Nuneaton, Bedworth & Hinckley Rail Users Group

Before the general election, the shadow minister for rail - Theresa Villiers, promised her support for getting our fast service back to London. In a response to a letter from us to her asking what she was now going to do for us now she had been elected, the same old story that was trotted out by the previous government was used i.e. that the people of Nuneaton do not deserve a decent rail service, while services in the south of the county get better and better. Representatives from the group are now looking to set up a meeting with the new MP - Marcus Jones.

One tiny crumb of comfort is that Theresa Villiers said there is the possibility of the 1610 stopping at Nuneaton, but after so many broken promises, we will not hold our breath. We ask all Nuneaton rail users to contact both Theresa and Marcus to complain about the way we are being treated.

London Midland are finally making good on a franchise commitment by putting a second tier on the car park on the weekend of the 4th and 5th September. Athough the new structure will not exactly be elegent, it will be quick to implement reducing impact on the travelling public and is similar to a recently installed one at Tamworth.

Alliance Rail, headed up by Open Access champion Ian Yeowart, has announced a development group to spearhead new open access services for northern towns without direct services to London. Beneficiaries of these services are also likely to be Tamworth and Nuneaton where Alliance Rail plan to stop. Nuneaton, Bedworth and Hinckley Rail User Group welcome this development and hope that this may be a step in the right direction in restoring services to what they were before savage cuts by the previous government. For more information go to www.alliancerail.co.uk

Improved Car Park capacity is a franchise commitment by London Midland. Before the recent recession, the Nuneaton car park was very often full by 0830. A year ago it rarely filled up but now capacity appears to be nearing it’s maximum.

Have you experienced difficulty in getting a space recently?

Have you any alternative suggestions to simply putting a top deck on the car park?

Please let us know your views. We will be taking this issue up with London Midland in the future.

When our fast trains were cut we told the previous Labour government that changing onto a Virgin train at Rugby would be a problem. A typical example of this was a recent Tuesday morning. The London Midland 0802 service to London was running 5 minutes late. When the staff at Nuneaton asked if the connection would be held they said ‘I doubt it very much’. How right they were! As the LM service pulled into Rugby and opened it’s doors, the Virgin train, started to close the doors leaving passengers to stop the doors closing to get on! Some were left on the platform and had to re-board the LM train. What a shocking way to treat fare paying passengers. We will be bringing this up with our local MP and the new government. If you have any similar stories please e-mail us at nuneatonrug@btconnect.com.

Tip No 1. Split ticketing

It can be cheaper to some destinations if you buy one ticket to one station en route and then another from that station to your final destination. It’s all perfectly legal too!

Example : Manchester from Nuneaton; Buy a normal day return out on the 0817 and back on the 1615, it would cost you £34.40, but by buying a return to Stoke (London Midland only) and then a return from Stoke to Manchester it would cost you £22.80! Even less if you restricted yourself to just Virgin trains between Stoke and Manchester! It can also work with advance tickets.

If you have any examples of this from Nuneaton, please e-mail us at nuneatonrug@btconnect.com

Tip No 2.

After complaining to National Rail enquiries that it did not normally show direct London Midland trains when searching for trains between Nuneaton and London, the national rail enquiries website has now included a tick box for ‘Include Slower Trains’ on the front screen of the journey planner rather than buried in the ‘advanced’ options. Make sure you tick this box to get the FULL range of services from Nuneaton inclusing BOTH London Midland and Virgin Services. This will often save you money as London Midland are often a lot cheaper than Virgin.

More tips? Let us know and we’ll pass them on

Firm proposals for the upgrade of the Nuneaton to Coventry have been announced and more details can be found at the attached link.

http://www.coventry.gov.uk/ccm/cms-service/stream/asset/?asset_id=34630048&

The proposal is for a half hourly service with 2 coach trains with new stations at Bemuda Park and the Ricoh.

While this is will be a huge improvement to the line, due to some line speed restrictions and some freight movements it does not look possible at this stage to increase to 20min frequency or provide better commections at either end. The proposed timetable does miss important connections at both ends.

The reality of the London Midland service today cannot be forgotten as the existing service provider is showing itself as completely incapable of running a long distance service. This description of a recent experience on one of London Midland’s trains is not an isolated example. What the people of Nuneaton want to see is our local and national politicians standing up for the people of Nuneaton and ensuring that the services we need and deserve are given a much higher priority.

‘I was on the London Midland 19:36 service from Crewe to Euston last Sunday (28 Feb).  Not only was this service yet another of those with no armrests or tray tables and with five-across seating (which are completely unsuitable for anything more than a 20-minute commute), the Train Manager waited until 2 minutes before departure to announce that the train had no toilet facilities.

The train had been boarding in Crewe for 20 minutes, so prior warning would have allowed use of the platform 5 toilets.

We were promised the opportunity to use station toilets in Stoke.  This was reneged upon.  We were then given just 3 minutes in Stafford to use toilets there instead, so anyone desperate for more than just a wee was out of luck.

I don’t know what happened after Nuneaton, but surely this is not acceptable on a long-distance railway.  The sooner these clowns lose their franchise the better imho.’

The announcement of the new High Speed 2 line which could revolutionise rail travel in the UK for the areas served by it provides a sharp contrast with the ‘high speed have-nots’ of the areas not planned to be served by the new line. The people of Nuneaton, North Warwickshire and South Leicestershire may have reasonably expected that their train services may actually improve as a result of the new line, even if it only creates capacity on the existing line to run more services. However, the proposed re-casted services in the Government’s proposed HS2 leaves Nuneaton with services to and from London in 2025 being no better than they were in 1980 and due to the lack of through trains to major North West destinations, it is reasonable to say that the services would be worse than in 1980. The situation for Nuneaton is even worse than that, the new very popular stopping Trent Valley service will be cut back to a train every two hours under the proposals. While towns a quarter of the size of Nuneaton like Market Harborough today enjoy 2 fast trains an hour to London and Warwick and Leamington look forward to 2 or 3 trains an hour to London and faster journey times in the next few years, Nuneaton has absolutely nothing to look forward to as far as rail improvements go, even when £20billion is spent on the new line. 

The huge gap between rail services in the south of Warwickshire and the north widened even further recently with the announcement that Leamington will gain 4 additional fast trains to and from London now that Chiltern have taken over the open access operator - Wrexham and Shropshire. This will allow 4 trains a day to stop at Leamington when previously they were not allowed to. Journey times are expected to be about 1hr 25m. Chiltern have also launched their Evergreen 4 project to reduce all journey times between London and Birmingham which will further increase the gap between north and south Warwickshire. There are no firm plans for any improvements to rail services to Nuneaton, Bedworth or Hinckley in the foreseeable future.