Actually jimm, as a BTW, I think the figures for Cornwall in total are still quite impressive and thus justify GWR's half hourly service with the join/split sometimes at Plymouth, from Dec 19 2019. Doesn't take anything away from the point you are making though. Doubtless this fact added to their decision-making,
As I noted back on page 34, almost a quarter of the passengers in Cornwall are on the Falmouth branch - so largely students and locals travelling up and down to Truro - and holiday season park-and-riders on the St Ives branch.
Take them off the total, take out all the people simply making other local trips within Cornwall, or no further than Plymouth, and the idea that there are vast numbers making London-Cornwall journeys all the time simply does not hold water and amply justifies the decision-making process - explained many times now by Clarence Yard - on the structure of the timetable and rolling stock allocations there and in other places on GWR where there is far higher overall passenger demand, such as Oxford.
Exactly! The fact oxford gets twice the number of trains than Cornwall from London yet doesn't have significantly more passengers rather supports the argument that either oxford is over served or Cornwall underserved.
Did you actually read and absorb the whole of HowardGWR's post? It doesn't look like it.
You are the person who has laughably claimed that as there are 500,000 people scattered across Cornwall that it should be treated like a conurbation of 500,000 when it comes to planning services.
Oxford station generates all that traffic off the back of a population of less than 160,000. Chuck in the adjacent 'village' of Kidlington (population about the same as the city of Truro) and Oxford Parkway station and that's another million passengers on to the local total.
And rather than bang on about how good we have it down here why not actually visit or listen to those of us on the ground dealing with the hectic farce that is the December 2019 timetable. Passengers - confused. Staff - confused. Trains- short formed daily.
Lack of crew to cope with all the extra ecs moves. It isn't going well whatever the punctuality figures may claim.
There is no reason why diagrams couldn't be 're jigged come may, so that a 9 car is used on the 1304 to Plymouth and back and then swapped at London onto a different working so it finishes at the right place.
Saying that people choose to get on the oxford to London's at Reading isn't really justified. An announcement telling them to wait 2 minutes for the next train would suffice and most would probably listen. Or are your precious south eastern customers immune from having to do what they are told , whereas those in the south west should do whatever GWR tell them too!
Could you enlighten me as to where all the short-formed train are today then?
From GWR Journeycheck just now.
0 Train Formation Updates
You keep crying wolf, but the script never changes, and you never actually produce any concrete evidence for what you say.
If a nine-car is used on the 13.04 to Plymouth then it gets back to Paddington at 20.22, so it wouldn't be going anywhere else for at least another 20 minutes and might just about squeeze in a lightly-loaded run to Bristol and back at that time of the day - or just go straight on to the depot. All very, er, productive....
It's not justified - did you miss the bit where I said that is exactly what happens? Unless a preceding train from Bristol/South Wales is late and has just cleared everyone off the platform when a five-car from Oxford/Cotswold Line/Cheltenham gets in, the passengers wanting a fast from Reading to Paddington get on whatever is in the platform, no matter what any announcements might tell them, or how busy the train is.
Why are you so keen that the 13.04 is a 9 car not at a 10 car I don’t understand? Same number of seats etc.
The reason the 13.04 is a 10 car which nobody seems to have picked up is in the high summer this train divides at Plymouth with 5 cars carrying onto Penzance. The rear 5 cars attach onto the 5 cars which come up from Newquay.
It's very simple - because of irishrail's dogged insistence that the South West is just so special that everything running between there and London simply must be an unsplittable 640-seat train all the time, irrespective of the variable loadings at different times of the day, and west of Plymouth - whereas everywhere else on the GWR HSS operation can just make do with whatever is left over, even if there are far more passengers, year-round, on those routes to begin with.
Although I don't see what conclusions can be drawn from comparing passenger numbers on an 80 mile stretch of railway serving multiple stations in one of the country's most socially and economically deprived areas with the one station in a wealthy city in the oute London commuter belt. Chalk and cheese.
What next? Waterloo and the Far North line?
You probably need to read back through some of irishrail's output to get what I am driving at - such as the example I give at the start of this post.
Apparently the area you say is socially and economically deprived - so not likely to be a top generator of rail travel demand - needs 640-seat London trains morning, noon and night, year-round, whereas other places do not - and while it is fine for those 640-seat trains to run half-empty, or worse, one or both ways through Cornwall, every journey any of them makes in other parts of the country, such as the 12.50 Paddington to Worcester/15.20 return, when they might not be packed to the doors all the time, must be eliminated forthwith and the offending piece of rolling stock dispatched to the West Country post haste.
Though as plans for the 769s develop it appears that they will be confined to the North Downs Line, branches east of Reading and Basingstoke. Sadly it's the 3-car Turbos that will be cascaded west leaving little prospect of anything other than 2-car Turbos shuttling up and down between Banbury, Oxford, Didcot and Reading as well as the two daily runs down the Cotswold Line. Commuters between Didcot and Oxford are worse off than ever, not helped by the very poor timekeeping of one of the main morning services into Oxford from Didcot at 08:07 - 9 minutes late again today which is about what is typical.