Open Access
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While we in the far South West are grateful for the prospect of new trains, the accelerated journey times they will bring to the region’s major population centres of Exeter, Plymouth and Torbay amount to a maximum of six minutes.
This will bring them more or less back to the original HST schedules of 1976 before these were eased to permit single-manning, and are achieved purely by replacing slam-doors with the automatics that every other part of the country has had as standard for the past quarter-century.
It should also be noted that the stock used will be the AT300s provided on the initiative of the new Great Western franchise, and is not part of the great rail regeneration plan.
Even Christian Wolmar has noted that the rail needs of Torbay have been ‘ignored’ ( RAIL 804). But this is also true of all the services over the 200 miles west of Bristol, which remain entirely untouched by the national investment plan.
Through working from Paignton to Exmouth is not occasional, but a regular hourly service through the day. Plans to double the frequency to half-hourly have been ready for a couple of years, but are on hold pending the new timetable now delayed until 2018 and the availability of stock.
Our trains are Class 143s and ‘150s’, kept going by the heroic efforts of the Exeter depot. Indeed, the Class 150/1s, demoted from suburban use in the Birmingham area after being deemed obsolete some years ago, now provide many of the inter-regional services from Penzance and Plymouth to Bristol and Cardiff, generically similar to those in Scotland that are soon to be taken over by the GWR HSTs.
Elsewhere in RAIL 804, the delay to publication of the Peninsula Rail Task Force 20-year Strategic Plan is mentioned. Please could you remind us all of: (a) the original proposed publication date; and (b) how many times it has been delayed?
This is not the fault of local politicians, who have worked hard to make it a success. We should be reminded that this locally-inspired project nearly collapsed at the turn of the year, when Network Rail withdrew the £0.5 million it had promised towards this crucial survey. Instead, it was the franchise operator (GWR) that stumped up to ensure completion of a survey that should have been totally DfT-funded in the first place.
The survey was prompted by the events at Dawlish in 2014. Two and a half years down the line, we still await a coherent policy.