Well yes Indeed, and if the new West Midlands Franchise opts for some new trains instead of taking some of the cascaded EMU's to be available and/or gets rid of some of its existing newer EMU's then its going to get very interesting.
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New South Western franchise: Awarded to First/MTR
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Well yes Indeed, and if the new West Midlands Franchise opts for some new trains instead of taking some of the cascaded EMU's to be available and/or gets rid of some of its existing newer EMU's then its going to get very interesting.
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It's a question of "the market" fixing problems which don't exist while ignoring those which do. It was the same with there apparently being no "business case" to replace life expired 142's before Patrick Mcloughlin took things in hand.
southern442
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It just seems to me that we already had too much of the wrong thing, and now we are about to get a whole lot more of it. Plus from someone in South Central territory I'm a bit miffed that the only trains that were ever purpose built for Gatwick Express got sent away and we were left with increasingly inadequate trains, all for nothing now.
Juniper Driver
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158's and that's only 1 unit...Do they ever use 159's on it? Never seen one.
swt_passenger
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I have a photo of one being tested down there from 2009, but haven't heard of one being used in service.
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Well I agree Its not ideal given the amount of work that been done on them if they end up sitting in a siding. To me I think it would have made more sense making some of the 450's more Intercity style with 2+2 seating for the Portsmouth route instead of digging up the 442's and keeping either the 707's or the 458's, but of course re-tractioned 442's and an all new suburban fleet may be the cheapest option for First/MTR.
southern442
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Agreed. They could have just ordered a load more 707's and put toilets in them which would free up the 450's too. Also, has there been any specification as to whether the coastal fleet need toilets or not? Could the 458's help out down there?
Personally I'm not complaining about the re-introduction of the 442's, although logically speaking there are more sensible ways to approach the problem.
I have heard of it once, back when the CIGs were still working the line. A 159 filled in one afternoon. It would have been around the time they were preparing to replace them.
ChiefPlanner
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What works the Lymington branch is about the least important option on the franchise , frankly.
HarleyDavidson
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Make it a tram, self contained easy to look after one track two trams, jobs a goodun.
Matt Taylor
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This transcript has appeared elsewhere but page suggests that all out DOO isn't on the agenda and given the length of the franchise it would be a brave decision anyhow, but changes to how crew work appear to be on the horizon. Interestingly there's a comment regarding allowing child fares for 16-18 year olds towards the end of the document.
http://www.firstgroupplc.com/~/media/Files/F/Firstgroup-Plc/170327%20FGP%20SWR%20transcript.pdf
http://www.firstgroupplc.com/~/media/Files/F/Firstgroup-Plc/170327%20FGP%20SWR%20transcript.pdf
ChiefPlanner
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Exactly - they could the use the (somewhat expensive and very late in delivery) - Rotherham tram train technology / stock. Must be an option for a simple depot arrangemt at Brockenhurst. Job done.
I hope any new timetable does not have any detrimental affect for commuters going from Clapham on the Portsmouth southbound in the morning.
SpacePhoenix
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What class of stock (presumably either 444s or 450s) get used on the current Southampton Central-Portsmouth Harbour route?
The 458s have the disadvantage of not all of them being convertible in the future to AC which makes the 458 fleet in effect a pure DC only fleet.
The 458s have the disadvantage of not all of them being convertible in the future to AC which makes the 458 fleet in effect a pure DC only fleet.
1x450, occasionally a 158.
The padding at Reading now is nuts with trains often sitting 5 minutes at least in both directions. Swindon also has more padding so Bristol to London takes far linfer than it should.
I imagine the 16-18 year old fares will create some new splitting ticketing options for children of that age. After all I assume this only applies to fares set by South West Trains.
So more advances will be sold to and from other stations. Does anyone have any examples of destinations or starting places that don't currently have advances at all? Will they sell advances to stations not served by South West Trains? It was lack of advances between operating companies in the South East which partly drew me to split ticketing.
I also found the comments on passenger service and DCO interesting. It could be read as we don't think DCO provides good passenger service or read as, if we introduce it, it will lead to strikes, which won't be good passenger service.
I imagine it's the latter, although I'd prefer it to be the former.
swt_passenger
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450s almost 100%. There is supposed to be one round trip in the SX morning peak (0623 from Portsmouth returning 0752 from Southampton) that is operated by a 444, apparently to release a 450 to strengthen mainline routes that need a twelve car.
I only say 'supposed to be' because I have never been up that early recently.
swt_passenger
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They no longer use a DMU, but when they did it was a 159.
swt_passenger
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The SWT 'Advance fares' within their own network are fairly limited, origins towards London have to be from west of Brockenhurst and somewhere on the Exeter line. However the availability of Megatrain fares clouds the issue, because they are to a certain extent a special type of Advance, and you'd expect them to be immediately withdrawn.
So increasing the options for Advance might simply be a case of providing them as direct replacements for Megatrain fares, e.g. from Southampton Central to Waterloo.
There certainly is a 444 used on those journies, but from memory it's not the same unit, the 0623 ex pms bangs onto something and forms a Waterloo service.
I think you'll find it will be rather more than that. There's also likely to a number of fare innovations based around "smart" ticketing. I say this based on how keen DfT were, and still are based on what's being said re South Eastern, for these things to happen.
Megatrain will be withdrawn because they are a Stagecoach product, not an SSWT one.
swt_passenger
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Oh right, so it would be better to just say explain it as one trip each way.
swt_passenger
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1. And so was my reply.
2. It's not a question of how it's explained; it's a fact.
Let me make it even clearer what I'm saying, for the hard of understanding. First/MTR will offer more advance fares than SSWT and they almost certainly won't simply be replacing ones currently sold by Megatrain.
What is true is that the replacement is unlikely to be identical to Megatrain, so there are likely to be winners and losers.
bb21
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National PPM in 16-17 was the worst since 2005.
National P9 PPM was the worst in 158 periods iirc. Puts it all into context.
Agreed.
Currently one small incident and the Weymouth services are in pieces.
SWT have increased the number of places you can get Advance tickets from within the last year or so. They're now available from Salisbury/Southampton/Portsmouth to London.
Been reported by The Times that Stagecoach are discussing reducing premium payments for the East Coast franchise because their passenger grow is around 4% when their bid was based on growth being 8-9%. That might not have helped their SWT bid.
Slightly ironic considering they are licencing the Virgin brand name and Virgin successfully appealed the decision to award the West Coast franchise to First claiming passenger growth forecasts in their bid were unrealistic.
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It does. I knew it had been bad, but I didn't realise it had been that bad. Why has 16/17 been so bad - any particular reason or just blind chance?
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