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May 2023 changes

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Watershed

Watershed

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JonathanH said:
Is that true? What has happened is removal of a working diagram, not a change in the unrostered units.
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A unit that has been sent to the West, so yes, there is one less in the LTV that's not required for service.
 
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DylanThomas

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JonathanH said:
Is that true? What has happened is removal of a working diagram, not a change in the unrostered units.
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Deleted as question answered by another user

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JonathanH said:
Yes, but that unit used to have peak work that has now been removed from the timetable.
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It is in GWRs own increased risk assessment pdf above
 
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JonathanH

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DylanThomas said:
It is in GWRs own increased risk assessment pdf above
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Yes - sorry I missed the point that that is what was being discussed. The circumstances of the removal of this unit had been discussed in a different thread.

Hopefully it is a one timetable period issue as the presentation also comments on the potential for making the North Downs timetable more efficient. Getting back to the position which existed for a long time of only needing six diagrams for the off-peak service would help with freeing up a spare unit.
 
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DylanThomas

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JonathanH said:
Yes - sorry I missed the point that that is what was being discussed. The circumstances of the removal of this unit had been discussed in a different thread.

Hopefully it is a one timetable period issue as the presentation also comments on the potential for making the North Downs timetable more efficient. Getting back to the position which existed for a long time of only needing six diagrams for the off-peak service would help with freeing up a spare unit.
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I wonder what will happen if they end up with a broken Turbo in the Thames Valley?

Scrap the peak Marlow donkey (Bourne End to Marlow) and run it as bus replacement until off-peak?

The Turbos are very expensive to maintain now. Believe I read that engine overhaul costs have tripled.
 
DelW

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JonathanH said:
Hopefully it is a one timetable period issue as the presentation also comments on the potential for making the North Downs timetable more efficient. Getting back to the position which existed for a long time of only needing six diagrams for the off-peak service would help with freeing up a spare unit.
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Presumably that basically means undoing most or all of the changes that were made to the NDL timetable to accommodate the 3tph service using 769s? None of those were needed as it turned out, since neither the second hourly Gatwick nor the bimodes were ever operated. The pointless delay to Redhill trains at Guildford, wasting time sitting still to allow overtaking by a non existent Gatwick service, is an ever present reminder of the cost of the whole 769 debacle. As passengers and taxpayers we paid a huge amount of money to end up with a worse service than before.

I suppose at least we're better off than in the days when Southern Region ran it with the dreadful Tadpoles.
 
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TT-ONR-NRN said:
A redundant unit due to a peak only diagram being eliminated, so a counteracting move/balance.
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I suppose the point that GWR and other posters are making is that once that morning peak work was completed, it was available to provide cover for the rest of the day.
 
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Benjwri

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Does anyone know why the Bristol to London services call at Didcot at 2tph, but the London to Bristol only has calls for 1tph?

Originally both directions were 1tph but the Up direction has increased its frequency. I'm not complaining, but if one way can, couldn't the other?
 
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mangyiscute

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Benjwri said:
Does anyone know why the Bristol to London services call at Didcot at 2tph, but the London to Bristol only has calls for 1tph?

Originally both directions were 1tph but the Up direction has increased its frequency. I'm not complaining, but if one way can, couldn't the other?
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Especially because the one that doesn't stop has the Cheltenham service 5 minutes after, so there's no use claiming that you can connect off of that service, it just means Didcot (and by extension Oxford) to Bristol and beyond is down to hourly
Furthermore, half of the trains have pathing allowance in their Reading to Swindon time which would allow for a Didcot stop without issue or change to journey times (they're gonna end up just sitting at Swindon), and the other half from what I can tell could easily run 3 minutes later from Didcot onwards without pathing issues
 
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Benjwri

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mangyiscute said:
Especially because the one that doesn't stop has the Cheltenham service 5 minutes after, so there's no use claiming that you can connect off of that service, it just means Didcot (and by extension Oxford) to Bristol and beyond is down to hourly
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Although I'm sure the answer to anyone asking what they should do is just buy the more expensive via Reading ticket!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==

Also rather hilariously this is such a last minute change it isn't even included in their published PDF timetable, which lists only the xx:30 services as stopping at Didcot, and I am absolutely sure this wasn't changed in journey planners 2 weeks ago.

One has to wonder what has forced this last minute change. Presumably political pressure, but the opposite direction couldn't be changed without a recast?
 
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mangyiscute

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Furthermore, half of the trains have pathing allowance in their Reading to Swindon time which would allow for a Didcot stop without issue or change to journey times (they're gonna end up just sitting at Swindon), and the other half from what I can tell could easily run 3 minutes later from Didcot onwards without pathing issues
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From looking deeper into it, the half of the trains that have pathing allowance have a freight/ECS service running in front of it at a slower speed, so they have to wait outside Swindon for a bit since they catch it up. There's absolutely no reason that I can see that this spare time couldn't be used sat at Didcot rather than travelling at a slower speed for a while. This is the reason that I get annoyed at timetables sometimes, it's when there's a clear change that could be made that wouldn't makes anyone's journey worse but would make a lot of people's journeys better.
 
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Benjwri

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mangyiscute said:
From looking deeper into it, the half of the trains that have pathing allowance have a freight/ECS service running in front of it at a slower speed, so they have to wait outside Swindon for a bit since they catch it up. There's absolutely no reason that I can see that this spare time couldn't be used sat at Didcot rather than travelling at a slower speed for a while. This is the reason that I get annoyed at timetables sometimes, it's when there's a clear change that could be made that wouldn't makes anyone's journey worse but would make a lot of people's journeys better.
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To be fair a significant amount don't, and I believe that stopping them at Didcot would mean the Cheltenham service would have to be pushed back, and then the Swansea service that's non stop behind it would have to be pushed back, slowing down both journeys. It's stupid that it was removed in the first place, but now that it's been done I can see that it can't be undone without another recast.
 
ThameslinkUser

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Does anybody know anywhere to find the booked train lengths of services in the timetable? Specifically for GTR...
 
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JonathanH

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ThameslinkUser

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JonathanH said:
As far as the public domain goes, I think it will be wait and see tomorrow,
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So much for "plan your journey" if there's no information available on whether you can actually get a seat or not... I should imagine the obfuscation is to play down the impacts of changing the vast majority (if not all) 12 car services to 8 or fewer.
 
PGAT

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JonathanH said:
As far as the public domain goes, I think it will be wait and see tomorrow, then referring to Tiger - https://tiger.worldline.global/ECROYDN/ciss;graphic=1.

There was also some commentary in this thread https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...nd-class-313-replacement.247724/#post-6191760
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Tiger only shows the next 30 minutes, each GTR website (Southern, Thameslink and Great Northern) all show lengths for the next 2 hours. (EDIT: nevermind you have to zoom out to see the whole thing)

If all else fails it's pretty easy to guess fairly accurately
 
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mangyiscute

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Benjwri said:
To be fair a significant amount don't, and I believe that stopping them at Didcot would mean the Cheltenham service would have to be pushed back, and then the Swansea service that's non stop behind it would have to be pushed back, slowing down both journeys. It's stupid that it was removed in the first place, but now that it's been done I can see that it can't be undone without another recast.
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The cheltenham trains either have a couple minutes of pathing between didcot and swindon, or they sit in swindon for a couple mins, so they'd be fine to be pushed back a couple minutes as they could still leave Swindon maximum a couple minutes later and they'd be fine to run a couple minutes later to Gloucester and then 8 mins reversal there rather than 10. The swansea service gets to Swindon over 10 minutes after the Cheltenham leaves so it would not cause any issue to that.

edit: before the change, the Cheltenham train left Reading at xx:53 and the Bristol at xx:57. The Bristol train would get to Swindon at xx:27 with both of them calling at Didcot. Now, they have swapped their times at Reading, so if they both stopped at Didcot the Cheltenham train could pull into Swindon at xx:27 and then leave at xx:29 as it does currently, since there's proof that this timing does work.
 
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CptCharlee

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Crosscountry are touting "an increase in services between Bristol and Plymouth"

Yet I don't see anything other then the hourly Edinburghs? So nothing extra.
 
hexagon789

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CptCharlee said:
Crosscountry are touting "an increase in services between Bristol and Plymouth"

Yet I don't see anything other then the hourly Edinburghs? So nothing extra.
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The gaps, at for example 1145 and 1945, off Bristol have been filled. So it's back to properly hourly.
 
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Mitchell Hurd

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DylanThomas said:
More info on GWR changes
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Thanks for this - found it really interesting!

I am concerned about the use of scheduled single 5-car sets on the Wales / Bristol / West of England diagrams though. However, looking at the planned diagrams, it seems like GWR have clearly thought of this so I trust them with their allocations!
 
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