South Western Railway launch Timetable Consultation (for Stakeholders only)

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Moving away from buses for a few minutes, many of you out there probably use the bus as a vehicle to get you further afield by train. Whether it’s for work, pleasure, or that mythical work that is enjoyable; rail services have been suffering considerably in recent months as people remain working from home and anxious about going to the beach. Now technically not a franchise, but more of a hybrid management contract, South Western Railway have launched a consultation about better serving communities across the Hampshire and Surrey region from December 2022.

First DfT South Western?

During the coronavirus pandemic, South Western Railway joined almost all other rail operators by becoming part of a nationalised service under Emergency Recovery Measures Agreements (ERMA). this means that although SWR is still running the trains, the parent companies FirstGroup and MTR doe not bare any risk. There were very few passengers, the trains were virtually empty for months and the ERMA system was at one point costing the Department for Transport some £900m a month.

In May, FirstGroup signed a new National Rail Contract with the Department for Transport, which is a management style contract with no outgoing risk. This runs until May 2023, with an option to extend until May 2025.

Services are increasing

Now we are re-opening fully, the South Western Railway network of services is probably around 80% to 90% of it’s pre-COVID capacity. I know that some rush hour trains I would sometimes use are not there at the moment, and the service between Petersfield and Portsmouth has changed drastically.

SWR are looking forward to when customer confidence is hoped to be a little higher and travelling resumes in some form. This challenge is mixed in with employers embracing working from home far more than they used to, which I think is partly the catalyst for this service consulation.

The Consultation is not for everyone

So the consultation is not your usual “Survey Monkey Q&A” that many companies seem to prefer at the moment, but one purely aimed at major stakeholders; passenger groups, accessibility groups, councils, etc. The consultation document can be downloaded from the SWR website here and if you fall into a stakeholder category then there are details on the page on how to respond.

This consultation takes into account a number of assumptions. Outside of our area, SWR are planning to introduce it’s class 701 Arterio trains. This is important as there are some pretty specific rumours flying about regarding these trains at the moment:

https://twitter.com/AnonSWRTeam/status/1420776436085010438

Now we have known that the class 458 trains have been heading down to Bournemouth for a refurb and allocation to longer distance routes for some time, South Western Railway put a press release to that affect some time ago and the basics are covered here at Railway Technology. If the class 701s are being replaced already though, we might be seeing archaic 40 year old trains across suburban London for the foreseeable future.

Proposals in the South

We are not in London though and that means most of the proposed changes are not affecting most of us. So we will take the fastest of looks at what South Western Railway are proposing for trips mostly from the South, along the “fast lines” to the capital:

Peak Times

Figures are in Trains per Hour	May 2019	May 2021	December 2022
Total “fast lines” from Woking and Surbiton into London Waterloo	25	18	21
Portsmouth to London via Haslemere	6	4	4
Portsmouth to London via Eastleigh	2	2	1
Southampton & Eastleigh to London	3	2	3
West of England to London via Salisbury	2	2	2

Off Peak Times

Figures are in Trains per Hour	May 2019	May 2021	December 2022
Total “fast lines” from Woking and Surbiton into London Waterloo	14	10	13
Portsmouth to London via Haslemere	4	2	3
Portsmouth to London via Eastleigh	1	1	1
Southampton & Eastleigh to London	3	2	3
West of England to London via Salisbury	2	1	2

Digging down into the document, there are a number of things that jump out at me. I am not going to paraphrase or repeat things that the document suggests will not change, as that means you have far less to read, and less reading means more content that is actually useful:

Portsmouth

On the “Portsmouth Direct” between Portsmouth Harbour, Haslemere and London Waterloo, the proposal is to remove the London to Haslemere Stopping service. This means that hourly slow service calling at all stations, will continue to call at Witley and Milford, and one of the fast services will call additionally at Farncombe.

Overall, this might add a few minutes to some trains, but overall the impact on services in Hampshire is not going to be much.

On the “Portsmouth – the long way” services via Basingstoke and Eastleigh, the proposal is to remove one of the two evening additional services out of London. This will instead be replaced by additional peak services between Winchester and Portsmouth, aimed at serving the local rush hour market instead.

Southampton

SWR are proposing that it’s more recent (we are talking the last decade) semi-fast through service to Poole will become separated like it was in the early South West Trains days. [I promise – I won’t reminisce about open top trains]

If you travelled pre-pandemic, you may remember the service that would call at Farnborough and Fleet on it’s way down to Southampton, and then call almost all stations through to Poole. This service had the problem that it would need to be overtaken at Southampton Central and Brockenhurst by faster Weymouth or Cross-Country services.

This will once again run only between London and Southampton, still calling at Farnborough and Fleet, but also at Swaythling and St Denys.

London – Dorset

The plan seems to be to return Weymouth to a half-hourly through service to London once again. I actually think this worked largely well when it was first introduced a few years ago, although I completely understand why it then became a shuttle service from Bournemouth during parts of the COVID era. The calling stations of the two Weymouth services are broadly similar to what they were; the train that stopped at Basingstoke will become the slow train after Poole and the one that stopped at Woking is the fast.

What does concern me though is that there will be more trains splitting en-route.

In the Peak, all trains will either attach (morning) or detach (evening) at Southampton; half running non-stop to Bournemouth and half stopping all stations except Beaulieu Road. The timetable promotes resilience, but I am never convinced that everything will work perfectly every time.

In the off-peak, one of the Weymouth trains will divide at Bournemouth instead, calling at Branksome, Parkstone and Poole. At the moment, these units often go out of service to either the sidings at Bournemouth, or the Depot at Branksome. This replaces the stops from the London – Poole stopping service.

Local Dorset

The local “slow” section of the London – Southampton – Poole services will be revised to run as a Southampton to Bournemouth service. This is expected to run to similar levels to May 2019, which would suggest an hourly all stations service, albeit without running through to Poole.

With the confirmation from SWR that the Alstrom class 458 stock is heading to Bournemouth on a permanent basis, I wonder if this is to become a self-contained route for them to operate as fixed 8 car formations? Maybe these will also be complimented with a 4 coach class 458 on the Lymington branch (which remains 2 trains an hour as it is now)?

West of England

Starting with what I think is the least surprising announcement in the consultation.

The route between Salisbury and Bristol Temple Meads has historically been served by both SWR and Great Western Railway, with SWR running five of the average 25 daily services in the May 2019 timetable.

Following a separate review with the Department for Transport, SWR will withdraw its current three daily services from December 2021 as duplicating services between the two operators does not provide good value for the taxpayer.

Extract of the SWR Timetable consultation found here

Running a small number of trains a day, which are already duplicated, is never going to be cost effective. This, alongside the summer special services to Weymouth via Yeovil Pen Mill, are going to be withdrawn. The better used Salisbury – Westbury – Yeovil service will continue though.

For rail enthusiasts, this does mean that the summer Saturday specials to Swanage, already withdrawn for 2021, are unlikely to return in any form.

Elsewhere on the core West of England route, the proposal is broadly similar to May 2019. South Western Railway plan to changes to the Honiton and Axminster shuttles outside of our area. Some local services between Basingstoke and Salisbury will continue to run to Reading in the evenings.

The Island Line

…. and finally.

Although still closed due to upgrade work and testing of the new Class 484 trains, SWR will not make any changes to their half-hourly service plan once the Island Line reopens.

Changes are lessor in the South than in the City

If you do commute into Suburban, rather than The City of London, there are many more changes in the Greater London area than there are in Hampshire and Dorset.

I think this does make a marked change from the transport structure of the franchisee keeping every customer satisfied though. Occasional through journeys are now replaced with a need to change trains at a major transport hub, which for the distance of trip being made should be an expectable outcome. With commuting 5 days a week likely to be less common, this is probably the time to bring everything back to the normalised standard that rail services should always be; a timetable on a clock-face and an expectation.

A decrease in commuter traffic will probably also mean that on paper, leisure travelling at the weekend will become more on a par. The loss of income on long season tickets will need to be replaced somewhere, and will this mean that there is a risk of more engineering works on the weekdays which become less important to the daily commute. I think the reduction in additional complicated individual services is telling, but we will see.