Chiltern running Oxford to Birmingham Moor Street after XC outage

Chiltern did very well to run around 12 special services yesterday between Birmingham Moor Street and Oxford calling at Banbury and Leamington Spa return. It seems like they had everything ready for running the route even with little notice.
I know they used the CrossCountry paths but is there no way they can regularly run the service to relieve the everyday bad XC service?
So many people in Oxford refuse to go with XC service to Birmingham and end up driving the M40. However, they would readily use Chiltern.
With CrossCountry already cutting Banbury for some trains it seems like Chiltern should be given a chance, especially as they must have spare drivers not doing EWR.

djox said:

Chiltern did very well to run around 12 special services yesterday between Birmingham Moor Street and Oxford calling at Banbury and Leamington Spa return. It seems like they had everything ready for running the route even with little notice.
I know they used the CrossCountry paths but is there no way they can regularly run the service to relieve the everyday bad XC service?
So many people in Oxford refuse to go with XC service to Birmingham and end up driving the M40. However, they would readily use Chiltern.
With CrossCountry already cutting Banbury for some trains it seems like Chiltern should be given a chance, especially as they must have spare drivers not doing EWR.

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There almost certainly aren't the paths, nor platform capacity at Oxford.
A more plausible option would be to send a GWR Oxford terminator up to Banbury to facilitate a simple change onto Chiltern's services to Birmingham.

JamesT said:

There almost certainly aren't the paths, nor platform capacity at Oxford.
A more plausible option would be to send a GWR Oxford terminator up to Banbury to facilitate a simple change onto Chiltern's services to Birmingham.

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Yes this is what I'd do, especially as Oxford-Banbury in itself is a very high passenger flow (4th highest from Oxford at 262k in latest data).

JamesT said:

There almost certainly aren't the paths, nor platform capacity at Oxford.
A more plausible option would be to send a GWR Oxford terminator up to Banbury to facilitate a simple change onto Chiltern's services to Birmingham.

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Yes that would even be better than XC, it's a shame the GWR shuttle isn't timed very well for Chiltern BAN to Moor St and usually has 40-50 min wait.

This was mentioned a while back as a plan - I think it is a good one and competition / choice would be welcome - but seems to have gone quiet. Would be a good one to get into Cowley too, if an additional tph could fit.

cle said:

This was mentioned a while back as a plan - I think it is a good one and competition / choice would be welcome - but seems to have gone quiet. Would be a good one to get into Cowley too, if an additional tph could fit.

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Yeah seems to have gone quiet, but it does look like Chiltern have had it in their back pocket and biding their time, as they have been able to have drivers ready to run it at a few hours notice yesterday.

djox said:

Yeah seems to have gone quiet, but it does look like Chiltern have had it in their back pocket and biding their time, as they have been able to have drivers ready to run it at a few hours notice yesterday.

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Isn't that just a function of them bringing trains between Oxford and Banbury Depot at the start/end of service? So they already had the route knowledge etc. I don't think it really says anything about a willingness to run it in service generally, never mind they don't have any spare rolling stock.

JamesT said:

There almost certainly aren't the paths, nor platform capacity at Oxford.
A more plausible option would be to send a GWR Oxford terminator up to Banbury to facilitate a simple change onto Chiltern's services to Birmingham.

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Maybe perhaps Chiltern can take over the Cherwell Valley stopper and extend it to Birmingham.

JamesT said:

Isn't that just a function of them bringing trains between Oxford and Banbury Depot at the start/end of service? So they already had the route knowledge etc. I don't think it really says anything about a willingness to run it in service generally, never mind they don't have any spare rolling stock.

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They found some spare trains pretty quickly yesterday. I know it's wasn't a full day service, but it's a start.

djox said:

They found some spare trains pretty quickly yesterday. I know it's wasn't a full day service, but it's a start.

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With Chiltern being a commuter operator Sundays are generally quieter, so a lot more would be spare than a weekday. They would presumably also (as they did on the really hot days with the 168 aircon really struggling) have been able to diagram more Mk5s on the Birmingham services to free up units.

WMT will be sort of similar, though the high level of leisure travel these days means there are more long trains on weekends. However it appears the Tring semifast service doesn't run on Sundays which frees up a few units.

Much as I'd love to see a Chiltern Oxford-Birmingham service, it would miss out the key traffic generators of the NEC/Airport, and I don't know whether the walk from Moor St-New St would reduce its attractiveness for anyone making onward connections... it's likely that journey planners would pad the transfer time so much that the XC route would probably still be offered regardless.

What is really needed is a proper hourly Reading-Birmingham service via Coventry and International, operated by proper-length, medium-density 'regional-spec' trains with lots of luggage space, supplementing the 1tph XC. However, there's a lot of money and infrastructure improvements required before that could be delivered.

In the meantime, extending some of the Oxford terminators to Banbury does seem like a sensible idea, relieving the pressure on XC for the Reading-Oxford-Banbury section and at least giving the option to transfer to Chiltern to Brum/Leamington if that suits the passenger better.

Personally, if travelling between Banbury and Reading, I'll always aim for the one direct GWR train a day as it's a much more pleasant experience than cramming onto a Voyager. However, it also seems to be first on the chopping block whenever there's disruption on the GWML.

Of course, in a sensible world, electrification would have reached Oxford and continued to Banbury, with 8 car Class 387s providing frequent stopping and semi-fast services along the whole route instead of 2 car 165s shuttling between Banbury and Didcot!