About Bedwyn Trains Passenger Group
Our aims
To restore our pre-pandemic direct services to Paddington. To be a voice for Kintbury, Hungerford and Bedwyn Station passengers. To keep Bedwyn Station as a nice environment and to promote its use along with the bus connection to Marlborough. To maintain and improve train services from Bedwyn, Hungerford and Kintbury.
Why do we need a passenger group?
Our stations are in a geographically difficult position, sitting west of Newbury on a non-electrified stretch of mainline railway. The railway is electrified to Newbury, meaning the electric only trains (running between Paddington and Newbury) can not run on to the commuter stations of Kintbury, Hungerford and Bedwyn. Therefore we rely on some stops on bi-mode trains (running to the West of England) and diesel shuttle services to Newbury. In summary the three stations suffer from:
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Freight and West of England services taking priority over us. So we are third in the pecking order. This makes drawing up timetables a challenge and relegates us to third place during frequent times of disruption (whether that be late through services, strikes or poor weather). When trains or drivers are in short supply our trains are, due to being perceived as less revenue generating, tend to get sacrificed first.
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Due to increased journey time, GWR's planners are under pressure, from Devon and Cornwall passengers and politicians, to not stop west of England services at our stations. This makes timetabling stops on through services a challenge.
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No west facing bay at Newbury. This means (i) the Bedwyn shuttle can be de-platformed to allow another service to stop at Newbury (ii) late notice platform changes when the shuttle is swapped around to give other services priority. Shuttles to Newbury have never been reliable enough.
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The punctuality of all other trains has priority over the Bedwyn shuttle. Thus there are frequent missed connections at Newbury.
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To date, Wiltshire Council has been very lacking, when compared to other authorities, in resource when it comes to trains. Therefore there is little local support for Bedwyn station. We fill this void, linking passengers, GWR, MPs and other groups. Also as Bedwyn is the only Wiltshire station on the service (Kintbury and Hungerford are in West Berkshire), we are often overlooked by Wiltshire Council.
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Due to lack of gates and ticket examiners, Kintbury, Hungerford and Bedwyn are undercounted in terms of ticket sales. This can lead to GWR and DfT making ill-informed decision based on incorrect passenger uses. E.g due to perceived lower passenger numbers stops on through services to Kintbury, Hungerford and Bedwyn are, at times of disruption, the first to be sacrificed.
Since 2006 the passenger group has faced the following additional major challenges:
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In 2006 First Great Western were set to halve our off-peak service. This is something we managed to get overturned.
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In 2009 The Department for Transport announced electrification as far as Newbury, isolating Kintbury, Hungerford and Bedwyn. The DfT had no plan as to how Kintbury, Hungerford and Bedwyn would be served post-electrification. It was not until 2012 did the DfT come clean (via an invitation to tender document for the new rail franchise) that we'd lose all of our direct Paddington trains and be on a shuttle service to Newbury. So from 2009 to 2012 we were fighting a solitary campaign. With the 2012 announcement we were able to get the two local MPs on board. This led to (i) an ARUP review of the feasibility of bringing electrification to Bedwyn (which proved economically positive) but then (ii) the introduction of the IET bi-mode trains, able to give us an hourly direct to/from Paddington service from December 2019.
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Major line blockade during 2018 where we had months of no trains (with bus replacements) while the overhead electrification was gong in between Newbury and Reading.
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In March 2020 Covid hit, putting us on a diesel shuttle to Reading. This was only three months after the new December 2019 timetable, the best eastbound timetable we'd ever achieved.
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Slowly we started to get our bi-mode (direct to Paddington) trains back. But in 2021 cracks were found in the IET bi-mode fleet. Kintbury, Hungerford and Bedwyn were an easy target, we were put on a diesel shuttle to Newbury while the reduced fleet was spread out elsewhere.
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Again, slowly we started to get our bi-mode (direct to Paddington) trains back. However, in 2022, post-Covid, the DfT instructed GWR to make massive cost savings. Again our bi-mode trains were taken away and assigned elsewhere (replacing older expensive to maintain trains) and we were put on diesel shuttles for all of our off-peak and the majority of our evening peak trains.
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Ongoing industrial action leading to no service days from Bedwyn, Hungerford and Kintbury.
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Major line blockade in February/March 2023 for two weeks of engineering works.
Who are we?
We are Steve Smith and Bill Wells - both retired commuters.