not-superfast train" will turn out to be one of life's more pointless truisms.

Another few days of this and I'll be insisting that no further advance tickets are purchased for this service, reverting instead to the much more reliable but slower 1700. The cost savings from leaving Bristol 25 minutes later are being more than negated by the costs and aggravation of routinely arriving late at appointments at the other end.

With a significant chunk of those delays little to do with the timetable change. The only potential indirect cause is more trains on the network = less capacity to recover from incidents.

Horizon22 · 15 Jan 2020

HowardGWR said:
I totally agree, but one hopes there is a tactical level of operations management that is looking at constantly recurring holdups and see if there is an identical reason for them. I think patterns of this nature could show up very quickly, and with suitable software, analyses can be made far more readily and with minimum human effort. I understand, from MR's Roger Ford, that Didcot now has such sophisticated software.

Oh there's lots of good software available to performance teams, but as with any statistical analysis you can make some provisional views after a few data points, but much more informed analysis with more data sets. In the railway's perspective, this normally comes after 4 weeks of operation (excluding Xmas / NY anomalies).

Thunderer · 16 Jan 2020

Most Paddington-Cardiff and Cardiff-Paddington services only formed of 5 coaches today. Is this the new normal since the timetable change in December?

Dren Ahmeti · 16 Jan 2020

Thunderer said:
Most Paddington-Cardiff and Cardiff-Paddington services only formed of 5 coaches today. Is this the new normal since the timetable change in December?

Why do people think that GWR have an underlying conspiracy to short-form services? Bloody hell...

The 5v10’s are due to late running of the South Wales’s as Badminton had just re-opened this morning, and now there’s a metal plate on the OLE and of course the Dawlish hullaballoo: 1A81 had all of its engines cut out and had to be rescued, and 2T15 (143603) had its windows blown out on the back set by sea waves!

FYI, one 5v10 is because 1A87 was cancelled, so 1L80 split at PAD, with 5 cars forming 1B26 1717 to Cardiff and the other 5 forming 1C25 1730 to Taunton.

317362 · 16 Jan 2020

Interested as to why 1K22 1708 Paddington-Bedwyn seems to have general problems getting out of Paddington on time.

Is 10 car to Newbury and the splitting remains problematic, so most days it's a late departure from Paddington, losing time and getting ina queue before Reading, lost time to Newbury and delays in splitting at Newbury. Average delay so far is about 20 mins.

Parallel · 16 Jan 2020

Dren Ahmeti said:
The 5v10’s are due to late running of the South Wales’s as Badminton had just re-opened this morning, and now there’s a metal plate on the OLE and of course the Dawlish hullaballoo: 1A81 had all of its engines cut out and had to be rescued, and 2T15 had its windows blown out on the back set by sea waves!

Oh dear! Hopefully nobody was injured.

Do you know which unit Class formed 1A81?

cactustwirly · 16 Jan 2020

317362 said:
Interested as to why 1K22 Paddington-Bedwyn seems to have general problems getting out of Paddington on time.

Is 10 car to Newbury and the splitting remains problematic, so most days it's a late departure from Paddington, losing time and getting ina queue before Reading, lost time to Newbury and delays in splitting at Newbury. Average delay so far is about 20 mins.

I'm guessing you mean the 1708 departure? The old 1707 used to be quite reliable

Dren Ahmeti · 16 Jan 2020

Parallel said:
Oh dear! Hopefully nobody was injured.

Do you know which unit Class formed 1A81?

802011, 5 car unit.

Mag_seven · 16 Jan 2020

Dren Ahmeti said:
Why do people think that GWR have an underlying conspiracy to short-form services? Bloody hell...

I think that's a bit harsh - the poster did not mention any "conspiracy theory" - they were mainly observing the large number of 5 cars on Padd-Cardiff services.

317362 · 16 Jan 2020

cactustwirly said:
I'm guessing you mean the 1708 departure? The old 1707 used to be quite reliable

Correct, have edited to be clear. It did, you're right. Not so now. I was really pleasantly surprised it went to 10 car with a split, but it's not just this bit causing problems. I get it with my three year old so reliability is useful!

Dren Ahmeti · 16 Jan 2020

Mag_seven said:
I think that's a bit harsh - the poster did not mention any "conspiracy theory" - they were mainly observing the large number of 5 cars on Padd-Cardiff services.

Part of many postings - not by the OP to be fair - that you can infer an underlying sense of GWR being to blame for 5v9 or 5v10’s, when it’s either units being displaced or Hitachi and their maintenance schedules...

irish_rail · 16 Jan 2020

Sadly it is a daily occurrence since December to run short forms on the pz to pad route. All the assurances that trains would all be 10 car plym to padd have so far proved not to be the case. Gwr need to start prioritising the routes had get 9s and 10s. They might just about get away with it midweek in January, but if this continues by April, large numbers will be standing for very long periods.

WelshBluebird · 16 Jan 2020

Dren Ahmeti said:
Why do people think that GWR have an underlying conspiracy to short-form services? Bloody hell...

I dont think anyone does think that.
What people are saying though is that some of us predicted that 5 instead of 10 would happen on a more regular basis than some others would care to admit and we were told that we were talking rubbish or needlessly worrying. Then when it started happening we were told that it was because we needed to wait till the rolling stock was all in use. Then we were told we had to wait until the timetable change. And now what's the excuse?

Clarence Yard · 16 Jan 2020

I will repeat. If you don’t put the right units into Laira, Long Rock or Maliphant in the evening, you won’t get the right ones out in the morning. That’s the overriding reason for short forms on both the the West of England’s and South Wales routes since December. It isn’t an epidemic but it is more than is desirable, usually about 2 diagrams a day, today was 5 diagrams at start of play.

Spare units off maintenance or repair tend to come off North Pole or Stoke Gifford so the normal procedure is to short form from the first up working and then add or swap to booked formation later in the diagram, if a unit is available.

When the infrastructure gives out and the service goes to pot, it gets very difficult for Control to juggle the service with the contractual matrix because if you have to put the “wrong” sets into the country depots or stabling points at night, then you are chasing your tail again the following day.

Thanks to all the infrastructure problems, the past few days have been very trying for everyone.

HamworthyGoods · 16 Jan 2020

Thunderer said:
Most Paddington-Cardiff and Cardiff-Paddington services only formed of 5 coaches today. Is this the new normal since the timetable change in December?

The off-peak pattern to Cardiff is a mix of 5 cars, 9 cars and 10 cars with the Swansea trains either 9 or 10 cars.

jimm · 16 Jan 2020

WelshBluebird said:
I dont think anyone does think that.
What people are saying though is that some of us predicted that 5 instead of 10 would happen on a more regular basis than some others would care to admit and we were told that we were talking rubbish or needlessly worrying. Then when it started happening we were told that it was because we needed to wait till the rolling stock was all in use. Then we were told we had to wait until the timetable change. And now what's the excuse?

If it is so 'regular' then could you, or anyone else, tell us what the average percentage of GWR HSS services being short-formed on a daily basis is?

I won't be holding my breath, because all we have ever got, before the IETs were introduced and since they entered service, is lots of predictions and assertions and precious little by way of actual evidence/figures/statistics from any of you.

As Clarence Yard puts it, there is no sign of an epidemic - and following the diagrams through some days, it is clear that where a 5-car is running on its own, some are deliberately placed on diagrams that involves contra-peak workings to keep them away from Paddington at the busiest times of the day.

For the umpteenth time, short-forming happened in the good old days when the supply of HSTs ran out at Paddington and Thames Valley/Oxford/Cotswold trains ended up with whatever else could be begged, borrowed or short-formed to plug the gaps, including a Hull Trains 180 getting a run out to Worcester on one occasion, or two-car 165s to Hereford instead of HSTs.

irish_rail · 16 Jan 2020

Clarence Yard said:
I will repeat. If you don’t put the right units into Laira, Long Rock or Maliphant in the evening, you won’t get the right ones out in the morning. That’s the overriding reason for short forms on both the the West of England’s and South Wales routes since December. It isn’t an epidemic but it is more than is desirable, usually about 2 diagrams a day, today was 5 diagrams at start of play.

Spare units off maintenance or repair tend to come off North Pole or Stoke Gifford so the normal procedure is to short form from the first up working and then add or swap to booked formation later in the diagram, if a unit is available.

When the infrastructure gives out and the service goes to pot, it gets very difficult for Control to juggle the service with the contractual matrix because if you have to put the “wrong” sets into the country depots or stabling points at night, then you are chasing your tail again the following day.

Thanks to all the infrastructure problems, the past few days have been very trying for everyone.

So you have explained the reason for the problem, but what is the solution?. Do we just keep bumbling along, consistently short forming daily long distance trains ( 10.15 pz to padd seems a favourite despite being a very busy one). Surely we cannot just go on this happening as come Easter and onwards you will get people standing for 2 , 3 hours plus. All the while Bristol gets 4 tph many of which run half empty. Surely priorities are wrong here.....

gaillark · 16 Jan 2020

irish_rail said:
So you have explained the reason for the problem, but what is the solution?. Do we just keep bumbling along, consistently short forming daily long distance trains ( 10.15 pz to padd seems a favourite despite being a very busy one). Surely we cannot just go on this happening as come Easter and onwards you will get people standing for 2 , 3 hours plus. All the while Bristol gets 4 tph many of which run half empty. Surely priorities are wrong here.....

Could this possibly have been solved when the DfT proposed a separate franchise for the West of England?
I doubt that there would be too many short forms if this route were part of a separate franchise - more likely we would have refurbished HST's lengthend to 9 coaches like East Coast had. It also would present it's own challenges as a stand alone franchise .

JonathanH · 16 Jan 2020

gaillark said:
Could this possibly have been solved when the DfT proposed a separate franchise for the West of England?

No.

gaillark said:
I doubt that there would be too many short forms if this route were part of a separate franchise - more likely we would have refurbished HST's lengthend to 9 coaches like East Coast had. It also would present it's own challenges as a stand alone franchise .

It would have been a disaster. Why would there be fewer short forms if there were a separate franchise? The trains aren't being used on a different route in preference to the South West, they are just not in the right depots at the start of the day. Isn't it just a case of needing a spare unit somewhere other than North Pole or Stoke Gifford?

HSTs lengthened to 9 car wouldn't fit in the sidings at Penzance any more than 9-car 802s do.

Where would the extra stock for weekends / Newquay in the Summer come from if there was a separate South West franchise?

GWR Dec 19 timetable

Established Member

RailUK Forums

Member

Established Member

Established Member

Established Member

Established Member

Established Member

Member

Established Member

Veteran Member

Established Member

Established Member

Established Member

Member

Member

Member

Established Member

Established Member

Member

Forum Staff

Member

Member

Established Member

Established Member

Established Member

Established Member

Established Member

Established Member

Member

Veteran Member