Wrexham and Shropshire to close

[orudge]

Clickity-click.

It seems they're just not making any money, and they're closing with two days' notice! A great shame. They offered by far the best onboard service of any train company I've used in the UK.

[Nawdic]

Are the services/stock going to be integrated into Chiltern, as prevously thought?

[JamieLei]

I just got the email

What a shame... - I never did get a chance to try out the service, even though I bought a ticket (I missed that train!)

It'll be interested to see how Grand Central do, who they were always compared to.

PS: I take it all the stock will go to Chiltern? Would be interesting to see some premium services operating from Moor Street at a surcharge! At the risk of Dave complaining, it's very common here to have premium services with lovely lovely stock, costing twice as much as the regular trains. The time savings however are usually not that much!

[Kevo00]

PS: I take it all the stock will go to Chiltern? Would be interesting to see some premium services operating from Moor Street at a surcharge! At the risk of Dave complaining, it's very common here to have premium services with lovely lovely stock, costing twice as much as the regular trains. The time savings however are usually not that much!

It'd be a very very brave man would do that in the UK rail industry!

[teccuk]

PS: I take it all the stock will go to Chiltern? Would be interesting to see some premium services operating from Moor Street at a surcharge! At the risk of Dave complaining, it's very common here to have premium services with lovely lovely stock, costing twice as much as the regular trains. The time savings however are usually not that much!

It'd be a very very brave man would do that in the UK rail industry!

Given the price of UK fares, they should all be a premium service.

[Chris]

I always heard great things about W&S, but never got the chance to travel on them . I would hope that the stock would remain with Chiltern, as they refurbished it all.

[Dave]

Great shame, but they DO run empty...

Hopefully they'll be absorbed into Chiltern and run the odd service per day to Wrexham or at least Shrewsbury?

[welshdragon]

Great shame, but they DO run empty...

Hopefully they'll be absorbed into Chiltern and run the odd service per day to Wrexham or at least Shrewsbury?

Yeah, right.

It is more likely DB/Chiltern wanted the rake/locos for its Marylebone-Oxford/Birmingham service and, if so, this is anti-competitive.

Many people are hugely annoyed by the demise of the W&SR and there are lots of conspiracy theories about.

I suspect the service will go down the pan from today, 1 member of staff failed to show today

[JamieLei]

I suspect the service will go down the pan from today, 1 member of staff failed to show today

Well there is only 3 days left... :/

[audigex]

It seems they're just not making any money, ..... They offered by far the best onboard service of any train company I've used in the UK.

Maybe that's the reason they weren't making any money? Just a thought.

[orudge]

Maybe, but I think the fact they were squeezed by Virgin and by DFT restrictions didn't help, either. Plus, I imagine a number of the customers they did have would have chosen W&S over the alternatives primarily because they offered a great service - as I say, it was certainly not the fastest service, considering you could get from Wrexham to London more quickly on Virgin even with a change.

[Kevo00]

Lets face it, no one in the real world will miss this service, and obviously the reason that it made no money is because Wrexham is clearly too small a town to support a rather expensive dedicated train from London, which barely called anywhere else.

Hopefully the locos and carriages will now be put to a more sensible use; I'm sure we've all got our pet projects to overcome overcrowding. If we're going to have premium services run by Open Access operators, they should be on routes that people actually want to use and where they can afford to pay for them.

[Dave]

Lets face it, no one in the real world will miss this service, and obviously the reason that it made no money is because Wrexham is clearly too small a town to support a rather expensive dedicated train from London, which barely called anywhere else.

Hopefully the locos and carriages will now be put to a more sensible use; I'm sure we've all got our pet projects to overcome overcrowding. If we're going to have premium services run by Open Access operators, they should be on routes that people actually want to use and where they can afford to pay for them.

Utter rubbish. Gave Shrewsbury (not a "small town"), as well as Telford (not a "small town") and Walsall (not a "small town") a direct link with London.

Don't really know what beef you have against W&S, but you must be mighty happy it's gone bump.

Maybe, but I think the fact they were squeezed by Virgin and by DFT restrictions didn't help, either. Plus, I imagine a number of the customers they did have would have chosen W&S over the alternatives primarily because they offered a great service - as I say, it was certainly not the fastest service, considering you could get from Wrexham to London more quickly on Virgin even with a change.

This is nearer the point; although I wouldn't blame Virgin too much - their franchise agreement REQUIRES them to challenge anyone trying to operate on their turf, so really (although they would have complained anyway) they had no choice.

[Badger]

Utter rubbish. Gave Shrewsbury (not a "small town"), as well as Telford (not a "small town") and Walsall (not a "small town") a direct link with London.

Which they didn't use though.

[Kevo00]

With the possible exception of Telford, none of these towns are exactly economic powerhouses though, plus from Wallsall you can easily link into the far more frequent Virgin services to London. I don't like to see rail services being closed, but like I say, it doesn't sound like anyone will miss this service. Perhaps it would have been more successful if it had stopped in Birmingham.

[welshdragon]

...it doesn't sound like anyone will miss this service..

I'm not going to flame, but that is untrue, A lot of people in Shropshire and the Welsh Marches liked Wrexham and Shropshire simply because it was by far the cheapest of all the West Coast operators.

The service, which carried passengers between Wrexham and London Marylebone via Shrewsbury and Telford took less than four hours, with a return ticket costing £50.

Compare this to:

The cost of a return journey on other services can be up to £219.

[Kevo00]

But ultimately, not enough £50s to make a profit.

The figure of 'up to £219' is clearly the Daily Snail 'OMG £1000 from Newquay to Kyle of Lochalsh' figure. I just looked up journeys on eastcoast.co.uk for Wrexham General to London Euston for tomorrow and it gives me a £70 off peak return to Euston that takes just 2 hours 38 mins. As a hypothetical Wrexhamer I could have an extra hour in bed, take the 0900 train and still be in London at more or less the same time as the Wrexham and Shropshire effort would have got me there. I daresay I could get a more competitive peak price with a bit of forward booking, or by booking Chester-Euston separately. Plus Euston has better tube connections, anyway.

[audigex]

I don't think there's much point arguing whether the route it served had the ability to support the service... the fact it's closing answers that pretty authoritatively.

I would've thought there were other potential routes which would offer a much higher return on investment myself. The fact is that people who have to commute to London move to towns/cities which have a good direct link to London. Similarly businesses tend to locate to cities with good links. You can't just put a link in and expect people to use it: if they needed it, they wouldn't be in Wrexham.

Okay, that's an over simplification - of course there are links which can be usefully served which currently aren't, but I think the point stands that such a dedicated link over a fairly obscure route with a fairly slow service was optimistic at best, and that the towns in question were unlikely to have the market to support it immediately. Give it a decade for people to adjust to the new services (ie "let's move to Wrexham! I work in Telford and it's got a great service from W&S") and maybe, but not straight off.

[Geo Ghost]

Went past some Wrexham and Shropshire coaches today that but been dumped in a siding. Not sure where the engines were.

[Kevo00]

Audigex hits it right on the button IMO. Interesting to see Roger Ford asking why everyone was getting so emotional over WSMR on Twitter:

Why is everyone getting so emotional about WSMR? Railways are a business dammit and it was losing money.

Amusing how people think that good economics in the case of railways are simply as many as possible, rather than distributed as effectively as possible.