West Midlands Trains - New Timetables

[melmerby]

Hi all

I've noticed something in the LNWR & WMR timetables which is baffling to say the least.

Following electrification of the line between Walsall and Rugeley TV, from 19th May there is a new hourly service from Rugeley TV to London Euston via Walsall & Birmingham so I looked for the service in the LNWR timetables. No luck it's not included. I checked on their system map and Rugeley to Birmingham is shown only as WMR.

So I looked on WMR timetables and sure enough, there is a timetable for Rugeley to Birmingham, however it shows that this also continues hourly to London.

At the top of the timetables is shows that this service is operated by - you've guessed, LNWR!

 

Effectively (actually?) one per hour Euston - Birmingham & Return LNWR service has been extended to Rugeley.

 

This is obviously a by-product of dividing the franchise into two named brands (although the same franchise) with certain defined routes but is a bit bewildering for the unwary traveller.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[wombatofludham]

Certainly the footage uploaded to YouChoob of the first services have shown LNWR branded Dessies, in fact a 350/2 replaced what should have been the last DMU into Rugeley on Saturday night, which I imagine upset a few gricers hoping to bag the last DMU out of the town.

 

I imagine the fact the timetable is shown on WMT pages despite being an extension of the LNWR service is to avoid confusion with the much faster Rugeley TV to London LNWR service which avoids the Northampton Loop.  Rugeley TV to Euston by direct train is about 1 hr 50 mins, but round the houses via Walsall and Northampton, over 3 hours.  LNW Timetable 1 shows the through times from Cannock and Walsall to London, but not Rugeley's two stations, which further suggests that they are trying to send Rugeley passengers via Trent Valley, which makes sense.

 

As someone who lived near Rugeley until 1999 and went to school in the town, it's incredible to think Rugeley has gone from a handful of dozy stoppers to Rugby or Coventry, mainly to provide some sort of connection into the Inter City services, to having twice hourly electrics to Walsall, New Street, International and beyond, plus hourly fast trains direct to London from Trent Valley every hour as well as the happy wanderer via Walsall.  Just shows that those who campaigned to bring back trains across the Chase were absolutely correct and given it was launched as a Speller Amendment trial service, shows how a cheap and cheerful experimental service can be developed into an important commuter route.

 

A very long way from the days when the hourly Walsall shuttle was seriously being considered for replacement by an express bus service via the M6.

[CovDriver]

I will only say this once as I don't want to end up on the naughty step for speaking out of term.

The new timetable is an absolute farce it works perfectly on paper or a computer but when you mix a big busy station (New St) and passengers it's a complete nightmare coupling and uncoupling the class 350's for the Liverpool and Rugeley TV services.

Before it took 1x Driver 1xGuard and 1 member of platform staff to safely couple/uncouple now we have to have 3 Drivers 2 guards and member of platform staff.

And as for our Driver diagrams all I'll say is recipe for disaster there's no padding in the turn around times and most of them have the minimum legal breaks. 

 

Think I'll stop now and get off my soapbox.

 

Cheers 

 

 

[298]

On 24/05/2019 at 21:00, melmerby said:

This is obviously a by-product of dividing the franchise into two named brands (although the same franchise) with certain defined routes but is a bit bewildering for the unwary traveller.

 

There was a piece on Midlands Today yesterday about the lack of service so the new timetable still isn't working properly and is attracting media attention. Local services tagged onto a longer distance one obviously doesn't work and someone has put too much faith into these proposals, as the same was mooted for new stations on Nuneaton to Leamington being linked to Oxford and Reading. Virgin have been doing the same for years when Birmingham to Glasgow/Edinburgh were extended to Euston, and the irony of being able to get off a Southbound train at Crewe and catch a later one that'd get to London an hour earlier was lost on alot of the passengers who were curiously following their ticket instructions.

[melmerby]

1 hour ago, 298 said:

 

There was a piece on Midlands Today yesterday about the lack of service so the new timetable still isn't working properly and is attracting media attention.

The biggest problem seems to be the WMR Birmingham - Rugeley service where the journey has been tagged onto the Euston - Birmingham - Liverpool LNWR service.

There doesn't seem to be enough recovery time available so trains are arriving later at their destinations than the time they should be starting the return journey.

The result, to keep the main part of the timetable operating, is cutting the leg to Rugeley short at typically Hednesford, so people going to or from Rugeley aren't getting a service at all.

There is also the joining and splitting of trains at New Street where a delay in one impacts on the other.

All this means the current timetable is the pits!

(See CovDriver a few posts back!)

Edited July 25, 2019 by melmerby

[multivac]

I would expect one of the franchise partners to be able to run a timetable well, maybe the crews need some more training?

[wombatofludham]

Much talk about the collapse of the service to Rugeley from Birmingham on the Rugeley Faceache page and the RailUK forums.  The primary problem appears to be late running into Birmingham, from London and Northampton, and some issues with the lack of time to split the 8 car sets down to the two units for Liverpool and Rugeley as mentioned earlier.  I looked at historic data from Real Time trains for the past week following some toxic postings from people I know from when I used to live in the area and there was a surprising number of cancellations north of Hednesford on some days, with some quite long gaps in the service.  What is slightly baffling is, as CovDriver points out, the potential for the service to go mammaries akimbo with some of the heroic turnround times assumed in the new timetable were being discussed by many, professionals and amateurs, when the proposed timetables were first discussed and it seems to have come to pass.  It doesn't take much for things to go a***wards on the WCML given the amount of traffic on the line, and New Street didn't get the nickname "The Crucible" for nothing, given it is probably running at 150-200% of it's design capacity in terms of train movements, so you would have thought that the bright idea of removing terminators at BNS by linking disparate services together would have been tempered by some reality.

The irony is of course, it is perfectly possible to have a through Rugeley-BNS-Rugeley service without terminating stock occupying a platform and eating capacity, you just go in via Soho, out via Aston and vice versa, pretty much what it did before.  You don't block up a platform, it would be a self-contained service and would be relatively immune from snowball delays on inbound services, once off the Soho-Proof House section.  Walsall loses a direct all day London service but who, really, is going to go to London from Walsall via Northampton and the principal towns and villages of Buckinghamshire? 

 

The electrification of the Chase Line has taken over 50 years to come to pass (it was originally pencilled in for EMU operation as part of the West Midlands Electrification before Beeching closed the line to passengers) and had the potential to massively improve the service together with resignalling and speed improvements, especially now Rugeley Power Station is shut and the complication of timetabling coal trains has gone.  It would be a disaster if the imported unreliability starts to hit ridership just as competing high quality bus services have been introduced from Cannock by NatEx.

[298]

9 hours ago, multivac said:

I would expect one of the franchise partners to be able to run a timetable well, maybe the crews need some more training?

 

Having thought about the issue, I believe the solution is to uncouple the units on the move in the Proof House area. This may need a few software modifications, but there is some history in slip workings and trains becoming uncoupled at speed. This would save station dwell times and the two units would still be able to share the same path into New St.

[multivac]

On 26/07/2019 at 09:11, 298 said:

 

Having thought about the issue, I believe the solution is to uncouple the units on the move in the Proof House area. This may need a few software modifications, but there is some history in slip workings and trains becoming uncoupled at speed. This would save station dwell times and the two units would still be able to share the same path into New St.

Interesting slant on an old operating practise. The East Japan Railway seen to connect and disconnect the Hayabusa and Super Komachi Shinkansens automatically without any problems though and the timetable is stricter there.

 

Edited July 27, 2019 by multivac