WSMR to finish

[sprinterguy]

I can only find two services on Chiltern's site, where is the afternoon one? I was planning to do a bash on it to say farewell to the staff.

In which direction?

There's two afternoon/early evening departures from Marylebone northbound, and one train southbound in the afternoon. Bear in mind that the afternoon southbound service does not call at Tame Bridge Parkway or Leamington Spa.

 

[TomJ93]

Why all the change? I remember I did TBP-Marylebone and Leamington to Marylebone in November.

Wel the plan was WSMR from Leamington to Marylebone (will have to be Banbury now)

Would it be possible to use a first anytime from Coventry to Wolverhampton and use WSMR from Leamington as far as TBP then get a LM to Wolves and a VT back to Coventry?

 

[duffman82]

Hey does anyone have times when the services will pass through Wolverhampton on Friday, I plan on photoing them coming through.

 

[sprinterguy]

Hey does anyone have times when the services will pass through Wolverhampton on Friday, I plan on photoing them coming through.

It would be a lot easier to work out if W&S had left their timetable on their website until Friday!

Basically:
Southbound: 06:25, 08:45, 14:45
Northbound: 11:55, 18:58, 20:58

 

[barrykas]

Hey does anyone have times when the services will pass through Wolverhampton on Friday, I plan on photoing them coming through.

Should be the same times as normal:

• 1P01 (05:10 ex-Wrexham) at 06:31
• 1P03 (07:23 ex-Wrexham) at 08:49
• 1J85 (09:24 ex-Marylebone) at 11:59
• 1P23 (13:28 ex-Wrexham) at 14:47
• 1J83 (16:30 ex-Marylebone) at 18:57
• 1J84 (18:30 ex-Marylebone) at 21:02

Cheers,

Barry

 

[duffman82]

Should be the same times as normal:

• 1P01 (05:10 ex-Wrexham) at 06:31
• 1P03 (07:23 ex-Wrexham) at 08:49
• 1J85 (09:24 ex-Marylebone) at 11:59
• 1P23 (13:28 ex-Wrexham) at 14:47
• 1J83 (16:30 ex-Marylebone) at 18:57
• 1J84 (18:30 ex-Marylebone) at 21:02

Cheers,

Barry

Thanks for your help!

 

[crewmeal]

Errrm - It isn't electrified from Wolvo to Shrewsbury so no class 90 or a pretendolino or anything else I would imagine.

I know that so do what they do with footex trips stick a 67 on the front at Wolverhampton

 

[transportphoto]

My thought are with the staff - everyone, including the back office staff.

I unfortunately have never been able to travel with them, my only opportunity was during my ALR which had to be cancelled.


To the poster asking how to get a seat reservation - you can get one when you present a valid ticket at any ticket office. As you only mention the reservation I guess you already have a ticket.

 

[142094]

Sod's Law that I was planning on my first trip on W+S in the next couple of months. Very sad news for the staff, good luck to all of you.

This pretty much sums up the fact that Privatisation has been a complete shambles, and the supposed competition it was said to deliver has failed to materialise, and where it has, has been so restricted to make it unprofitable.

 

[scotsman]

Hope DB can get staff positions with Chiltern for these guys

 

[Gareth Marston]

I think the key underlying factor is what it say about DB's ownership - the remit of dabbling in foreign railways is to send profit back to the fatherland you can google the German Transport Minster saying so. Cross Country, Wales and Borders, Chiltern and EWS have "new orders from Berlin". Letting WSMR grow its market while making a loss for a few years until Moderation of competition ends doesn't fit the remit.

According to WSMR release they must have been generating revenue of c£6 million a year. That's a lot of footfall at £40 quid a one way trip for London Midland/ATW to absorb especially as the big issue on the Salop -Brum corridor has been overcrowding for the last few years. Will WSMRS customers stay on rail or abandon it?

 

[ushawk]

Sad news, i hope all the staff are able to find new jobs. Hopefully other companies dont go the same way.

 

[Intermodal]

Also just booked onto the last train for the full length of the service in first class. Hope they're still serving food! Again, my condolences to all the staff and I can't imagine how upset you must all be.

 

[Aictos]

Agreed, far from a done deal I believe. Not sure why the stock would just go to GC...who owns it? I believe the application proposed 90s...which DB have since put up for tender. I don't believe anyone in their right mind would try and run a service on the WC with 67s, paths will be horrendous.

Only thing is IF Grand Central were to use 90s on the proposed service, I can't see the wires being up in time unless some miracle happens.

 

[mrcheek]

Sod's Law that I was planning on my first trip on W+S in the next couple of months. Very sad news for the staff, good luck to all of you.

This pretty much sums up the fact that Privatisation has been a complete shambles, and the supposed competition it was said to deliver has failed to materialise, and where it has, has been so restricted to make it unprofitable.

Yes, because if the railway was still nationalised, this service would still be running.

 

[Oliver]

Yes, because if the railway was still nationalised, this service would still be running.

Do you really think BR would have started a service from Wrexham to Marylebone?

 

[WestCoast]

:cry:
Very sad news indeed, Wrexham & Shropshire were undoubtedly my favourite train company. I hope all the staff find further employment - perhaps a few could be transferred to Chiltern Railways for Evergreen loco services?

We now are down to two open access operators Grand Central and First Hull Trains. Hull Trains seems to be doing OK they have a major group owning them and Grand Central seems to be doing well on the Sunderland runs - but I have heard they are not doing so well on Bradford services?

 

[Voyager 2093]

Wrexham & Shropshire were also my favourite company! It's a real shame. I never once got to travel on one of these trains but did get the pleasure of viewing them at Marylebone and West Ruislip, I remember the service that used to thrash past West Ruislip at 18:30 only moments before a Chiltern 165 had just about managed to cross over to Platform 2 at West Ruislip.

Truly sad news. Lets hope Chiltern get usage of the 67s + MK3s and DVTs!

 

[mrcheek]

Do you really think BR would have started a service from Wrexham to Marylebone?

sorry, my sarcasm doesnt always come over well on a message board!

The point I was trying to make was that under BR, no such service could ever have existed in the first place. Privatisation enabled such a service to be tried, but, because it wasnt popular enough to make money, it failed, and is being scrapped, so that stock can be switched to more heavily used routes, such as extra Chiltern services from Birmingham to Marylebone.

what a disgraceful way to behave!!! providing services where passengers actually want them instead of where railway planners just think they do. Clearly this would never have happened under BR......

 

[Ticket Man]

Yes, because if the railway was still nationalised, this service would still be running.

I dont think BR had the commitment you think it did. In the early 80's they had planned on closing marylebone altogether

In the early 1980s there was a proposal to close Marylebone, divert British Rail services via High Wycombe into nearby Paddington, and extend the Metropolitan Line to Aylesbury, so London trains via Amersham would be routed to Baker Street. Marylebone was to be converted into a coach station with the tracks converted to a road for coaches only.

Although it never happened there was still the intent and it was probably only due to the fact that paddington was getting so overcrowded that trains were diverted there.

full page here.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
sorry i missed the sarcasm too

 

[mrcheek]

I dont think BR had the commitment you think it did. In the early 80's they had planned on closing marylebone altogether



Although it never happened there was still the intent and it was probably only due to the fact that paddington was getting so overcrowded that trains were diverted there.

full page here.

As I say above, please remind me never to use sarcasm on here again!

 

[Oliver]

sorry, my sarcasm doesnt always come over well on a message board!

The point I was trying to make was that under BR, no such service could ever have existed in the first place. Privatisation enabled such a service to be tried, but, because it wasnt popular enough to make money, it failed, and is being scrapped, so that stock can be switched to more heavily used routes, such as extra Chiltern services from Birmingham to Marylebone.

what a disgraceful way to behave!!! providing services where passengers actually want them instead of where railway planners just think they do. Clearly this would never have happened under BR......

Oh, I see, and I tend to agree. Probably best to say what you mean with simple souls like me reading your posts.

 

[Daimler]

Yes, because if the railway was still nationalised, this service would still be running.

I do understand your sarcasm, but I feel it's perhaps missing 142094's point - not so much that BR would have introduced a London - Wrexham service, but rather that one of the great things privatisation was supposed to bring - small operators competing for services on certain routes by offering something better - has proved something of a fallacy.

To discover that it can't even sustain this - despite the hugely increased costs of the railway overall - does rather highlight the fact that the railways are not well suited to privatisation - being a natural monopoly, and one that is a public service that will never, when all parts of the network are considered, make a profit.

 

[mrcheek]

I do understand your sarcasm, but I feel it's perhaps missing 142094's point - not so much that BR would have introduced a London - Wrexham service, but rather that one of the great things privatisation was supposed to bring - small operators competing for services on certain routes by offering something better - has proved something of a fallacy.

To discover that it can't even sustain this - despite the hugely increased costs of the railway overall - does rather highlight the fact that the railways are not well suited to privatisation - being a natural monopoly, and one that is a public service that will never, when all parts of the network are considered, make a profit.

Perhaps if they ran a better, faster service, instead of force feeding people a load of crap food (tho apparently some people like it), they might have made some money.
It shows the beauty of privatisation. Unwanted services are removed, to be replaced by extra trains on Chiltern services.

 

[TDK]

I know that so do what they do with footex trips stick a 67 on the front at Wolverhampton

On the front of what? Pantographed trains are not permitted on the route either and do you really think VT would bother knocking the lekky off and hiring a 67 to just take the train to Shrewsbury? Just get off the VT and on to an ATW or LM service. As I said I doubt it will ever happen, maybe with a voyager but not the pretendolino, the only station it would fit on is Telford anyway
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

Perhaps if they ran a better, faster service, instead of force feeding people a load of crap food (tho apparently some people like it), they might have made some money.
It shows the beauty of privatisation. Unwanted services are removed, to be replaced by extra trains on Chiltern services.

Pathetic attitude, no one was force fed crap food, the paths for a faster service were just not available, the last part of the post could be nearer the truth

 

[Daimler]

Perhaps if they ran a better, faster service, instead of force feeding people a load of crap food (tho apparently some people like it), they might have made some money.
It shows the beauty of privatisation. Unwanted services are removed, to be replaced by extra trains on Chiltern services.

Surely the fact that the trains were slow and not as popular as was necessary is a direct result of the botched nature of this railway's privatisation and the ridiculous 'moderation of competition' (what's the point of privatising an industry if you don't allow the competition that's supposed to increase efficiency?) agreements. After all, I'm not convinced that they'd have called at Tame Bridge if they could've stopped at Birmingham New Street/International/Coventry. Had they been able to do this, I suspect it'd have been a lot more difficult to describe the services as 'unwanted'.

Purely out of curiosity, did you at any point try their food? If you did and didn't like it, fair enough, but I've travelled with them on more than one occasion and much enjoyed it - as have many other people, judging by the number of people who've expressed their sadness at the loss of this service and have *specifically* mentioned the quality of the food while doing so. In my experience, the staff prepared the food well from good quality ingredients - it was emphatically not 'crap'.

 

[Tom B]

Surely the fact that the trains were slow and not as popular as was necessary is a direct result of the botched nature of this railway's privatisation and the ridiculous 'moderation of competition' (what's the point of privatising an industry if you don't allow the competition that's supposed to increase efficiency?) agreements. After all, I'm not convinced that they'd have called at Tame Bridge if they could've stopped at Birmingham New Street/International/Coventry. Had they been able to do this, I suspect it'd have been a lot more difficult to describe the services as 'unwanted'.

Precisely. The railways are one of those entities which seem to be somewhere in a big grey area. They're not public services anymore, although they should be, but they retain the public service monopoly. They're not truly private competitive markets, as there are massive barriers to entry and all sorts of regulations on pathing, rolling stock etc. They just sit in the middle, the worst of both worlds!

 

[Justin Smith]

I've just heard on Radio 4 that WSMR is to cease operations and I'm really very sad aboout it. I found the coaches to be far more comfortable than virtually all the other stock in use on British railwyas at the present time. Far more comfortable than Pendolinos....... Apparently I wasn't alone in being impressed, R4 reported that WSMR had the highest satisfaction ratings on the whole network. Some of Radio 4`s Vox pops were eulogising the space that passengers had.
I'd have thought it obvious that being prevented from calling at Wolverhampton, Birmingham and Coventry was the cause of the failure.

 

[43167]

I heard the news on 5 live this morning. Really dissapointed for the staff. Only used the service about 6 times, but found the staff really friendly, the trains are excellent, and food was delicous. Surprised they say the service wont make profit, because each time I used them, it was well loaded. Hope they can find work within the industry soon, because their PR skills are excellent.

 

[MidnightFlyer]

Sad to see a company go down, and all we can do is complain about how was responsible... but here goes:

Virgin will be rubbing their hands now though, they can have that Euston-Shrewsbury via Nuneaton now, or do they need to, now that competition has been eradicated? (Typical Virgin, thinking the Earth revolves around their business interests!)

Sorry, had to get that off my chest.

Thanks, WSMR, for the excellent service you provided, albeit for too short a time, to the people of Wrexham, Shropshire and North Wales. You will be missed. Your stock was the best in the country, as was your onboard service and staff. Your ideas were good, maybe too ambitious, but your levels of service to First Class passengers were second to none. You were far and away the best train company that I have ever travelled with (and Will the TM (from South Africa?) is one of the best members of staff that I have ever met). I am sad to see you go, maybe 28th January 2011 will go down as one of the black days of Britain's railways, but I do wish the staff all the best (55 being laid off, apparently DBS will find jobs for them elsewhere, source BBC News), and thank you for providing a magical railway experience.

All the best to all involved, and I am so sorry that it had to end this way.

Matt E