Rail: Wrexham & Shropshire - London direct route to close (Other routes remain open)

A tiny bit of what some might see inconsequential news today is that Wrexham and Shropshire Trains - who operate a route from Wrexham, through Chester, Shrewsbury, Telford and through to London are to cease operations in the near future.

Services will cease on 28th January.

Forward booking tickets will be accepted on on Virgin, Arriva Trains Wales, London Midland and Chiltern Railways services

See: http://www.wrexhamandshropshire.co.uk/alternative-travel.php to see if and how you're affected.

The last operated train will be the the 1830 from London Marylebone to Wrexham General.

Wrexham, Shropshire, Marylebone Railway (WSMR) blamed falling customers numbers in the economic downturn. 55 staff are affected, and the company will be helping in finding alternative jobs,

In terms of service, it is a very "Classical" service, with a 3-4 Car's of passenger space with a locomotive and a driving trailer unit. However, this has dropped from 5 services a day, to 4 and finally 3 services before the termination notice was issued. It was set up in

In a notice handed to passengers, there was a loss last year of £2.8millon, and no foreseeable opportunity to see the service breaking even, let alone making a profit.

The service was set up initially between Renaissance Trains and Laing Rail in 2008 to re-provide the link after a break of 41 year. These companies sold their share to Chiltern Railways who in turn sold to Deutsche Bahn Regio.

The service has since faced competitor from Virgin Trains who had various demands of stopping patterns before they could operate the service, as well as local competition from Arriva Trains Wales and London Midland (all three of these are franchised rail companies - WMSR was set up as an open access operator, and has no access to subsidies or legacy services/paths unlike the Franchised operators).

As opposed to placing the company into receivership, the company is naturally winding itself up so as not to implode on the industry.

A shame, as the service was of a high quality and an on-time nature. However, the rolling stock from this may be diverted and send to support the upgraded Chiltern Main Line that is coming from May onwards, releasing further capacity on the line.

E*: Belgiums causing cancellations

(Yes, it's trains. After all, it's a TRAVEL blog...)

Already widely reported, but Eurostar services from London to Brussels are affected due to a Belgium rail strike in progress.

It isn't a wild guess to also say TGV and Thayls services are also hit, as well as domestic Belgium rail services.

A very limited coach service from Lille to Brussels is being operated, but passengers are being advised to rebook, with only the 19:34 departure from London will be making it through to Brussels today.

Eurostar - so wonderful, yet one little rail strike (saying that it's the same if ATC walks out in a country....)

In other Chunnel related news, the DB has been busy with one of it's ICE3 units, sending it back and forth through the Channel Tunnel in for testing purposes and evaluation to see if an ICE3 will meet the safety requirements to operate in the Tunnel, with a view of opening up a London -> Colonge/Frankfurt service (and taking on Eurostar at it's own game). 

This is thanks to open access coming to the tunnel - allowing other operators to access it and run services subject to safety (and if they pay enough for the paths through the tunnel). 

If this works, opens up a lot of routes and possible new services. However, to work (in my thoughts) they're going to have to pass the centre-to-centre test.

What's that you're asking?

It's time time from one Centre to another Centre, whilst factoring actual travel time, time waiting time in security and time getting to the main transit points. Eurostar works well against the planes for this - whilst the flight time is 50 minutes, the time to get to Heathrow (15 minutes to ~1 hour depending on part of London and mode of transport), an hour through check in, security and boarding, and anohter 30 minutes getting into london, suddenly the 1 hour 51 London to Paris train service with a 10 minute tube point to point suddenly looks very good timing.

And this is where new operators will have to compete on - convenience and point to point times.

Still - interesting times.