The Bristol Railway Archive

Brief report on improvements to Severn Beach Line via Evening Post.

http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/news/New ... ticle.html

When I worked the Beach line as a conductor guard in the mid - eighties it was operated by three-car heritage sets, along with the odd off-peak bubble car. There was never any significant overcrowding and certainly no complaints. First Great Western, which inherited the service eventually, uses railbuses despite the increasing patronage.
Julian Crowe may like to crow about "bigger trains" to come, but they're going to be first generation Sprinters cascaded from London Overground and around twenty five years old. Nothing to get excited about; they'll soon prove to be inadequate for the service, methinks.
Andy

complete nonsense of course. the 143s were built in 1985/1986 while the 150s were built between 1984-1987. that's some good spin to call them newer!

they do have a larger capacity, and better door layout, so that's one thing, however, the platforms on the beach line are notoriously low, the 143s combat this by having a built-in step. no such luck on the 150s, so much harder to get on/off. and of course we know this because 150s are already regularly used for services on the beach line!

what a non-story!

As revealed in the Evening Post earlier this month, the council did consider scrapping the line altogether as part of the ú28 million budget cuts for 2011/12 but has now discounted that idea.

Typical mis-reporting by The Evening Pest on rail issues once again. The City Council "considered scrapping the line altogether"???

Idiots. Any fool knows it's not the Council's line to scrap. What they should have said is the Council had considered "scrapping their subsidy altogether", which is somewhat different from scrapping the line.

Piss poor reporting like this would really get my goat, if I had a goat

I commute daily from Redland station, so I was very pleased to see that the stolen information point has now been reinstated.

I was also rather surprised to see that a machine for dispensing car-parking tickets had been installed next to it - especially surprised since Redland station has no car park. All was explained a couple of days later when I saw that the large blue P sticker had been removed and First Great Western branding applied. It is now being used to sell train tickets, seemingly with minimal modification. It only sells tickets as far as Temple Meads which is a flat fare, so the machine doesn't need to know about any of the destinations. I don't know how useful it will prove, as in my experience of the 06:29 from Redland nearly all the passengers are buying through tickets to onward destinations. Perhaps it's different later in the day.

I don't know how useful it will prove, as in my experience of the 06:29 from Redland nearly all the passengers are buying through tickets to onward destinations.

I am sure anything will be an improvement. Everybody knows that Severn Beach line fares have been chronically under-collected for at least 40 years!

The older models are due to be sent to a northern rail franchise as part of a deal with the Department for Transport.

So no prizes for guessing who the Northern Rail franchise is then! This will add to their collection of ageing units.

the void wrote:complete nonsense of course. the 143s were built in 1985/1986 while the 150s were built between 1984-1987. that's some good spin to call them newer!

they do have a larger capacity, and better door layout, so that's one thing, however, the platforms on the beach line are notoriously low, the 143s combat this by having a built-in step. no such luck on the 150s, so much harder to get on/off. and of course we know this because 150s are already regularly used for services on the beach line!

what a non-story!

Are they ALL low? It's been 23 years since I moved away from Bristol so I can't really remember, but I do recall that Montpelier got very low at the Redland end, and that Sea Mills was a bit low......