Is GWR too complex?

[Horizon22]

Part of the problem with Oxford / Cotswold services is the demand to Oxford outstripping the capacity of a 5-car 80x and the Cotswold bit of the journey not needing more than 5 cars. However, there isn't an easy answer to that with the lack of timetable capacity at Oxford to split trains.

Probably the only route on GWR where splitting would indeed be sensible. But partly due to a lack of electrification, P3/4 do indeed get extensively used with shunts. You'd ideally want a south facing terminating platform.

 

[jimm]

Part of the problem with Oxford / Cotswold services is the demand to Oxford outstripping the capacity of a 5-car 80x and the Cotswold bit of the journey not needing more than 5 cars. However, there isn't an easy answer to that with the lack of timetable capacity at Oxford to split trains.

Can we please get away from this idea that there is some sort of neat binary division in loadings either side of Oxford. There is heavy traffic between the stations at the eastern end of the line - especially Hanborough and Charlbury - and Oxford, and five-car sets can be very busy on this part of their journeys as well, in both directions.

Probably the only route on GWR where splitting would indeed be sensible. But partly due to a lack of electrification, P3/4 do indeed get extensively used with shunts. You'd ideally want a south facing terminating platform.

No, you ideally wouldn't. It would do nothing to avoid the issue of trains having to cross the running lines on arrival or departure, whichever side of the line such a platform was located, so offers next to no benefit compared with current practice of using the sidings north of the station to reverse.

The project to build an extra through platform 5 on the west side of the station is in hand, which will be far more useful and flexible operationally than a dead end. Ideally electrification should be extended all the way from Didcot out to Hanborough or Charlbury, so at least some of the current Oxford terminators can turn back there and avoid shunt moves across the layout at Oxford.

 

[irish_rail]

Can we please get away from this idea that there is some sort of neat binary division in loadings either side of Oxford. There is heavy traffic between the stations at the eastern end of the line - especially Hanborough and Charlbury - and Oxford, and five-car sets can be very busy on this part of their journeys as well, in both directions.


No, you ideally wouldn't. It would do nothing to avoid the issue of trains having to cross the running lines on arrival or departure, whichever side of the line such a platform was located, so offers next to no benefit compared with current practice of using the sidings north of the station to reverse.

The project to build an extra through platform 5 on the west side of the station is in hand, which will be far more useful and flexible operationally than a dead end. Ideally electrification should be extended all the way from Didcot out to Hanborough or Charlbury, so at least some of the current Oxford terminators can turn back there and avoid shunt moves across the layout at Oxford.

Yes the 5 cars can be busy between Charlbury and Oxford. Journey time is about 15 minutes so not really the be all and end all if there is some standing on a couple of trains a day.
10 cars splitting at Oxford would be nice, but as has been shown at Plymouth, in practice it is very poor from a customer and an operational point of view. I've had a senior manager admit as much to me.
Luckily, out west a decent balance has now been found with predominantly 9 car trains on the London to PZ route with a few odd trains splitting and joining. Maybe a few trains a day that run as 10 to Oxford and then 5 onto Worcester would be beneficial.

 

[RedPostJunc]

5-cars are regularly employed on the Oxford and Cotswolds routes and simply cannot cope on a weekend and hindsight suggests there are too many 5-cars and too few 9-cars. That being said, GWR are hardly the only company with stock problems for their regional routes; I can think off the top of my head that EMR, XC and Northern (in parts) are as bad, if not worse.

Would it be technically feasible to convert some 5-car 802/0 to 9-car 802/1 by building additional coaches?

 

[irish_rail]

Would it be technically feasible to convert some 5-car 802/0 to 9-car 802/1 by building additional coaches?

I'd say so. Doing some 7 car sets may be more realistic as they'd be perfect length for certain services.

 

[Clarence Yard]

No - they would be a diagramming & operational nightmare because the predominant need on GWR at the London end is for 9 or 10 cars. 7 cars would be the odd men out and that length is probably more suitable for Cross Country.

Getting stock swapped so as to put a 7 or 9 on the right working isn’t as easy as some might think (it’s bad enough with 9 and 10 car sets) so these days, apart from split and join opportunities, getting the maximum required length right for the entirety of a diagram is what you aim for.

There isn’t actually a surplus of IET sets at the moment either. The daily diagram requirement is getting closer to being back to normal, taking into account 2 sets being at Eastleigh for crack rectification work.

It’s all a bit academic anyway as the DfT are now in charge of rolling stock policy and they don’t currently want to extend IET units. The FG plan to possibly extend 14 x 5 car cl.802 units to 9 car didn’t even get onto their options list for DA3 - they didn’t want to even consider it.

 

[irish_rail]

It’s all a bit academic anyway as the DfT are now in charge of rolling stock policy and they don’t currently want to extend IET units. The FG plan to possibly extend 14 x 5 car cl.802 units to 9 car didn’t even get onto their options list for DA3 - they didn’t want to even consider itit.

How unbelievably unfortunate. This would be a game changer on the Western. Meanwhile Dft is happy to chuck money at schemes that are about as much use as a chocolate teapot. Id argue proper length trains on GWR is more useful than HS2 in the "new" Post covid World.

 

[Craig1122]

But going back to the original premise of this thread, that GWR is too big and complex, if it had been split local/intercity then presumably all the 80x units would belong to the intercity TOC? So there would be even less possibility of being able to substitute an 80x for an overcrowded 16x than there is currently.

The gradual cascade of the turbo fleet to the west shows the flexibility of a larger organisation. As did the response to the IET cracks where the electrostar fleet was very quickly pushed into interim service being cleared first to a Swindon and now I believe as far as Cardiff. Both of these moves would have been much more difficult or maybe impossible if GWR were still in its previous separate parts.

There's some valid criticism of certain aspects of operation in this thread but I'm not convinced any of the problems are directly related to the franchise being too big. Mostly they're the result of the dead hand of the Dft like so many current problems.

After all the 'original' GWR was a far bigger operation with not only many more miles of railway but also massive freight traffic.

 

[Benjwri]

That wouldn't be practical - you'd have to carve up trains from London to Penzance / Swansea / Worcester in half if you did it that way.

Obviously there would be an intercity operator that took the vast majority of GWRs intercity routes, but I was more referring to the local operators being carved up. In the same way LNER basically just does intercity services, but along its route many different TOCs operate local services. That way every part of the local network receives fair attention, and upgrades would be spread across the network, as gains can only be directly reinvested in the area they came from

 

[Basil Jet]

When I visited the North Cotswold line, I thought the IETs dwarfed the stations to the point of ridiculousness.

 

[AlastairFraser]

Obviously there would be an intercity operator that took the vast majority of GWRs intercity routes, but I was more referring to the local operators being carved up. In the same way LNER basically just does intercity services, but along its route many different TOCs operate local services. That way every part of the local network receives fair attention, and upgrades would be spread across the network, as gains can only be directly reinvested in the area they came from

I grew up in Reading and now live in the North West.
If you had to deal with commuting on a TOC like Northern where they are given the vast majority of the less profitable rural routes and branch lines whereas TPE are given the faster mainline prestigious services to and from larger cities and airports, then you'd understand a TOC doesn't work well with this type of division.

They just don't get funding for new stock to operate the vast majority of their services or heavy infrastructure works on a large percentage of their network.
Reliability is particularly appalling with Northern (not it's own fault with the bulk of its' fleet being 1980s Sprinters). Yes, prices are cheaper up here but service frequency is much poorer and station facilities in general much more basic.
Apart from the fares, public transport is one of the few things I miss about the South East. It's a different world.

 

[Horizon22]

When I visited the North Cotswold line, I thought the IETs dwarfed the stations to the point of ridiculousness.

Yet when you’re at Oxford, a single IET is normally hopeless inadequate at key times.

 

[pompeyfan]

Yet when you’re at Oxford, a single IET is normally hopeless inadequate at key times.

Imagine if the wires had extended all the way to Oxford or beyond, there’s a fleet of 10 year old 4 car EMUs that could have been repurposed. Ah well hindsight is a wonderful thing.

 

[JonathanH]

Imagine if the wires had extended all the way to Oxford or beyond, there’s a fleet of 10 year old 4 car EMUs that could have been repurposed. Ah well hindsight is a wonderful thing.

It is easy to say that fast Oxford trains should be provided by outer-suburban units but half the services continue through to the Cotswolds and many of the trains that terminate at Oxford interwork with other services at Paddington.

 

[Horizon22]

Imagine if the wires had extended all the way to Oxford or beyond, there’s a fleet of 10 year old 4 car EMUs that could have been repurposed. Ah well hindsight is a wonderful thing.

We can dream, we can dream. Same with Bedwyn.

 

[sor]

From a user perspective I have little to complain about with GWR, and I've used everything from branch line services to the sleeper to a daily local commuter to (at one point) being one of those once-a-week commuters between London and the SW, during the lows such as when the electrification seemed to co-incide with at least one major signalling failure a week between Paddington and Reading and of course the Dawlish collapse too. Disruption has always been handled well and with little drama.

I have problems with the 80xs like everyone else but those complaints should be aimed towards the DfT anyway.

 

[Basil Jet]

Yet when you’re at Oxford, a single IET is normally hopeless inadequate at key times.

It sounds like the Cotswold line shouldn't run to Paddington at all.

 

[swt_passenger]

Imagine if the wires had extended all the way to Oxford or beyond, there’s a fleet of 10 year old 4 car EMUs that could have been repurposed. Ah well hindsight is a wonderful thing.

If the wires had extended to Oxford when originally planned I suspect they’d have already had the right number of 387s to operate it. I think it’s the sideways move of 12 units to HEx, or the extensions to Cardiff that would never have happened.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It is easy to say that fast Oxford trains should be provided by outer-suburban units but half the services continue through to the Cotswolds and many of the trains that terminate at Oxford interwork with other services at Paddington.

12 cars on the turnbacks, 5 on the Cotswolds, and use Advances to price people over, perhaps? Interworking can be sorted out.

But really the IETs should be able to portion work. It's not really any different than Northampton.

 

[HamworthyGoods]

It sounds like the Cotswold line shouldn't run to Paddington at all.

Which London station should they run to then?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Which London station should they run to then?

I think the suggestion is that they should run only to Oxford for a connection.

 

[HamworthyGoods]

I think the suggestion is that they should run only to Oxford for a connection.

I’m sure the cities of Worcester and Hereford would respond well to having their Intercity services to London withdrawn! What a daft idea!!

 

[TT-ONR-NRN]

Ideally you’d be able to run ten carriages to Oxford and then drop five for the onward run to the Cotswolds.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Ideally you’d be able to run ten carriages to Oxford and then drop five for the onward run to the Cotswolds.

This would make sense, and if they're making major changes to the station providing for this would be sensible now. It has long worked fine at Northampton.

 

[JonathanH]

This would make sense, and if they're making major changes to the station providing for this would be sensible now. It has long worked fine at Northampton.

Northampton's layout is much more conducive to the issue of splitting and joining than Oxford's as is its passenger service pattern. It isn't going to work putting CrossCountry through the middle lines.

That said, even in Thames Trains days there was some splitting and joining of formations at Oxford.

 

[HamworthyGoods]

Northampton's layout is much more conducive to the issue of splitting and joining than Oxford's as is its passenger service pattern. It isn't going to work putting CrossCountry through the middle lines.

That said, even in Thames Trains days there was some splitting and joining of formations at Oxford.

What also doesn’t help is the extended dwell time (compared to most modern DMUs/EMUs) required to split IETs - 8 minutes.

It was never envisaged the time would be so long but was an unintended by product of the GW Upgrade descope. It was never in the design that IETs would be fitted with ATP as the line should have been resignalled as part of the upgrade. When retrofitting ATP to the IETs it was found to be very tricky to fit such an antiquated system onto a modern computer controlled train which is what generated the long search times and computer resetting.

 

[Irascible]

What also doesn’t help is the extended dwell time (compared to most modern DMUs/EMUs) required to split IETs - 8 minutes.

It was never envisaged the time would be so long but was an unintended by product of the GW Upgrade descope. It was never in the design that IETs would be fitted with ATP as the line should have been resignalled as part of the upgrade. When retrofitting ATP to the IETs it was found to be very tricky to fit such an antiquated system onto a modern computer controlled train which is what generated the long search times and computer resetting.

Or it's possible that the TMS is just rubbish ( see other issues, like reshuffling unit members around ). I've no doubt fitting ATP to anything these days is a horrorshow though.

 

[Snow1964]

So I think the summary so far, is GWR is not too big, it just has problems :

1) not having ideal mix of trains, lack (and age) of turbos, and an IET fleet with nothing between 5 and 9 cars (and constrained by DfT not to alter the fleet)
2) lacking a small number of locations where ideally could split/join trains without disrupting other services.
3) a bipolar approach to services, either Express or local with a rather poor experience (and lack of suitable rolling stock) for the long secondary routes, so that some 3+ hour journeys have abysmal facilities.
4) A customer experience that seems to be to/from London standard or something much poorer, no uniform consistency.
5) A kind of paralysis resulting from unfinished bits of electrification (so 387s can’t operate) and the lack of 769s


.

 

[HamworthyGoods]

3) a bipolar approach to services, either Express or local with a rather poor experience (and lack of suitable rolling stock) for the long secondary routes, so that some 3+ hour journeys have abysmal facilities.

Not sure this is quite correct - the longest secondary route Cardiff - Penzance has HST rolling stock which is set out for long distance travel.

 

[Snow1964]

Not sure this is quite correct - the longest secondary route Cardiff - Penzance has HST rolling stock which is set out for long distance travel.

Wasn’t actually thinking of that as a secondary route as can travel on IETs on all of it (except few hundred metres at Stoke Gifford)

I was thinking more Cardiff-Portsmouth and Weymouth-Worcester etc as secondary, route between multiple cities