Fears for future of rail link
Wednesday 14th January 2009, 1:59PM GMT.
Fear was growing today that a direct rail link from Wellington to London could be axed just months after it was launched.
Members of Wellington Town Council fought to get Wrexham & Shropshire train services to stop at the market town on their way to the capital.
But councillors were forced to contact the train company after rumours spread that the timetabled stops at Wellington would be reduced or axed.
Andy Hamilton, managing director of the Wrexham, Shropshire and Marylebone Railway Company, which runs the services under the Wrexham & Shropshire brand, wrote to the council saying “as is often the case with rumours there is an element of truth and lots of embellishment”.
He said passenger levels to and from London had been “lower than we had anticipated at Wellington” and the company was “experiencing a number of issues relating to people seeking to travel without tickets from Wellington to Telford Central and vice versa”.
He said the fare dodgers were causing a “bad experience” for passengers and staff and had even caused delays, particularly on the 4.21pm weekday service from Wellington.
He also admitted, due to the “nature and layout of the platforms” at Wellington, it took longer for trains to stop there than at Telford or Cosford – a station which, Mr Hamilton said, the firm was now promoting as a “potential park and ride venue for our trains”.
Although he said the Cosford promotion was not intended to move rail users from Wellington or Telford, the company had recognised both of the borough station car parks, especially Well-ington, were full early in the day.
Mr Hamilton said: “We are confident any customers choosing to change their habits and park at Cosford are merely creating a potential space at Wellington or Telford for another passenger for whom these stations are more convenient than Cosford.”
But town councillors said they feared this could mean the end of services stopping in Wellington.
Councillor Gary Davies, speaking at a council meeting yesterday, said: “Directing people to Cosford is bad news for us. The railway authority knows we have a car parking problem and it will get worse when we lose 43 car parking spaces to the bus station.”
Councillor Dorothy Roberts said people were often unable to book on-line tickets from Wellington and asked whether the railway chiefs had considered the number of people who instead booked from Telford but got on at Wellington.
By Kirsty Smallman
Shropshire Star on Twitter
Keep updated with the latest breaking news and content on our Twitter feed.
Lifestyle
Interactive Dining Out map
Hundreds of reviews by the Shropshire Star and Express & Star's teams to help you decide where to eat.
Entertainment
All the film reviews
Before you plan a trip to the pictures, get our critics' verdicts on all the latest movie releases.
OUR NEW APP
Get the new Shropshire Star app
Download the Shropshire Star’s new app to your iPad or iPhone to get one week of access to our digital newspapers absolutely FREE.
shropshirestar.com
Popular sections
Useful links
Not enough people get on the train in Wellington so why stop there when it doesn’t make commercial sense??
Mark Pritchard made a big song and dance about this service stopping at Wellington but I have never seen him using the service to get to London or back!!!
Report abuse
The train will continue to stop at Telford Central, a mere 3 miles from the centre of Wellington. Not such a big deal if the train no longer stops at Wellington really. It would also cut the journey time between Shrewsbury and London by a few minutes.
Report abuse
Exactly as the same as before in the early 90′s.
The link to Euston was lost because the majority of passengers joined the train at Shrewsbury, Wellington and Telford to travel to Wolverhampton and Birmingham, as a former employee in the industry, we warned you, use it or lose it. You didn’t use it and you lost it. Wrexham and Shropshire Railway will go the same way eventually. Just how vital is the link to London from Shropshire ?
Report abuse
Maybe the service ought to stop at Wellington more often. Who knows how many pepople choose not to use the station as the first train (the logical choice for bsiness or a long day out in London) of the day already misses this stop? It is frustrating to have to get the car out to drive to Telford. A walk to the station is a much greener alternative & costs nothing (Telford £4 to park for the day).
Report abuse
Wrexham and Shropshire is a great service with excellent customer service and value. Withdrawing the Wellington stop on both outbound and return journeys detracts from the service. If I have to get a connecting service between Telford and Wellington, it reduces the value of the service.
If I have to travel to Telford and pay for the car parking, or travel even further to Cosford I might be tempted to consider reverting to my old habit of travelling to Stafford station to use the West Coast mainline. I would be very disappointed if the W&S strategy drove me away from using their service.
Report abuse
If they take the service away from Wellington I won’t ever catch it. It’s easier to get the Virgin train from Wolves, so I will. I have used it from Wellington and want to keep it – but I won’t be catching it from Telford or Shrewsbury because the times it runs aren’t convenient enough for me to be messing around with connections to other services just to get home.
People talk about a mere 3 miles – how about those of us who don’t drive and who rely on inflated bus charges to get to Telford in the first place? Our buses from home are hourly and timed badly against the trains. And expensive into the bargain. I live 7 miles from Telford centre. That’s not a convenient place to get to unless you live on the 44 route – which applies to Leegomery but nowhere else in North Telford.
Plus what about people who live in Newport or places further afield? They’ll have to go to SHrewsbury and pay more for their ticket than they would if they caught it from Wellington. OR drive and spend more money getting to Telford.
Besides, this has nothing to do with the # of people at Wellington. It’s all to do with the fussing over the points and the fact it apparently takes 8 minutes to enter and exit Wellington station. If it had to do with # of people, Ruabon, Chirk and Cosford would all be axed because NO ONE catches the trains there. But they won’t be.
Before the service even began, the W&S people were muttering about that eight minutes and the points because I spoke to them about it via email. I had thought that W&S had good customer service, but I’ll be retracting my opinion if they leave the people of Wellington once more in the lurch.
As I’ve said before, Wellington the town is small, but Wellington the station serves a HUGE number of outlying places, many with bad bus services. If the London link goes from Wellington, I think it unlikely many Wellington people will go to Telford and change. So W&S will simply lose the people they have from Wellington.
They lose no money by stopping there, but they will lose money by not stopping there. Economic reality – some bodies on seats are better than no bodies on seats.
Report abuse
It is an awful shame, but I think the W&S has been nobbled from the start, and I think this may also be why passenger numbers from Wellington are low. It just takes far too long to get into London (not sure what it’s like with the new timetable changes), the one time I did use the service, we sat at a junction for 15 minutes waiting for ‘our slot’ to get into Birmingham New Street.
You just get the impression that because it’s a johnny come lately service, it has to be shoehorned around all of the other train services to the detriment of the journey time. I think people will be looking elsewhere because of this.
Having said that though, the staff are outstanding – I’ve never seen such good customer service from train staff, particularly the train manager.
Report abuse
The W & S service is suffering from fare dodgers. The existing companies have been experiencing this problem for ages. Staff feel threatened just to ask to see tickets and when someone is caught they just get a slapped wrist – naughty people! What it needs is London Midland to have a properly manned ticket office and ticket barrier. Aswell as fare dodgers travelling between wellington and telford, it will also catch people from wolverhampton.
Report abuse
Those people who do pay their fares are getting punished because of those who don’t.
But it’s not about barriers at stations (good grief, barriers at Wellington, what next – isn’t Shrewsbury illogical enough?) If guards actually bothered to come down trains between Wellington and Telford regularly, there would be less fare dodgers.
When I was a student in Brum I travelled the local service there daily and I hardly ever saw a guard on that service. I hate to think how many people exploited that loophole :S and it’s the same between Wellington and Telford on this line. Most guards that do appear do so after Telford and ask for tickets from both/either. The only reason W&S are noticing is because they bother sending guards down the train when they should :S
Report abuse