The Bristol Railway Archive

From the Bristol Evening Post

'200MPH TRAINS ARE NEEDED'

High-speed trains are needed between London and Bristol to ease pressure on the regional rail network, according to an influential expert.

The idea is part of Jim Steer's 50-year vision for better rail links around the country, commissioned for the Association of Train Operating Companies.Mr Steer, the former director of the Strategic Rail Authority, says trains travelling at up to 200mph could carry 750 passengers at a time to London and across the proposed Severn Barrage to Cardiff.

He says the trains are desperately needed to cope with a growing number of passengers.

The 100 miles of railway needed to run such a service would cost an estimated ú8 billion.

Mr Steer said: "It's a large sum of money but it's over a long timescale and this is the national transport system here, so it's important to get right."

125mph trains would be a good start!!!

Doubt we'll ever get 200mph trains on Bristol-London services.

What they should do though is have limited stop services like they did pre-privatisation. When journey times were somewhat quicker than they are now. For instance 1 hour 24 minutes Bristol Temple Meads-London, or 1 hour 5 minutes Bristol Parkway-London. Nowadays all services are 1 hour 40 minutes minimum and faff about stopping at stations every 15 minutes between Bristol and Reading. They should at least have a limited number of these limited stop/true express services running daily.

For anyone who's interested there is currently a rare limited stop working every Sunday until May 17th. Departing Temple Meads at 2024, the service calls Reading and London Paddington only. Though the journey between Readind and London isn't that fast(about 40 minutes). But the journey between Bristol and Reading is great, and such a novelty to be on a scheduled service whizzing through Bath, Chippenham, and Swindon stations. When I'm so used to being on services that faff about stopping at all these stations.

Bring back the limited stop Bristol-London services!

Before the time of bus drivers running trains. The runing times for HST trains from Paddington to Reading if I remember correctly was 31 minutes stoping at Reading. As for the reverse it was about the same with a 4 minute recovery time between Ealing Broad way and Padd;
The 1-15 pm Padd; to Bristol first stop Bath Spa in the steam days was about 40 minutes to pass Reading I can remeber a trip that I worked with Driver JOE CRIDLAND.of BATH RD .A lovely gentle man .