TO BOLDLY GO
Wrexham, Shropshire & Marylebone Railway gets the Retro Years treatment now that it is 10 years since the fondly remembered, but financially unviable, open access operator suddenly stopped running.
The short-lived WSMR open access operation ended suddenly ten years ago after its high approval rating could not be converted into sustainable profits. Its legacy, however, was to show that loco-hauled trains were an option again on a units-obsessed network.
THE Wrexham, Shropshire & Marylebone Railway Company was formed in 2006 to run open access trains to London from an area of the Welsh and English border that last saw such through trains in the 1990s.
The initial company was a joint venture between John Laing and Renaissance Trains, and it was given approved by the Office of Rail Regulation to run trains from December 2007. A delay saw services actually begin on April 28, 2008 – at which time Deutsche Bahn subsidiary DB Regio owned a 50% stake (that it would increase to full ownership by September 2009).
WSMR resurrected the bay platforms at the south end of Wrexham General station for its servicing needs. No. 67020 is stabled there on May 30, 2008, while platform 3, on the far left, was used for public services.
The use of loco-hauled stock happened almost by accident. Cheaper to run, Class 158 or 170 DMUs were the first choice, but none were available at the time. However, spare Mk.3 coaches were, while co-owner DB (through its subsidiary DB Schenker, now DB Cargo, which had acquired freight operator EWS) had underused Class 67s locomotives looking for work.
The revised idea was thus to run short rakes of three (later four) Mk.3s sandwiched between a ‘67’ and a
Driving Van Trailer. DB bought up a fleet of ex-Virgin coaches, spare since the introduction of ‘Pendolinos’ on the West Coast Main Line, and sent them for refurbishment at Marcroft Engineering in Stoke-on-Trent.
These were not ready in time for the launch, however, so four sets of Mk.3s were hired in from Cargo-D, to be ‘top and tailed’ by two Class 67s.
Four DB locos, Nos. 67012015, were repainted in WSMR silver livery (later joined by 67010). These dedicated locos were modified for pushpull operations and named A Shropshire Lad (No. 67012), Dyfrbont Pontcysyllte (No. 67013), Thomas Telford (No. 67014), and David J Lloyd (No. 67015).
The initial three train diagrams needed six locos for ‘top and tail’ working, so there were always at least two others from the non-dedicated fleet. By the time WSMR received its DVTs from October 2008, more than two-thirds of the Class 67 fleet had worked a WSMR train at some point – including the two royal locos (Nos. 67005/006), and celebrity No. 67029.
ROUTE AND TIMETABLE
WSMR’s initial timetable saw five trains each way on weekdays, four on Saturday and three on Sunday, with a full-route journey time of just over four hours.
From Wrexham General, calls were made at Ruabon, Chirk, Gobowen, Shrewsbury, Telford Central, Cosford, Wolverhampton and Tame Bridge Parkway, then fast to Marylebone.
March 2009 saw the weekday service reduced to four trains each way, and this was further reduced to three in December 2010. This final timetable had departures from Wrexham at
05.10, 07.23 and 13.28, returning from Marylebone at 09.24, 16.30 and 18.30 – which only required two trainsets to be used (one making two return trips, the other just one).
Passenger approval for services was always highly rated, but WSMR could never attract enough numbers to make it viable in the long term.
The main problem was that, in being
granted rights to run the trains, the company was not allowed to compete with (and therefore abstract revenue from) the franchised operator Virgin Trains. This meant the Wolverhampton call could only pick up passengers in the Down direction (to Wrexham) and set down in the Up direction, while other potentially lucrative calls at the likes of Birmingham New Street, Birmingham International and Coventry were also not allowed – even though the trains passed through and sometimes even stopped there to wait time.
Virgin Trains introduced a direct service between Wrexham General and Euston from December 2008, with an Up service in the morning and a Down return in the evening – basically an extension of an existing Chester service that took only 2½ hours but did not serve the other stations in Shropshire and the West Midlands.
One interesting feature of the operation was the various diversions due to engineering work. To the
WSMR’s booked route through the West Midlands to Tame Bridge Parkway was via Coventry and Stechford, but they sometimes ran via Solihull and Birmingham New Street instead (without calling). On September 26, 2008, No. 67019 approaches Grand Junction to the west of Birmingham with a Wrexhambound service. company's credit, it always tried to run a service, resulting in trains sometimes using Paddington at the London end or running via Crewe and Chester at the northern end. In January 2010, diversions saw WSMR trains run from Wrexham to Shrewsbury, Crewe, Wolverhampton, Tame Bridge Parkway and fast up the West Coast Main Line to Marylebone via a reversal at Acton using freight-only curves – a routing of almost railtour standards.
RUNDOWN AND LEGACY
Chiltern Railways took over the running of WSMR trains from January 2010, which initially helped as it allowed a full stop at Banbury (previously not allowed for journeys to London) and an additional one at Leamington Spa. But in reality it was the start of the end for the Wrexham services.
Chiltern had its own plans to run loco-hauled services from Birmingham Moor Street to Marylebone, and introduced two such diagrams from December 2010: the 05.46 from Moor Street and 06.53 from Banbury, returning at 16.33 and 18.06 respectively. The locos and stock for the Birmingham run used one of the WSMR sets, whose service pattern was reduced and rejigged to compensate. The Banbury train was formed of hired in coaches.
Worse was soon to follow, however, when Chiltern’s parent company DB announced at short notice that all WSMR services would finish on January 28, 2011, due to low passenger numbers. The dubious honour of powering the last ever
WSMR train was given to No. 67013 with the 18.30 Marylebone to
Wrexham.
The former WSMR sets were not idle for long. From May 2011, Chiltern announced it would be phasing in further loco-hauled trains.
There would be four trips in each direction between Moor Street and Marylebone, while completion of a route upgrade cut the journey time to under two hours. The Birmingham trains left at 06.19, 06.55, 10.55, and 15.55, returning at 08.37, 13.37, 16.50 and 18.07 – and these were in addition to the Banbury trip.
Since then Chiltern has expanded its loco-hauled operation, both in terms of length and scope, with refurbished Mk.3s forming a high-quality service between Marylebone and the West Midlands. DRS Class 68s replaced DB’s Class 67 from early 2014, but of the original five dedicated locos,
No. 67012 still carries its silver livery ten years on from the end of WSMR operations.
A service train to Wrexham on the departure board at Paddington on September 21, 2008 for the first time since the 1960s.