Chiltern Oxford Link completed

[LexyBoy]

And that intermediate price point would be where? FGW offer advance OXF-PAD singles as low as £5 via their website, so if you can shop around they are an absolute bargain. Find two of them that suit your journey and you are paying less than a single on the M40 coaches.

Advances are insignificant in the scheme of things; the money will be from commuters. (And Megabus £1.50 fares are available on many Tube departures BTW). Current annual tickets are:
Rail: £4348
Tube: £1130
For comparison, from Bicester North it's £4060. I'd expect a saving of £500 per annum over the Any Permitted fare would win over a reasonable number of passengers.

Chiltern's key target is traffic between Water Eaton and London - Oxford station is a secondary consideration.

Agreed. It's hard to guess what the implications on routeing would be, but I would anticipate both Any Permitted and via High Wycombe (or equivalent) would be available from intermediate stations on the Oxford-Bicester line, so pricing would still have to be competitive. I'd also hope the Bicester stations get grouped.

My guess would be that Chiltern will introduce "via High Wycombe" walk-up fares and "Chiltern only" Advance fares, as per the existing tickets for Leamington and points North thereof.

Seems likely - let's hope the routeing is via High Wycombe rather than Chiltern Only. As you say it's all a long way off now.

 

[aylesbury]

Indeed the East West link might benefit Aylesbury but unless the infrastructure upgrade of our entire area is carried out no gain will happen.The road links into the town are useless and are not being upgraded although a big industrial development taking place in a village nearby is going to put 400 plus lorries through the town every day,just a few traffic lights being put in.Probably with the new links people will be leaving the town to work and shop ,it is unlikely that any official improvements will take place as Bucks County Council and AVDC are totaly banckrupt of ideas .At least Chiltern are trying to inovate and provide us with travel alternatives albiet awkward to access because of our useless road network.The suggestion of a soutwards link at Calvert would be good but the passenger take up would be low.When its opened East West will provide an interchange at Winslow to Oxford from Aylesbury this could be well used if advertised and timetabled properly .Our bus links are quite good HWycombe every 15 minutes ,Oxfrd 15 mins Watford 30mins but are are slowed by traffic levels ,on these routes the buses are good quality.But all the main developments are bypassing the town and we will continue to stagnate ,not a good prospect for the county town.

 

[IanXC]

Presumably Chiltern will take a slice of the Any Permitted tickets which are sold for London-Oxford journeys and both FGW and Chiltern will offer cheaper one operator only tickets, same as London-Birmingham with VT/LM/Chiltern all competing. We'll also likely see single operator only season tickets which might tempt people on a tighter budget.

The lead operator (which sets the Any Permitted) isn't usually allowed to set a TOC specific price for walk up tickets. I'm not sure whether a "via Reading" fare would be possible?

 

[barrykas]

The lead operator (which sets the Any Permitted) isn't usually allowed to set a TOC specific price for walk up tickets. I'm not sure whether a "via Reading" fare would be possible?

I refer the honourable gentleman to flows like London - Glasgow, where there's a "Virgin Only" Anytime First Single and Return, ditto on the ECML where there are "East Coast only" Anytime First Singles and Returns, and similarly London - Milton Keynes, where both Virgin and London Midland have TOC-specific fares.

 

[jimm]

Presumably Chiltern will take a slice of the Any Permitted tickets which are sold for London-Oxford journeys and both FGW and Chiltern will offer cheaper one operator only tickets, same as London-Birmingham with VT/LM/Chiltern all competing. We'll also likely see single operator only season tickets which might tempt people on a tighter budget.

Plus, Chiltern's evening peak restrictions aren't as strict; an Any Permitted off-peak ticket could get you to Oxford from Marylebone but wouldn't be valid on most evening peak trains out of Paddington.

So yeah, I'm pretty sure they're mostly after the London-Oxford market.

Depends what you mean by Oxford - but traffic to/from central Oxford is not the key consideration and never has been - they are after commuter custom via Water Eaton from the parts of Oxford from which it is an arduous slog to get to the station in the morning across the city centre and from Kidlington (right on the doorstep of Water Eaton), a 'village' of 17,000 people, and from people on the eastern side of Oxford who currently drive to the Thornhill park-and-ride on the A40 near Headington and get on a coach to London. To try to free spaces at Thornhill park-and-ride for people going into Oxford, the county council is about to introduce parking fees there, making Water Eaton Parkway an even more attractive prospect once the trains start running.

Between the existing (usually rather empty) bus park-and-ride car park at Water Eaton and the expansion under Chiltern's plan, there will be something like 1,500 parking spaces there (almost three times Bicester North or Oxford's capacities) - that's what I call a declaration of intent. Plus there are already frequent bus services passing the site on top of the city park-and-ride buses which turn round there. They may be after a slice of Orcats money from Oxford but electrification, etc, means the GW express journey time will come down - hopefully to 45 minutes, though so addicted to padding have the railways become, they may just settle for 50. But if full advantage is taken there is potentially a substantial time margin against Chiltern's 66 minutes - whatever their fares - a timing which will be extended for anything calling at Islip or extra stations on the Chiltern main line. But if you hit Water Eaton around the hour mark and spare a lot of people the fight to get through central Oxford, then you are on to a winner.

And remember Chiltern have to pay for all the work on the line from fares, over rather fewer years than they first expected, so they will have to strike a balance between that consideration and competitive pricing, against both the GW route operator and the coaches.

Peak ticket restrictions can perfectly well change, so whatever Chiltern are doing now is no guarantee of what they may be doing two or three years hence. Also, if you are travelling to Cotswold Line stations, which Chiltern may have half an eye on pinching traffic from (though the car park extensions at Charlbury and Hanborough may well reduce potential transfers) off-peak tickets are valid for return journeys on peak trains from Paddington - and for London-bound travel from the Cotswold Line at the back end of the morning peak.

 

[The Ham]

Indeed the East West link might benefit Aylesbury but unless the infrastructure upgrade of our entire area is carried out no gain will happen.The road links into the town are useless and are not being upgraded although a big industrial development taking place in a village nearby is going to put 400 plus lorries through the town every day,just a few traffic lights being put in.Probably with the new links people will be leaving the town to work and shop ,it is unlikely that any official improvements will take place as Bucks County Council and AVDC are totaly banckrupt of ideas.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but although 400 lorries a day may sound a lot, over a 10 hour day that is only one extra lorry movement through a traffic light juntion each 90 second cycle time (time from one arm to go green through to maximum time taken for it to go green). Which given the general amount of traffic on the roads is likely to be a very small amount of extra traffic.

Now it is likely that the lorries will not want to drive in the peak hours, so even if you remove them you are still looking at 2 lorries per cycle time at a junction (5 hour day). If it was a housing development generating that much traffic (on a much smaller site) there proberbly would be no junction improvements and if it was a housing development on the same size site you'd be looking at several times the amount of traffic, although you would be looking at more junction improvements (but no new roads).

 

[IanXC]

I refer the honourable gentleman to flows like London - Glasgow, where there's a "Virgin Only" Anytime First Single and Return, ditto on the ECML where there are "East Coast only" Anytime First Singles and Returns, and similarly London - Milton Keynes, where both Virgin and London Midland have TOC-specific fares.

I may well be wrong! I was aware of some cases of this on the West Coast, I had the impression the rule was a response to Virgin introducing such fares. I'd not come across these on the ECML though, do you have some examples as I'm intrigued!

 

[barrykas]

I may well be wrong! I was aware of some cases of this on the West Coast, I had the impression the rule was a response to Virgin introducing such fares. I'd not come across these on the ECML though, do you have some examples as I'm intrigued!

It seems to be fairly random: London - Grantham has them, but London - Newark doesn't. London - Retford has Any Permitted, East Coast and Hull Trains only FORs, as does London - Doncaster. London - York offers Any PErmitted, East Coast and Grand Central only, and so on.

Looking at Grantham - Edinburgh, on the other hand, you can only get Any Permitted ones, but switch to Doncaster - Edinburgh and EC only reappears.

 

[Andyjs247]

Depends what you mean by Oxford - but traffic to/from central Oxford is not the key consideration and never has been - they are after commuter custom via Water Eaton from the parts of Oxford from which it is an arduous slog to get to the station in the morning across the city centre and from Kidlington (right on the doorstep of Water Eaton), a 'village' of 17,000 people, and from people on the eastern side of Oxford who currently drive to the Thornhill park-and-ride on the A40 near Headington and get on a coach to London. To try to free spaces at Thornhill park-and-ride for people going into Oxford, the county council is about to introduce parking fees there, making Water Eaton Parkway an even more attractive prospect once the trains start running.

Between the existing (usually rather empty) bus park-and-ride car park at Water Eaton and the expansion under Chiltern's plan, there will be something like 1,500 parking spaces there (almost three times Bicester North or Oxford's capacities) - that's what I call a declaration of intent. Plus there are already frequent bus services passing the site on top of the city park-and-ride buses which turn round there. They may be after a slice of Orcats money from Oxford but electrification, etc, means the GW express journey time will come down - hopefully to 45 minutes, though so addicted to padding have the railways become, they may just settle for 50. But if full advantage is taken there is potentially a substantial time margin against Chiltern's 66 minutes - whatever their fares - a timing which will be extended for anything calling at Islip or extra stations on the Chiltern main line. But if you hit Water Eaton around the hour mark and spare a lot of people the fight to get through central Oxford, then you are on to a winner.

I believe that the 66 minute timing MYB-OXF may well be quicker when the service actually launches. With the mainline timetable MYB-BCS is possible in around 44 minutes now an I suspect the promotional materials weren't updated owing to the delay in gaining approval for the scheme. Even though the journey to Bicester Town will be slower (the chord will be limited to 40mph), if the time from there to Oxford comes down to 14 minutes then it ought to be possible to get to Oxford in about 1 hour. The High Wycombe stop will slow things down a bit, but I still think sub 66 minutes is easily doable (8 minutes for Water Eaton-Oxford suggests some recovery time here).

From a marketing point of view it would be fantastic to claim a 1 hour timing; will there be at least one train which is non-stop from Marylebone - Bicester or Water Eaton? It would certainly make the time difference marginal between Water Eaton-MYB vs OXF-PAD.

 

[jimm]

I believe that the 66 minute timing MYB-OXF may well be quicker when the service actually launches. With the mainline timetable MYB-BCS is possible in around 44 minutes now an I suspect the promotional materials weren't updated owing to the delay in gaining approval for the scheme. Even though the journey to Bicester Town will be slower (the chord will be limited to 40mph), if the time from there to Oxford comes down to 14 minutes then it ought to be possible to get to Oxford in about 1 hour. The High Wycombe stop will slow things down a bit, but I still think sub 66 minutes is easily doable (8 minutes for Water Eaton-Oxford suggests some recovery time here).

From a marketing point of view it would be fantastic to claim a 1 hour timing; will there be at least one train which is non-stop from Marylebone - Bicester or Water Eaton? It would certainly make the time difference marginal between Water Eaton-MYB vs OXF-PAD.

Enjoy your fantasy. The 66 minute time is a realistic timing, not one from an ideal world whether things never go wrong - the new flat junction at Bicester creates obvious potential for conflicts and delays when trains are late and running out of their booked paths.

If you are going to load/unload a lot of people from eight-car formations at busy times, you are not going to be making Formula 1-style station stops at Bicester and Water Eaton.

The proposed timetable relies on some very tight turnrounds in Oxford anyway, which pose a very obvious performance risk for London-bound trains, so after the bitter experience of the first few weeks of the Mainline timetable last year, caution will be the watchword. Get it wrong at the outset and bang goes any goodwill passengers may have for Chiltern offering something new.

And what would be the point of running a lone super-fast train? Virgin do this between Manchester and London and Birmingham and London and in the context of a turn-up-and-go service, with trains every 20 minutes, these few trains are an irrelevance.

Why would you base a marketing strategy around one utterly untypical train's running time? It just makes you look stupid - Chiltern's reputation has been founded on frequency and reliability and that reputation took a serious hit last year, for all the press releases proclaiming their glorious successes in growing traffic to/from the West Midlands. Rather less seems to be said about the bread and butter commuter traffic closer to London on which they built the business, places where there is still deep anger about the impact of Mainline on frequencies and stopping patterns and more grumbling about further changes planned for December.

You ignored what I said about electrification making big inroads into the Paddington timing. Whoever is operating GW services will, at least if they have any sense, want Network Rail to deliver the fastest possible journey time to give an edge against Chiltern. A 45-minute timing with a Reading stop was achievable by HSTs before the GWML became so congested with extra trains - and that would be a consistent timing across the overwhelming majority of Oxford-London fast services, not some isolated piece of grandstanding.

 

[Eagle]

And what would be the point of running a lone super-fast train? Virgin do this between Manchester and London and Birmingham and London and in the context of a turn-up-and-go service, with trains every 20 minutes, these few trains are an irrelevance.

Something of which Chiltern are also guilty. This is the only train that does Birmingham to London, or vice versa, in their much-touted 90 minutes.

 

[barrykas]

Something of which Chiltern are also guilty. This is the only train that does Birmingham to London, or vice versa, in their much-touted 90 minutes.

Except Chiltern changed the "headline time" in their advertising to 100 minutes when Virgin called "foul" to the ASA...Whilst Virgin continue to advertise a journey time (1 hour 22 minutes) that is achieved by a minority of their trains.

Incidentally, the 16:30 ex-Marylebone is timetabled to take 90 minutes to Moor Street as well.

 

[The Ham]

Enjoy your fantasy. The 66 minute time is a realistic timing, not one from an ideal world whether things never go wrong - the new flat junction at Bicester creates obvious potential for conflicts and delays when trains are late and running out of their booked paths.

Also there is very little advantage of a sub 60 minute service unless you can turn the train around and use it on a return service.

If you have a 66 minute service that allows you 9 minutes to turn the train around at each end and still be on a 30 minute frequency service (5 trains required; as it takes 150 minutes for one train from starting one service to it being able to start the next).

Otherwise if you have a 59 minute service you either only have 1 minute to turn around (4 trains; as it takes 120 minutes) or end up with trains with a 16 minute turn around (still with 5 trains).

 

[tbtc]

It seems to be fairly random: London - Grantham has them, but London - Newark doesn't. London - Retford has Any Permitted, East Coast and Hull Trains only FORs, as does London - Doncaster. London - York offers Any PErmitted, East Coast and Grand Central only, and so on.

Looking at Grantham - Edinburgh, on the other hand, you can only get Any Permitted ones, but switch to Doncaster - Edinburgh and EC only reappears.

London - Grantham has more than one TOC running direct trains, so does London - Retford, London - York, Doncaster - Edinburgh etc.

Whereas there are no direct alternatives between London and Newark* or Grantham to Edinburgh (so no alternative fares).

(* - yes, okay, there's one direct EMT service a day from London to Newark via Leicester and Nottingham, if you want to be pedantic)

You ignored what I said about electrification making big inroads into the Paddington timing. Whoever is operating GW services will, at least if they have any sense, want Network Rail to deliver the fastest possible journey time to give an edge against Chiltern. A 45-minute timing with a Reading stop was achievable by HSTs before the GWML became so congested with extra trains - and that would be a consistent timing across the overwhelming majority of Oxford-London fast services, not some isolated piece of grandstanding.

This is an interesting point, one which hasn't been touched upon much in all the excitement about "competition".

If Chiltern had got their Oxford plans sorted out a decade ago, they could have had many years of providing a fast alternative to the FGW service between London and Oxford.

However they are going to be introducing their new Marylebone service a couple of years before the London - Reading - Oxford line is upgraded with electrification/ IEP/ 110mph running even on the "slow" services... they may have picked a bad time to tap into that market (if the end to end market was what they were chasing after).

 

[Buttsy]

This is an interesting point, one which hasn't been touched upon much in all the excitement about "competition".

If Chiltern had got their Oxford plans sorted out a decade ago, they could have had many years of providing a fast alternative to the FGW service between London and Oxford.

However they are going to be introducing their new Marylebone service a couple of years before the London - Reading - Oxford line is upgraded with electrification/ IEP/ 110mph running even on the "slow" services... they may have picked a bad time to tap into that market (if the end to end market was what they were chasing after).

Being from the area, I think the market that's being aimed for is for north of Oxford commuters to London to save them either the trip into Oxford for the train or the traffic congestion around the Green Road (Headington) roundabout for Thornhill P&R and the coaches.

 

[Cherry_Picker]

Something of which Chiltern are also guilty. This is the only train that does Birmingham to London, or vice versa, in their much-touted 90 minutes.

At the risk of taking this further off topic, the 08:55 is generally the fastest train between the two cities. I have done Moor Street - Marylebone in 86-87 minutes on multiple occasions on that train as there are fewer trains to catch up at the southern end of the line because the morning peak is over by the time the 08:55 reaches there.

 

[route:oxford]

If Chiltern had got their Oxford plans sorted out a decade ago, they could have had many years of providing a fast alternative to the FGW service between London and Oxford.

If only they did...

There may have been the option for "local" services operating between Princes Risborough and Oxford - with a new P&R at Wheatley, as well as stations at BMW/Business Park, Littlemore/Science Park/London Welsh Stadium & Redbridge/Kennington.

 

[Buttsy]

If only they did...

There may have been the option for "local" services operating between Princes Risborough and Oxford - with a new P&R at Wheatley, as well as stations at BMW/Business Park, Littlemore/Science Park/London Welsh Stadium & Redbridge/Kennington.

What's the London Welsh Stadium?????? It wasn't built this year for rugby. It's a footy ground first & foremost, just like Adams Park and Vicarage Road.

 

[route:oxford]

What's the London Welsh Stadium?????? It wasn't built this year for rugby. It's a footy ground first & foremost, just like Adams Park and Vicarage Road.

Talking to Oxford United Fans at work, they all seem to pretty much hate it and are convinced they'll soon be leaving it for a new build stadium elsewhere.

So why not name it after the soon-to-be primary tenanats?

 

[tbtc]

If only they did...

There may have been the option for "local" services operating between Princes Risborough and Oxford - with a new P&R at Wheatley, as well as stations at BMW/Business Park, Littlemore/Science Park/London Welsh Stadium & Redbridge/Kennington.

Although a decade ago there was no rugby team there?

 

[Buttsy]

Although a decade ago there was no rugby team there?

A year ago there was no rugby team there. I've been following Oxford United for 30 years now and I'm OK with the stadium, though a 4th stand would be nice. Also, after all the hassle in getting the council to agree to a site since the 70s, I can't see them giving planning permission for a new ground elsewhere.

The stadium was planned for 'Championship' football, when it was finally completed, it was 'League 2' football, hence why there seems to be no atmosphere at times at the ground and why some fans dislike it, but they're the ones who want to go back to the 'good old days' of the Manor and urine dripping down teh walls of teh food kiosk as fans couldn't get out at half time to go to the toilet...
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

Talking to Oxford United Fans at work, they all seem to pretty much hate it and are convinced they'll soon be leaving it for a new build stadium elsewhere.

So why not name it after the soon-to-be primary tenanats?

The ground is owned by Firoka Holdings Ltd, a company owned by former Oxford United chairman Firoz Kassam and he is interested in one thing, money. If you can meet the rent, it's yours to use.

There is an agreement with Firoka and the Football Club to buy the ground at a certain cost, but teh club is unable to afford the fee at this time, particularly with teh current ecomonic situation.

 

[route:oxford]

Although a decade ago there was no rugby team there?

That's why you need to future-proof for growth in your plans.

 

[Andyjs247]

Enjoy your fantasy. The 66 minute time is a realistic timing, not one from an ideal world whether things never go wrong - the new flat junction at Bicester creates obvious potential for conflicts and delays when trains are late and running out of their booked paths.

Yes, there will be a flat junction at Bicester but Chiltern are the only operator currently so there is less potential for delays etc. Unlike on the GWML where there's more likelihood of disruption due to more intensive traffic and more operators with XC and Freightliner as well. There is also the junction at Didcot to negotiate on the level even after conflicts at Reading have been minimised.

The proposed timetable relies on some very tight turnrounds in Oxford anyway, which pose a very obvious performance risk for London-bound trains, so after the bitter experience of the first few weeks of the Mainline timetable last year, caution will be the watchword. Get it wrong at the outset and bang goes any goodwill passengers may have for Chiltern offering something new.

And what would be the point of running a lone super-fast train? Virgin do this between Manchester and London and Birmingham and London and in the context of a turn-up-and-go service, with trains every 20 minutes, these few trains are an irrelevance.

Why would you base a marketing strategy around one utterly untypical train's running time? It just makes you look stupid - Chiltern's reputation has been founded on frequency and reliability and that reputation took a serious hit last year, for all the press releases proclaiming their glorious successes in growing traffic to/from the West Midlands. Rather less seems to be said about the bread and butter commuter traffic closer to London on which they built the business, places where there is still deep anger about the impact of Mainline on frequencies and stopping patterns and more grumbling about further changes planned for December.

Why wouldn't you want to run some trains to Oxford in 1 hour from Marylebone? It is more readily achievable if necessary than the 90mins MYB-BMO [no need to contend with XC, LM and freight further north], so it need not be just a lone train or pair of trains. It depends on what Chiltern want to do. Arriving earlier would increase the turn round time available and reduce the performance risk to following services. Once they have turned off the mainline at Bicester pathing is not going to be too difficult, at least for the moment.

On Chiltern's Project Evergreen website it mentions the following

"Chiltern Railways envisages operating two London-Oxford trains each hour in each direction, throughout the day. All trains will call at Bicester Town and Oxford stations, and the new Parkway station in North Oxford. Most trains will call at High Wycombe, and some will call at Islip. Projected journey times will be around 66 minutes Marylebone to Oxford, 58 minutes Marylebone to Water Eaton, 14 minutes Bicester Town to Oxford and 38 minutes High Wycombe to Oxford."

I think it is maybe something Chiltern are planning as not all trains will stop at High Wycombe. Presumably it means some will run non-stop between Marylebone and Bicester in which case a 1 hour timing to Oxford would be feasible. 8 minutes for Water Eaton-Oxford also feels like it includes some minutes performance margin too. Chiltern will effectively have a separate standalone route into Oxford and I suspect early arrivals will not be uncommon.

Like I said, the website does not appear to have been updated recently so the caveat "all times and frequencies are subject to change" clearly applies. Nothing is mentioned about some trains stopping at Princes Risborough or Haddenham & Thame as far as I can see.

 

[Cherry_Picker]

If Chiltern had got their Oxford plans sorted out a decade ago, they could have had many years of providing a fast alternative to the FGW service between London and Oxford.

However they are going to be introducing their new Marylebone service a couple of years before the London - Reading - Oxford line is upgraded with electrification/ IEP/ 110mph running even on the "slow" services... they may have picked a bad time to tap into that market (if the end to end market was what they were chasing after).

Well not really, ten years ago the single line between Risborough and Aynho had only just been doubled. Lines speeds were much lower pre Evergreen 2 and Evergreen 3, there were far fewer signal sections and Marylebone only had four platforms. I dont think the line would have been able to cope pre the 2011 upgrade.

 

[jimm]

However they are going to be introducing their new Marylebone service a couple of years before the London - Reading - Oxford line is upgraded

Chiltern target date is 2015 - could be May, could be December, will depend on the scale of work required and believe me that scale is pretty large given the state of the embankments much of the way between Oxford and Bicester (hence the currrent 45mph maximum) - Oxford electrics will start December 2016, so hardly a couple of years.

There may have been the option for "local" services operating between Princes Risborough and Oxford - with a new P&R at Wheatley, as well as stations at BMW/Business Park, Littlemore/Science Park/London Welsh Stadium & Redbridge/Kennington.

No prospect whatever. Chiltern took a look at that route (much of which was single track, incidentally) - and steered well clear due to the state of it, the huge gaps around Wheatley due to road building and other developments and the fact that Horspath tunnel is... a bat sanctuary.

Yes, there will be a flat junction at Bicester but Chiltern are the only operator currently so there is less potential for delays

Not when trains have to come all the way from Birmingham to Aynho on shared tracks, where ever more container trains are appearing, and where electrification work will be taking place in the back end of this decade.

Why wouldn't you want to run some trains to Oxford in 1 hour from Marylebone? It is more readily achievable if necessary

And who is saying it is necessary? As I said, the key station for Chiltern is Water Eaton, not Oxford - getting to/from Water Eaton within the hour is the main consideration here, not to Oxford station.

Yes, the exact stopping patterns remain to be determined but the fact of the matter is that even if a train does not stop at high Wycombe, it might stop at Haddenham & Thame instead - there is clear potential for traffic between that station and Oxford and one thing Chiltern are good at is exploiting opportunities like that. Someone I work with drives from Beaconsfield to Oxford every day - driving the M40 may now be an ingrained habit but who knows, if there was a direct train or two at a suitable time?

If Chiltern were determined to go for a 60-minute time then they would surely have said so long ago. The planning of this project and Mainline and timetable development for both went hand-in-hand. If the process had gone as chiltern originally hoped, there would have been a gap of about a year between the two things happening, so the 66-minute timing was not plucked out of thin air. The High Wycombe-Bicester North non-stops take 20 minutes, add on 14 and you get 34. Chiltern's projected HWY-OXF timing is 38 minutes, so not much margin to play with there, allowing for a slow run round the chord line into Bicester Town, even without another stop at Islip/Haddenham, is there?

Chiltern will effectively have a separate standalone route into Oxford and I suspect early arrivals will not be uncommon.

Not when East West opens and there are other passenger trains and freight running (on top of the existing Bicester MoD traffic) they won't. They may get a couple of years of it being their private railway but that will be about it.

 

[mr_jrt]

No prospect whatever. Chiltern took a look at that route (much of which was single track, incidentally) - and steered well clear due to the state of it, the huge gaps around Wheatley due to road building and other developments and the fact that Horspath tunnel is... a bat sanctuary.

I suspect long-term it might actually return. The fact it was single-track is largely irrelevant - it's so long gone you'd be rebuilding it anyway, which helpfully lets you straighten out the kinks in the old route to enable higher line speeds thanks to modern traction.

Once the competition kicks in from the Oxford electric services via Reading I don't really think Chiltern will be very competitive (aside from targeting the north-east of Oxford market with the P&R) unless they undercut the fares.

...especially if EWR kicks off and a capacity constraints start to bite then they may well decide to leave Bicester Town-Oxford to EWR's TOC and plump for the direct route via Wheatley which would make their route *far* quicker than the one via Reading. The Planned route is 66 miles to Marylebone, the existing route is 64 miles to Paddington. The route via Thame would be ~55 miles to Marylebone.

 

[jimm]

I suspect long-term it might actually return. The fact it was single-track is largely irrelevant - it's so long gone you'd be rebuilding it anyway, which helpfully lets you straighten out the kinks in the old route to enable higher line speeds thanks to modern traction.

Once the competition kicks in from the Oxford electric services via Reading I don't really think Chiltern will be very competitive (aside from targeting the north-east of Oxford market with the P&R) unless they undercut the fares.

...especially if EWR kicks off and a capacity constraints start to bite then they may well decide to leave Bicester Town-Oxford to EWR's TOC and plump for the direct route via Wheatley which would make their route *far* quicker than the one via Reading. The Planned route is 66 miles to Marylebone, the existing route is 64 miles to Paddington. The route via Thame would be ~55 miles to Marylebone.

How many more times do you need to be told? It just is not going to happen. The route via Thame and Wheatley was a rural backwater, with single track, not some lost main line like the Great Central, never mind the state the route is in now. So it's a bit shorter, so what?

Just rebuilding Oxford-Bicester and creating the chord line plus station work will cost £130m. What on earth do you think what you suggest would cost? Why do you think Chiltern took a look and decided against the idea? Especially once the stark staring obvious benefits of creating Water Eaton Parkway are factored in.

The demise of fotopic took with it a gallery of photos taken along the route from Princes Risborough about eight or so years ago, showing what a dismal state it was in then, never mind now. If you had seen that, you might understand what a total fantasy reopening between Cowley and Princes Risborough is.

 

[IanXC]

It seems to be fairly random: London - Grantham has them, but London - Newark doesn't. London - Retford has Any Permitted, East Coast and Hull Trains only FORs, as does London - Doncaster. London - York offers Any PErmitted, East Coast and Grand Central only, and so on.

Looking at Grantham - Edinburgh, on the other hand, you can only get Any Permitted ones, but switch to Doncaster - Edinburgh and EC only reappears.

Ah thanks for those! Looking a bit further into it, it seems that only the regulated fare has a prohibition on the lead operator setting a TOC specific fare, so presumably GW would be free to have some TOC specific fares, just not on their regulated Oxford-London fares.

 

[Eagle]

How many more times do you need to be told? It just is not going to happen. The route via Thame and Wheatley was a rural backwater, with single track, not some lost main line like the Great Central, never mind the state the route is in now. So it's a bit shorter, so what?

For a while in the late 19th century, it was the main GWR route between London and Birmingham/Merseyside. Up until the line through Bicester North was built in around 1903.

 

[jimm]

For a while in the late 19th century, it was the main GWR route between London and Birmingham/Merseyside. Up until the line through Bicester North was built in around 1903.

If it was used as you suggest:

a. It would have been between 1906 and 1910 when the GW/GC Joint line was available to Princes Risborough and Ashendon but the Bicester cut-off had yet to be built.
b. The number of trains able to run that way would have been very limited, due to the single track, so to describe it as the main GWR route to Birmingham is about as much of a fantasy as reopening the line is today, most traffic would still have had to go via Didcot.