5 coaches is the maximum. They are struggling with fleet availability (eg to run a 3-coach 166 and 2-coach 165 coupled) but as you can guess there is no money to do much about it.
A passing loop adjacent to West Cornwall golf club is proposed.
It’s not comfortable and good look.
It has been fairly miserable for the last few years and seems to be getting worse still. I remember when people (including me!) complained about having a 5-car turbo do the route, and now you'd be lucky to get a 3-car! Again, its' another route in need of more money which simply doesn't exist...
If the main issue is fleet availability, where is the financial block? Are the DfT preventing maintenance happening - either directly or indirectly?
It's funny how the money exists for the passengers to buy fares in such substantial numbers that many of the trains are regularly crowded out, but somehow that money doesn't make it back to being able to be spent on providing what they have bought.
It's not helped that the A36 from Bath to Southampton is largely single carriageway and usually isn't any quicker than the train.
It would be the other way around. An order for parts or a specialist may need to be approved by the civil servant in charge of the contract, depending on how much the bill will be. The Department may simply sit on the request, unapproved, or send it back with questions. Delaying payment makes it easier for the Department to manage its budget.
It's not the first time I've seen or heard of full and standing services along that line either. When I travelled on one of the last remaining SWR services last winter, we were picking up a lot of passengers from Warminster and Westbury onwards, to the point where we were leaving stations full and standing. And that's despite a GWR Stopper running about 10 minutes ahead of us.
Partly, but even if the whole Thames fleet moved over tomorrow, wouldn’t allow all the trains to become 5car and allow the Bristol area service improvements.
That will upset the nudists in the dunes below the ridge at Porthkidney sands. Strangely, however, Despite the extensions of the platforms at St Erth and Lelant, there were no 5 car trains run on the branch this past summer and Lelant remains a Request Stop.
Given it's pretty tight to do a full return trip within 30 mins, would a 15 min service be feasible if you had to add the time in for crossing at the passing loop, especially as it isn't at an existing station stop. Surely it would be every 20 mins, with more realistic turn around times at both ends.
Well the end result is indeed precisely the same yes. But the phrasing of the question originally implied that it was GWR's money and the DfT were intervening to stop them, when in reality it's actually inaction at DfT to release the funds stopping some things of this nature from proceeding.
I didn’t take note of the service pattern. I’ll take another look.
