Analysis
PHILIP HAIGH examines the capacity problems affecting services between Basingstoke and Exeter, and the improvement options being considered
The gateway to the West.
LONGER loops lie at the heart of Network Rail’s recommendations for upgrading the line from Basingstoke to Exeter, a line which was once the Southern Railway’s gateway to holidays in the West Country.
Three demands along the route vie for NR’s attention: regular services west of
Salisbury; improved commuting opportunities into Exeter; and making it fit for diverted Great Western Railway services without compromising its usual timetable. And they come against a backdrop of house building that NR expects to increase demand for rail services over the next few decades.
The line’s problems go back to British Rail’s decision to cut its double-track to single in the 1960s, in the face of rising car ownership and falling rail use. Between London and Exeter, BR concentrated its efforts on the Great Western line via Swindon and Taunton, rather than the Southern’s old route via Salisbury.
As NR notes in its latest investigation into the line’s prospects, BR intended to have three passing loops (Honiton, Chard and Gillingham) and a six-mile double-track section (Templecombe-Sherborne) for the 82 miles from Wilton (Salisbury) to Pinhoe (Exeter). The six miles later became ten with double-track between Templecombe and Yeovil Junction.
Then stations started reopening, such as Feniton in 1971, Pinhoe (1982) and Templecombe (1983). This put more pressure onto the single-track, with the result that BR laid a loop at Tisbury in 1986 and Network Rail added Axminster Loop in 2009. Cranbrook station joined the network in 2015. Railtrack had proposed more double-track in 1998 ( RAIL 329), but little other than Axminster appeared.
Now, NR suggests a new 6km loop between Whimple and Cranbrook, extending existing loops at Tisbury (to be 5.5km and to include an extra platform at Tisbury), at Axminster (by around 1.2km), at Honiton (to be 3.9km), and at Gillingham (to be 3.7km), and pushing Yeovil’s junction 1.6km further west to extend the double-track there.
The exact mix of improvements depends on what stakeholders such as government, local councils and passenger groups want from the line.
NR records stakeholders’ top three priorities as reliability, capacity and London journey times. Meanwhile, Transport Focus surveys of passengers produce a top three of value for money fares, seat availability and punctuality. This on a line on which commuting brings 50% of all its travel (from surveys taken before COVID-19 struck).
Lengthening Tisbury Loop, for
example, allows a two trains per hour (2tph) service from London Waterloo to Yeovil Junction (currently there’s only 2tph between London and Salisbury, with one every two hours extended to Yeovil). Extending Honiton Loop and building Whimple-Cranbrook could result in 2tph at the line’s western end between Exeter and Axminster, as part of Devon Metro.
Or, if funders decide that providing an alternative route for GWR services between Exeter and Castle Cary is important, then the line needs a longer loop at Axminster. At the moment, diverting one GWR train every two hours disrupts South Western Railway’s services, but NR talks of hourly diversions in the future.
As NR notes in its new West
of England Line Study 2020 (the latest in its series of continuous modular strategic planning, CMSP, documents): “Since the last major West of England Line infrastructure modification in the 1960s, the service level operated has begun to increase considerably but the infrastructure has not kept pace with this. In other words, we are squeezing more capacity out of much the same infrastructure.”
It adds: “This gradual, incremental ‘using up’ of capacity without making significant changes to the infrastructure has knock-on effects to service performance, maintenance regimes, asset management and the operation of a robust timetable.”
Hence the line’s declining performance over the past few years, such that it now records 74.5% punctuality - almost ten percentage points adrift of its 84.3% target.
NR is clear about its effect: “The impact that poor performance and a lack of reliability has should not be underestimated.
“Services on the West of
England Line have seen a reduction in localised patronage at several stations over the last few years that coincides with the record of poor performance. It is likely that this is a key component of a passenger’s decision not to travel by train, in combination with the Waterloo blockade in summer 2017, poor car parking capacity and the subsequent strikes.”
Thus stations such as Tisbury, Gillingham, Templecombe, Sherborne, Yeovil Junction, Axminster, Honiton, Feniton and Whimple have suffered from declining passenger numbers since 2014-15 while Grateley’s peak was in 2015-16.
Despite this, NR expects crowding to increase. It reports that in 2018, passengers were standing from Andover on the busiest peak trains into London and suggests this will spread to Gillingham by 2041. Exeter, too, will witness similar crowding by 2041 if house builders meet their targets for new developments east of the city. This could be sated by running longer trains or, if NR delivers Woking’s remodelling, more trains towards London.
Yet increasing services will overload SWR’s current fleet of 30 three-car Class 159s and ten similar two-car Class 158s. SWR has no plans to replace them during its franchise, which should end in 2024.
With the Department for Transport keen to see the end of pure diesel trains, it’s likely that future stock will be hybrid, incorporating power from batteries or hydrogen.
Electrification is another option - NR reckons that it might cut 14 minutes between Worting Junction and Exeter. (Worting Junction is near Basingstoke and is the point at which the line to London becomes electric on the DC thirdrail system.)
NR suggests the extra off-peak trains that SWR introduced in May 2019 has harmed punctuality.
It says: “In some four-week periods, up to 25% of trains can be more than three minutes delayed in the Up direction (towards London) through
Pinhoe and in the Down direction (towards Exeter) through Tisbury.”
It explains further: “Trains end up waiting to cross at single-line sections of the West of England
Line. This means that if there is an issue, whatever the cause, it is difficult to recover the timetable without an impact on other services or creating lengthy gaps by turning services short of their destination.”
Further pressure will come if new stations open. There are already ideas for stations at Oakley (between Overton and Basingstoke and linked to new housing),
Porton (between Salisbury and Grateley, the previous station closed in 1968), Wilton Parkway (east of Salisbury and possibly with platforms on the Westbury and Exeter lines), and a second new station for Cranbrook.
Then there are new services such as that proposed by TransWilts between Swindon and Westbury that might be extended to Salisbury. Or the Sundays Salisbury to Reading via Basingstoke train that might be run on weekdays, too.
There are also aspirations to run Heart of Wessex services from Bristol, Taunton and Wesbury into Yeovil Junction station, to connect with London-Exeter trains, although NR says it will look at this in its Dorset CMSP work. (Potential improvements at Exeter St Davids form part of NR’s Bristol-Exeter CMSP.)
None of these longer loops or extra stations are guaranteed. To be delivered, NR must find funding from central or local government and put the ideas through the
DfT’s rail network enhancements pipeline (RNEP) process.
NR suggests Honiton, Tisbury and Whimple-Cranbrook (see panel) enter first for possible delivery in Control Period 7 (2024-29), tied in with track and signalling renewals and maybe a new train fleet.