West Country woes

One of the problems the West Country has is a lack of people who know the difference between what is reasonably possible, given investment, and what is a pipe dream.

Some years back we had consultants in Plymouth saying the maximum speed west of Exeter was 60mph, implying they’d never been on a train out of Plymouth and sampled the 100mph running east of Dawlish Warren. Now we have a local MP saying the Peninsula Rail Task Force’s ambition is for LondonTaunton in 1h 30min, Exeter in 1h 45min and Plymouth in 2h 15min ( RAIL 853).

Given a Reading stop, Taunton in 90 minutes is a feasible aim with track improvements (97mph Reading-Taunton). However, Taunton-Exeter in 15 minutes is ludicrous (123mph), while Exeter-Plymouth in 30 minutes is even more ridiculous at 104mph start-to-stop.

Without a total rebuild between Exeter and Newton Abbot, that stretch cannot be done in under 17 minutes and I cannot imagine what sort of engineering the writer had in mind to allow the journey on to Plymouth to be covered in another 13 minutes (147mph)! A 30-mile tunnel under Dartmoor perhaps?

The reason so little is being done is the unrealistic aims of the Task Force. There’s no point comparing possible Plymouth times with today’s to Darlington – the terrain is entirely different. Two hours 45 minutes should be the best realistic long-term aspiration.

Meanwhile, further to my criticism of GWR in RAIL 851 for not offering compensation to a reader who was wrongly excessed on a train, GWR – unprompted by our reader – has emailed him again. They said: “One of the reasons we do not offer compensation is that we could risk opening our staff up to dishonest complaints.”

What an extraordinary excuse. They allow their poorly-trained staff to insult a genuine user and refuse to offer any goodwill gesture.

Our reader has advised GWR: “Your inspectors should be issued with personal cameras to record incidents to avoid compensation cheats.” Indeed! Might that encourage GWR to treat its customers better?