No problem. I think the double Voyagers to the south coast were a bit of an oddity, and if your working hours didn’t match up you’d likely go all year without ever seeing one. I’m not sure if there was a particular need to double that service into and out of Bournemouth at the time they ran, so I always assumed it was about getting the stock positioned for the Reading to Manchester leg in the evening peak. A criticism I’ve made before is that XC never highlighted any longer than normal trains, including HSTs, in the paper timetables, so there was nothing to guide passengers to the higher capacity trains anyway.
What proportion of the turbo and 80x fleets will need to be working daily by May? Is there the possibility of scrapping some Chiltern turbos for parts given the number waiting for spares.
Yes, I thought as much, but doesn't attaching and splitting happen throughout the day at Bournemouth so the time allowance is needed, whereas Redhill not all trains split and attach throughout the day, only in the peaks?
I believe it was the 0727 or 0827 Manchester - Bounmouth and return was a double set on Fridays.
Less than that, just one in each direction Mon-Fri if you don't count the morning one from Edinburgh.
I'm not suggesting that the line will be physically closed. It's clear it will remain open for freight and the occasional railtour. But passenger services shouldn't be withdrawn unless they are also instigating closure proceedings. There is no way they could possibly undertake that very slow and arduous process by the May TT change so this looks like another example of a 'closure by stealth' where the proper process is just ignored.
That is a bit drastic. Using a few as parts donors for a while is a better solution.
Yes, the units can't stay longer at Reigate as they would be in the way of a North Downs Line service. They have a standard path north from Redhill.
I think there is also services occupying Platforms 2 and 0 (GWR Gatwick Reverser) perhaps preventing the train leaving earlier?
Do you know, and perhaps more importantly are you able to tell us which TOCs are in each camp?
Please can you link it, I can’t find it on RTT.
Is it a morning peak service? Doesn’t seem to continue further on throughout the day.
Correct, and as far as I can tell there are no return journeys
That is quite clever. The shortest of services, formed off a working into Victoria to act as a crowdbuster on the Peckham Rye route. It is good to see this sort of innovation squeezing every last drop out of the train fleet.
I'm all I favour of cutting XC services beyond Edinburgh. Since the fleet is based in Edinburgh, this will save a lot of services which are essentially just positional in the early morning or late evening.
Doing that at the cost of disconnecting Glasgow (and more importantly, Motherwell) from East Lothian and the North East of England though. They really should extend those TPE sets over to Glasgow instead then, and run them to either York or Liverpool. The TPE crew are Glasgow based so it would make sense.
I’ll second that! I had briefly mentioned this way back upthread but the main focus seemed to be on the south coast services, a great surprise - was beginning to think we would never see it return, at least not in the near future.
