May 2023 changes

[geoffk]

So Northern are dictating to the SoS what lines the choose to run ! What a curious state of affairs.

But surely railway managers rather than civil servants should be making these decisions - whether they are the right ones is a different matter!

 

[Bald Rick]

But surely railway managers rather than civil servants should be making these decisions - whether they are the right ones is a different matter!

Civil servants aren’t taking the decisions.

 

[zwk500]

Civil servants aren’t taking the decisions.

Is it the minister then?

 

[brad465]

In other GWR changes:

The 10.04 Paddington to Penzance on weekdays reverts to running non stop Reading to Exeter (should please @irish_rail). The 09.37 Paddington to Paignton ceases to call at Newbury and Pewsey, instead there’s a new 08.38 Paddington to Westbury semi-fast service.

Weston-super-Mare to Paddington through daytime services are restored on weekdays, running every 2 hours.

As someone who for the last 9 months often got the 10:04 PAD-PNZ for business trips to Bridgwater, but coming to an end this month (as I'll be moving near there), I've avoided the loss of Taunton in the nick of time, although good to see something actually making use of the 100mph running through there again. I notice that service is also sub-5 hours to Penzance (4h56m), is this a PR move?

I notice also on the Weston-super-Mare - Paddington services that there are some long waits at Bristol, particularly in the down direction, where waits of 9-11 minutes, and in the case of the 10:28 service, 24 minutes, are timetabled in. In the up direction they seem to be a more typical 4-6 minutes.

 

[Bald Rick]

Is it the minister then?

Civil Servants don’t take any decisions on matters such as this. It all goes to ministers either directly, or as part of certain items delegated to (a very few) officials.

 

[Mitchell Hurd]

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding it, but as a Didcot user I can't help but be disappointed by the May 2023 timetable.

• Services now seem very bunched. London seems to have 3 fasts an hour, but two are within a few minutes of each other. Likewise towards Oxford there are some annoying gaps?
• No longer 2 tph towards Bristol. Surely this affects services from Oxford heading west which is a bit rubbish.
• I haven't looked at frequency and spread of London/Reading to Didcot but if one of the Bristols has been cut, will the Oxfords be consistently 9 cars? I used to avoid the Oxfords (on Sundays for example when they called) as they were often a 5 and full from Oxford already.
• Losing Hayes on the semi fasts means Heathrow is now two changes away. Very frustrating.
• London to Bristol users who use split ticketing at Didcot will now need to be careful. Obviously it's in GWRs interest to close this but the regular pattern being closed is frustrating.

Are there any benefits to this I'm not seeing? I was a bit frustrated with the semi fasts not stopping at Hayes which I knew was coming, but I thought that the Oxford calls would be additional to the Bristols and giving a huge capacity boost between Didcot and Oxford/Reading/London (in lieu of Slough having the capacity), which it isn't if some Bristols are cut. It just seems like a bit of a step backwards from the current TT which, whilst it has its flaws (connections from Oxford to Cholsey/Goring etc are a bit rubbish) is otherwise a relatively nice and regular timetable from Didcot. Someone help me see the positives!

I'm not too happy about the gaps either if I'm honest. I suppose that there is still a train close to the xx:10 ish departures which are the Cheltenham Spa trains heading towards Swindon from Didcot Parkway.

I can see passengers commuting to and from Oxford and Didcot being happy - a 5-car or 9-car IET instead of a 2-car 165!

 

[CR165022]

Having looked at the Chiltern timetable, it's been ruined on the Aylesbury side, there won't be any direct services anymore from Marylebone to Aylesbury via high Wycombe, with only the last few trains of the day running the full route, and only 2 in the very early morning running from Aylesbury. Instead, nearly all services on that branch will now be shuttles to and from Princes Risborough. The paths for myb/ays services are still there, and run at the same times as before, but they now terminate at high Wycombe instead. I've also noticed that there's now no services at all from Marylebone and terminating at banbury, with Birmingham services picking up extra stops instead.

 

[Bald Rick]

Having looked at the Chiltern timetable, it's been ruined on the Aylesbury side, there won't be any direct services anymore from Marylebone to Aylesbury via high Wycombe, with only the last few trains of the day running the full route, and only 2 in the very early morning running from Aylesbury. Instead, nearly all services on that branch will now be shuttles to and from Princes Risborough. The paths for myb/ays services are still there, and run at the same times as before, but they now terminate at high Wycombe instead. I've also noticed that there's now no services at all from Marylebone and terminating at banbury, with Birmingham services picking up extra stops instead.

isn’t that temporary for HS2 works?

 

[penguin8967]

With 1tph from Bristol now skipping Didcot this means that trains from Swindon-Didcot run twice an hour but only 5 minutes apart - at :04 and :11 past the hour. Luckily going the other way they are roughly 30 mins apart.

 

[HamworthyGoods]

Having looked at the Chiltern timetable, it's been ruined on the Aylesbury side, there won't be any direct services anymore from Marylebone to Aylesbury via high Wycombe, with only the last few trains of the day running the full route, and only 2 in the very early morning running from Aylesbury. Instead, nearly all services on that branch will now be shuttles to and from Princes Risborough. The paths for myb/ays services are still there, and run at the same times as before, but they now terminate at high Wycombe instead. I've also noticed that there's now no services at all from Marylebone and terminating at banbury, with Birmingham services picking up extra stops instead.

And yet there’s posts above saying how brilliant it is Birmingham goes back to 2tph.

What people have to remember is there’s no magic money tree so to do improvements somewhere to match demand there has to be cuts somewhere else.

 

[CR165022]

isn’t that temporary for HS2 works?

Ah yes that could be it, hadn't thought about that.

 

[YSTrains]

Great Northern are operating Letchworth/Cambridge services. Why is that the case?

 

[Peter0124]

Avanti West Coast have uploaded theirs:


From what I can see, it's the same timetable they had originally planned for last Dec with the 3tph Birmingham and Manchester etc. Good news that the Scotland via Birmingham's are planned non-stop from Coventry again whereas at the moment they call WFJ/MKC/RUG.

Let's just hope it stays like this and that Avanti have the resources to run it.

 

[DDB]

EMR are up as well. They contain the long awaited return of through running from Matlock to Nottingham.

 

[whale]

And now LNER’s are on. Not spotted any changes.

 

[mangyiscute]

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding it, but as a Didcot user I can't help but be disappointed by the May 2023 timetable.

• Services now seem very bunched. London seems to have 3 fasts an hour, but two are within a few minutes of each other. Likewise towards Oxford there are some annoying gaps?
• No longer 2 tph towards Bristol. Surely this affects services from Oxford heading west which is a bit rubbish.
• I haven't looked at frequency and spread of London/Reading to Didcot but if one of the Bristols has been cut, will the Oxfords be consistently 9 cars? I used to avoid the Oxfords (on Sundays for example when they called) as they were often a 5 and full from Oxford already.
• Losing Hayes on the semi fasts means Heathrow is now two changes away. Very frustrating.
• London to Bristol users who use split ticketing at Didcot will now need to be careful. Obviously it's in GWRs interest to close this but the regular pattern being closed is frustrating.

Are there any benefits to this I'm not seeing? I was a bit frustrated with the semi fasts not stopping at Hayes which I knew was coming, but I thought that the Oxford calls would be additional to the Bristols and giving a huge capacity boost between Didcot and Oxford/Reading/London (in lieu of Slough having the capacity), which it isn't if some Bristols are cut. It just seems like a bit of a step backwards from the current TT which, whilst it has its flaws (connections from Oxford to Cholsey/Goring etc are a bit rubbish) is otherwise a relatively nice and regular timetable from Didcot. Someone help me see the positives!

And yet I see countless posts and threads about how to speed up Bristol services which (now that the superfasts aren't happening) all come down to the summary of dropping Didcot and/or Reading stops, and I don't think there is any doubt that Reading cannot be dropped from any services (I for one am very happy to see almost all trains that used to run non-stop through reading in the peaks now calling, I believe there are only gonna be 2 left in the morning and 1 in the evening)
Similarly, Twyford, Maidenhead and Slough passengers will benefit from faster travel times to London, and we all know that there is a lot of travel from these stations to London.
There will always be winners and losers with this kind of thing, and it seems that Didcot is probably losing out (although an extra Oxford service formed of an 80x will definitely not be causing any complaints) but longer distance passengers will be gaining from faster journey times - that is the benefit that you aren't seeing

 

[HamworthyGoods]

And yet I see countless posts and threads about how to speed up Bristol services which (now that the superfasts aren't happening) all come down to the summary of dropping Didcot and/or Reading stops, and I don't think there is any doubt that Reading cannot be dropped from any services (I for one am very happy to see almost all trains that used to run non-stop through reading in the peaks now calling, I believe there are only gonna be 2 left in the morning and 1 in the evening)
Similarly, Twyford, Maidenhead and Slough passengers will benefit from faster travel times to London, and we all know that there is a lot of travel from these stations to London.
There will always be winners and losers with this kind of thing, and it seems that Didcot is probably losing out (although an extra Oxford service formed of an 80x will definitely not be causing any complaints) but longer distance passengers will be gaining from faster journey times - that is the benefit that you aren't seeing

Indeed the often grumbled about lack of a Cotswold service in the evening peak from Reading is resolved with the 17.58 and 18.58 departures now leaving 1 minute earlier and calling additionally at Reading.

 

[Doctor Fegg]

Indeed the often grumbled about lack of a Cotswold service in the evening peak from Reading is resolved with the 17.58 and 18.58 departures now leaving 1 minute earlier and calling additionally at Reading.

Yes. This is a really welcome improvement.

 

[Bantamzen]

This is in line with what I keep advocating, but keep getting shot down. Scrap Bradford - Leeds and divert Skipton - Bradford to Leeds.

Sorry for being off topic - I'll shut up now.

So you are proposing scrapping Bradford-Leeds and Bradford-Skipton, leaving potentially just Bradford-Ilkley once an hour? And you wonder why you get shot down?

 

[OliverH68]

LNWR/WMR, TfW, TPE, Greater Anglia & Merseyrail are now up also.

Just SWR, c2c & Grand Central left.

 

[Goldfish62]

LNWR/WMR, TfW, TPE, Greater Anglia & Merseyrail are now up also.

Just SWR, c2c & Grand Central left.

I'd be surprised if there were any changes at SWR given that they did a fair few changes in December.

 

[43055]

EMR are up as well. They contain the long awaited return of through running from Matlock to Nottingham.

Lincoln - Leicester look to be back to hourly. Still no change on the North Staffs and Robin Hood. Really hope this changes and the 2 hour gaps are filled in.

London's it looks like the daytime Melton return is now a 360 to Corby.

 

[arb]

Looking at Cambridge/Ely/King's Lynn, there are more Great Northern peak-time trains that currently start/finish at Ely that will go all the way to King's Lynn. However the handful of Greater Anglia peak-time extras that ran north of Cambridge have all been cut back to start/finish at Ely, and none of these go as far as King's Lynn any more, so there is no longer any direct service between King's Lynn and Liverpool Street. It's probably a more frequent service between King's Lynn and Cambridge for connections to Liverpool Street though.

 

[setdown]

Still just the one train per hour between Liverpool and Birmingham

 

[Parjon]

Civil Servants don’t take any decisions on matters such as this. It all goes to ministers either directly, or as part of certain items delegated to (a very few) officials.

The ministers rubber stamp what is put before them. Technically they "make the decision". In reality they need to have arguments if they want to go against what is presented to them. For something like railway service levels, the officials will know what pet issues their minister gives a shot about, or might cause them trouble, and likely factor in so as to avoid any possible points of conflict.

Either way, the passenger, the railway and anyone's or any places actual needs (unless pet) would be at the bottom of the pile of consideration.

 

[class717]

Great Northern are operating Letchworth/Cambridge services. Why is that the case?

More use of 387s, fewer 700s, that and the Cambridge to Ashford services are dead now as there’s a new SE service that has taken the path on the south side, so no need for them to be branded TL anymore as they’re never going south of the river.

 

[Birmingham]

3tph Birmingham

Somehow I doubt that’ll come to fruition but we can live in hope.

(I have no inside info, just pessimism from what we’ve seen play out over the last couple of years.)

 

[Class 466]

When it goes over to Southern will it run as 8 or 12 coaches?

Most likely 8. 12s are increasingly rare on Southern, especially with the 313s going in May with no replacement.

 

[47421]

GA West Anglia changes.

As noted above the traditional 1707 / 1807 / 1907 Liv St to Kings Lynn now only run to Ely. They have also picked up calls at Broxbourne. Same on the up the 0647 / 0717 / 0747 fasts from CBG - LST start 2 mins earlier and now call also at Brox.

The 0730 / 0800 / 0830 BXB - LST start back from Herford East and 1656 / 1726 / 1756 /1826 LST - BXB run through to Herford East.

Stansted Express remains half hourly off peak Mon - Fri and Sat/Sun, 4TPH SSD-LST 0600-0915 and LST - SSD 0510-0910 (no 0825) Mon - Fri.

 

[55002]

Hertford East rush hour trains changed in the morning no longer limited stop and no longer via Seven Sisters, but they miss out Cheshunt. City workers in for 7.30am currently get straight through at 0625, they have to change from May as that train now a Stratford not Liverpool St.