Faster London to Cornwall services

[Sprigibax]

Travelling from London to Penzance is about the same distance as travelling from London to Newcastle, and yet the Newcastle train is a rocket with barely any stops and the Penzance train weaves its way through the countryside stopping wherever it gets the opportunity to. Couldn’t the Paddington to Penzance service be sped up by skipping some stops? How about a service running London Paddington - Reading (?) - Exeter St David’s - Plymouth - Liskeard - St Austell - Truro - Penzance? If this would be too problematic then the regular services could still run, alternating with the new express ones, but the London - Plymouth service could be used for Taunton, Newton Abbot, etc, and for other Cornwall stations, changes could be made at Exeter, Plymouth or Liskeard.

 

[signed]

Would there any demand for fast/semi-fast services?

 

[gazthomas]

The engineering of the line, particularly west of Exeter and especially west of Plymouth makes a fair comparison between routes difficult

 

[SynthD]

https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/paddington-to-plymouth-in-2-5-hours.267294/post-6758391 and other threads have some thoughts and potential answers.

 

[Trainbike46]

An alternative way to speed up services would be to electrify key areas of the route, as the 80x used accelerate much better on electric than they do on diesel, so the route could be sped up without skipping any stations by electrifying at least the sections just out of stations and key gradients

Another thing that could make the service more appealing and reduce door-to-door journey times would be to make London-Penzance hourly all day, without any gaps

 

[Trainguy34]

Quite odd when you consider that in the time it takes to go Penzance to Exeter, you could've done Newcastle to London!

 

[Bletchleyite]

I think with the nature of the line connectivity and capacity (particularly the latter in summer) is more important.

 

[Irascible]

Faster Birmingham/Manchester wouldn't hurt either. A service pattern mixing the destinations for best effect between Taunton & Penzance is a nice little exercise for someone.

 

[Rich McLean]

Taking stops out of the service west of Newton Abbot will have minimal effect on timings, due to the low line speed. Newton Abbot, Liskeard, Par, Truro and St Erth are all interchange stations, with the latter two feeding into a 2tph branch line service. There is also a large commuter flow to and from Plymouth into Cornwall.

 

[30907]

There are 3 trains that do Penzance in 5hr (and one back) with limited stops East of Plymouth, one of which this summer is Exeter only.

(BTW St Austell not Penzance is near enough the same distance as Newcastle and that's an hour nearer London.)

 

[TheGrew]

The entire population of Cornwall in 2022 was 575k people according to Wikipedia. Many more people live in the Tyne and Wear metropolitan area and north into Scotland.
I think electrification is the most sensible suggestion to improve journey times as suggested above, perhaps with some additional passing loops to allow overtaking (like Dawlish Warren). I suspect the single-line sections over the Royal Albert Bridge, East Largin, and St Pinnock Viaducts would start to constrain capacity as well though.

 

[Grecian 1998]

Penzance is a town of approx. 21,000 people. The 575,000 odd people of Cornwall live in an area covering 1,375 square miles, with no one town having a population exceeding 30,000. Newcastle in comparison has a population of approx. 300,000 people in a 44 square mile area, with the wider Tyne & Wear area containing approx. 1.1 million people in 210 square miles. It isn't a particularly good comparison. There's a clear benefit in connecting London with large urban areas where lots of people live. No one place in Cornwall can realistically claim to be a large urban area where lots of people live.

As came up on a similar thread recently, the demand for rail travel in Cornwall is spread right across the county / duchy, which is why most trains stop at so many stations. The most obvious station to drop, Par, may become more important if the intended Newquay - Falmouth trains start up. Many trains don't stop at Hayle and there aren't really any other obvious candidates to drop.

I dare say if BR or GWR thought they could fill even one train per day from Penzance towards Plymouth and London they might have tried it. I'm not aware that anyone has done so.

 

[cle]

The demand inbound into Cornwall must eclipse the demand from within it, to outside of it.

St Ives has nearly double the rail users as Sunderland - which deserves more service? Etc... apples and oranges here.

Population isn't really the full story here, I'd say it's disingenuous by itself when considering such a seasonal, tourist-based location - and I don't know what Newcastle has to do with things. It's a regional city, and much more dominant in its hinterland than others (see Sunderland, and the note on Cornish spread demand), which will have a lot of outbound, year round demand to other places, namely to London.

 

[HSTEd]

Fundamentally the Cornish Main Line is too lightly engineered to do much better than it currently does.

You'd have to wholesale replace it to get much improvement, and given how poorly HS2 went, I doubt such a large project will get onto the table any time soon.

There is nothing about 75mph on the line, and only a short section above 70mph.

 

[Sir Felix Pole]

As came up on a similar thread recently, the demand for rail travel in Cornwall is spread right across the county / duchy, which is why most trains stop at so many stations. The most obvious station to drop, Par, may become more important if the intended Newquay - Falmouth trains start up. Many trains don't stop at Hayle and there aren't really any other obvious candidates to drop.

I dare say if BR or GWR thought they could fill even one train per day from Penzance towards Plymouth and London they might have tried it. I'm not aware that anyone has done so.

BR did make Bodmin Rd (as then was) the junction for Newquay rather than Par for a brief period in the '70s in an attempt to speed up main line trains. It proved unpopular - Par has respectable passengers numbers as a railhead for Fowey, St.Blazey etc. - and just racked up the miles for the branch DMU. It also considered just a single new Redruth / Camborne station midway between the two.

Even more bizarrely, when singling the whole line west of Liskeard was considered, it contemplated closing St. Erth and making Hayle the junction, the branch train running on the second track. How times change!

 

[I'm here now]

Penzance is a town of approx. 21,000 people. The 575,000 odd people of Cornwall live in an area covering 1,375 square miles, with no one town having a population exceeding 30,000. Newcastle in comparison has a population of approx. 300,000 people in a 44 square mile area, with the wider Tyne & Wear area containing approx. 1.1 million people in 210 square miles. It isn't a particularly good comparison. There's a clear benefit in connecting London with large urban areas where lots of people live. No one place in Cornwall can realistically claim to be a large urban area where lots of people live.

As came up on a similar thread recently, the demand for rail travel in Cornwall is spread right across the county / duchy, which is why most trains stop at so many stations. The most obvious station to drop, Par, may become more important if the intended Newquay - Falmouth trains start up. Many trains don't stop at Hayle and there aren't really any other obvious candidates to drop.

I dare say if BR or GWR thought they could fill even one train per day from Penzance towards Plymouth and London they might have tried it. I'm not aware that anyone has done so.

And more trains stop at St Erth instead. Line speeds around Hayle are lower than that of St Erth. By skipping St Erth and extending more of the branch line services to Penzance, one could get a better journey time at a higher top speed.

 

[The exile]

The demand inbound into Cornwall must eclipse the demand from within it, to outside of it.

St Ives has nearly double the rail users as Sunderland - which deserves more service? Etc... apples and oranges here.

Population isn't really the full story here, I'd say it's disingenuous by itself when considering such a seasonal, tourist-based location - and I don't know what Newcastle has to do with things.

Stopping patterns on Penzance services are ECML- comparable east of Taunton, surely? After that, the demographics become very different, not only in terms of the size of each line’s major centres of population but also of the more minor ones.The ECML had most of its minor stations culled to speed up IC workings (as did the GW between Bedwyn and Exeter) but the settlements in Cornwall were in the main fortunate to retain their stations. If last Saturday was anything to go by, local demand is high - and serving that probably does far more environmental good than getting people from London to Truro 20 minutes quicker.

And more trains stop at St Erth instead. Line speeds around Hayle are lower than that of St Erth. By skipping St Erth and extending more of the branch line services to Penzance, one could get a better journey time at a higher top speed.

At the cost of needing an extra train for the branch.

 

[Tetchytyke]

Would things be sped up if the trains go back to not stopping at Camborne on Wednesdays?

I'll get my coat.

 

[Sly Old Fox]

And more trains stop at St Erth instead. Line speeds around Hayle are lower than that of St Erth. By skipping St Erth and extending more of the branch line services to Penzance, one could get a better journey time at a higher top speed.

Missing St Erth and inconveniencing a lot of St Ives passengers for the sake of a two minute reduction in journey time for Penzance passengers would be mad.

 

[I'm here now]

Stopping patterns on Penzance services are ECML- comparable east of Taunton, surely? After that, the demographics become very different, not only in terms of the size of each line’s major centres of population but also of the more minor ones.The ECML had most of its minor stations culled to speed up IC workings (as did the GW between Bedwyn and Exeter) but the settlements in Cornwall were in the main fortunate to retain their stations. If last Saturday was anything to go by, local demand is high - and serving that probably does far more environmental good than getting people from London to Truro 20 minutes quicker.


At the cost of needing an extra train for the branch.

It would be a much better service for people in the area. Why not? Could be a more civilised cross platform transfer w/ luggage if coordinated.

 

[Tetchytyke]

It would be a much better service for people in the area.

How would making passengers for St Ives go right through St Erth to Penzance, change, and then end up back in St Erth 30-45 minutes later be a "much better service"?

 

[MarkyT]

Would things be sped up if the trains go back to not stopping at Camborne on Wednesdays?

I'll get my coat.

Perhaps on other days of the week, a different station might be omitted to keep journey time broadly the same!

 

[I'm here now]

How would making passengers for St Ives go right through St Erth to Penzance, change, and then end up back in St Erth 30-45 minutes later be a "much better service"?

Cross platform transfers with luggage. As an interim measure until the new footbridge opens.

 

[HSTEd]

Cross platform transfers with luggage. As an interim measure until the new footbridge opens.

I think that there are few journeys in the UK long enough where such convenience would trump the time disadvantage.

People want frequency and travel time above all else, in my view.

 

[I'm here now]

I think that there are few journeys in the UK long enough where such convenience would trump the time disadvantage.

People want frequency and travel time above all else, in my view.

It would certainly improve more local services, for the tourists to visit Penzance, and it could be a timed departure with the train from London. Doesn’t have to be the case throughout the day though.

 

[RailWonderer]

With electrification, could you increase line speeds 70/75mph to 85/90mph and add some passing loops to shave half an hour off the total London - Penzance time?

 

[MarkyT]

With electrification, could you increase line speeds 70/75mph to 85/90mph and add some passing loops to shave half an hour off the total London - Penzance time?

Maybe in a very few places, but continuous ever-changing tight curvature determines much of the line speed over long stretches throughout Kernow due to 'value engineered' construction following the contours of valleys and ridges, limiting the need for major structures and earthworks, just as in South Devon. Additional tracks would be difficult in this terrain too. If they were just provided as platform loops at certain stations then slow train dwell for overtaking by an express would be long, maybe five minutes or more. To avoid the dwell time being even more excessive, signalling would need more, shorter blocks in the vicinity to allow an express to catch up with such a stopper. Such overtakes are operationally difficult to achieve reliably every time with the short margins and precise performance required of both trains in the manoeuvre. Not a great tactic for robust performance at one of the far extremities of Britain's long-distance network.

 

[Mgameing123]

Would there any demand for fast/semi-fast services?

There would be enough for a handful of trains per day.

 

[irish_rail]

There would be enough for a handful of trains per day.

Agree. The 1203 all summer has been London, Exeter, Plymouth and has been very busy when I've worked it. 3 or 4 fast trains a day would give those making the very long trip to Cornwall a choice at least. Sadly the 1203 becomes a "stopper" again next month.....

 

[brad465]

The entire population of Cornwall in 2022 was 575k people according to Wikipedia. Many more people live in the Tyne and Wear metropolitan area and north into Scotland.
I think electrification is the most sensible suggestion to improve journey times as suggested above, perhaps with some additional passing loops to allow overtaking (like Dawlish Warren).

Or perhaps more utilisation of existing passing loops, such as more trains skipping Totnes if this is possible. Also resignalling Castle Cary-Cogload junction to a higher signal aspect, so fast trains don't catch up to a semi-fast traversing the long block between just beyond CLC and Somerton.

I suspect the single-line sections over the Royal Albert Bridge, East Largin, and St Pinnock Viaducts would start to constrain capacity as well though.

How easily could the Royal Albert bridge bottleneck be mitigated? Obviously double tracking is a very expensive ambition currently, but if it were possible to raise the line speed from its 15mph restriction, and/or reposition Saltash station if this has an impact on bridge utilisation, then capacity could improve.