Prologue

Readers of two earlier blogs will know that I have been a collector (or perhaps better described as a hoarder)  of train and bus timetables for many decades. In the two posts, I used this collection to look at public transport developments in Oakham and the development of the cross city rail line in Birmingham, both over the last 50 or 60 years.  In this post, I do something similar, and look at how the rail journeys through the Gwynedd town of Porthmadog have changed from the 1960s to the present day. Specifically I look at how services on the Cambrian Coast railway have changed over that period. I visited the area many times from the 1980s onwards, and particular from the mid 1990s through to the mid 2000s for family holidays. These holidays were often focussed on travelling on the Ffestiniog Railway and were thoroughly enjoyed by all. I do not however consider the services on the FR in this blog, except in passing.

In what follows, I basically consider the southbound services through Porthmadog in terms of frequency, connectivity, journey times and reliability, with my considerations based on timetables I have in my collection or are easily accessible over the web. The services heading east to Pwllheli exhibit much the same trends. But first we need to set out the basic facts about the Cambrian Coat line itself.

Cambrian Coast line

The Cambrian Coast line is shown on the map if Figure 1 (from Wikipedia). It extends from Pwllheli in the north to Dovey Junction in the south, where it meets with the Aberystwyth to Shrewsbury line. In between it passes through a number of small towns (Criccieth, Porthmadog, Harlech, Barmouth and Tywyn) and a larger number of villages. It is a single track route with a number of passing places – at Porthmadog, Harlech, Barmouth and Tywyn.  

Figure 1. The Cambrian Coast Line

In the pre-Beeching area, there were two other connections with the national rail network – at Afon Wen between Pwllheli and Criccieth where the line was met by the  Caernarfon and Bangor line; and at Morfa Mawddach, south of Barmouth, where there was a junction with the line to Dolgellau, Llangollen and Wrexham. At Porthmadog the line was crossed by the narrow gauge Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Railways.

From the 1960s onwards the main service on the line has been between Pwllheli and Machynlleth, the latter being the first main station on the Aberystwyth to Shrewsbury line after Dovey Junction. Some of these services continued to Shrewsbury and beyond, often having attached to a service from Aberystwyth. These services have been provided by a number of operators – British Rail up to privatisation in 1996, then Regional Railways Central, which morphed into Central Trains from 1996 to 2001, then within the Wales and Border franchise operated by Arriva Trains Wales up to 2018.   The franchise was then awarded to Keolis Amey Wales  by Transport. Following the financial collapse of the franchise in 2021, services have been provided directly by Transport for Wales, through Transport for Wales Rail.

The traffic on the line is mostly passenger – some local traffic for work / school / leisure purposes, but mainly tourists and holidaymaker traffic that, inevitably, is much higher in the summer than in the winter. The major destinations are Barmouth, Porthmadog and Pwllheli, and up to the 1980s, there was a sizeable flow to Butlins near Pwllheli.

Post-Beeching the traction on the line was mainly coaches hauled by diesel locomotives – class 25s and then class 31s. But by the 1980s, the dominant forms of traction were DMUs of various types. Services are now provided by two coach Class 158s.

More details of the line can be found at its Wikipedia page, although this is somewhat unbalanced in subject matter and not terribly consistent in format and style.

Frequency Analysis

Figure 2 shows the number of trains on the line from 1960 to the present day, for weekdays, Saturdays and Sundays. These are southbound trains through Porthmadog during the summer period (there often being a slight reduction in the winter). In the early 1960s (pre-Beeching) there were nine or ten services on the line.  including through trains to Wrexham (and beyond) from the junction at Morfa Mawddach. Many of the services terminated at Barmouth. There  were also trains from Pwllehil to Bangor via Afon Wen that did not pass through Porthmadog.  After the Beeching cuts however, the service number settled down somewhat to seven or eight per day on weekdays and Saturdays. Sunday services were introduced in the 1980s and the number of these have steadily increased to around five per day.

Figure 2. Southbound services

Figure 3 shows the interval between services on weekdays only – the graphs for Saturdays and Sundays tell the same story. Broadly, up to 2007, the services were irregular, with intervals between services from one hour to three hours are more. Around that time, a regular interval timetable was imposed, with trains at broadly two hourly intervals. This will be reflected in much of the discussion that follows.

Figure 3. Intervals between southbound services

Connectivity Analysis

Figure 4 shows the number of through trains that ran south from Porthmadog and went beyond Machynlleth, again for weekdays, Saturdays and Sundays. From the 1960s to the 1980s these were very occasional, with most through trains running on Saturday for the holiday market. These included the Cambrian Coast Express to Euston. From the 1990s onwards the number of through services increased, mainly through the Cambrian Coast DMU coupling to the service from Aberystwyth and running to Birmingham New Street. In the late 1990s and early 2000s the turnaround time at New Street was very tight, which led to unreliability and late running, the effect of which was magnified by the single track nature of the line westwards from Shrewsbury, with delays caused by the need to wait for passing trains. This was to some extent alleviated from 2008 when most services ran through to Birmingham International. Most services on the line are now through services, although, oddly, the current timetable doesn’t acknowledge this and suggests a change at Machynlleth is necessary. There seems no obvious reason for such reticence, unless the operators are simply keeping their options open to terminate the Cambrian Coast services at Machynlleth.

Figure 4. Southbound services beyond Machynlleth

Figure 5 shows the number of connecting services from the Cambrian Coast line onto the Aberystwyth – Shrewsbury – Birmingham services, with a connection time of less than 30 mins. These peak in the 1980s and 1990s and then fall off as through trains become the norm.

Figure 5. Connections at Machynlleth

Figure 6 show the average connection times at either Machynlleth or Dovey Junction. In the 1990s and early 2000s the average connection time was over 20 minutes, with some connections (if they can be called that) having times of 40 minutes or more. Machynlleth is a very pleasant station on a dry summers day, and it is a pleasure to wait there. However, it is in mid-Wales and such days are few and far between. In general waiting there for 30 or 40 minutes for a connecting train was usually rather unpleasant. Some services required a change at Dovey Junction, a station with road access, minimal facilities and in the middle of a bog. Again on a dry summer’s day it has a certain bleak charm. But one suspects scheduling connections there was simply an act of sadism by the franchise timetabling teams.

Figure 6. Connections times at Machynlleth

Journey Time Analysis

Figure 7 shows the journey times between Porthmadog and Machynlleth on weekdays – again the Saturday and Sunday times are similar. From the 1960s to the mid 1990s these decrease from around two hours on average to around one hour forty minutes on average, with a wide spread. In 2007, coinciding with the introduction of a regular interval service, there is a sharp increase in average journey times to around one hour and 55 minutes – roughly the same as in the 1960s.

Figure 7. Journey times

Reliability Analysis

The rail industry measure reliability through the use of a Public Performance Measure (PPM). Essentially it produced a figure between 0 and 100% that is a measure of lateness / cancellation etc. All franchises are given targets for the measure that they have to meet. A value of 90 to 95% is regarded as adequate or good whilst one of 80% is regarded as poor. The historical figures for the whole of the Wales and Borders franchise are given in Figure 8. (The figures for individual routes are not easily available – at least I can’t find them on the web.) The graph shows a significant increase in PPM between 2006 and 2007, which coincides with the frequency and journey time savings on the Cambrian Coast. Now the Wikipedia page indicates that the Cambrian line was by far the worst performing line in the franchise, so it is not unreasonable to conclude that the changes made there in 2007 had a significant effect on the overall franchise PPM.

Figure 8. Public Performance Measure

Discussion

The major point to arise from the analysis presented above, is that in 2007 there was a positive decision to adopt a regular interval timetable, which enabled an increase in through journeys beyond Machynlleth through coupling with the Aberystwyth trains and resulted in a significant increase in reliability. However, this also resulted in a significant increase in journey times. The question arises as to whether a regular timetable and better connections and reliability was worth the extended journey times. I am inclined to think it was, but others may well disagree.

But could journey times be improved? I think perhaps they could be. simply having a longer layover at Pwllheli, with trains arriving there earlier and leaving later, should keep similar times for all the trains in the passing places. However I say this without having done any sort of timing analysis, which would require detailed route information and train performance characteristics. But perhaps a few minutes could be taken off the journey without loss of reliability.

Similarly, could journey frequency be improved to an hourly service? Leaving aside the issues of whether passenger numbers warrant this, or of stock availability, the answer is probably yes, if the two currently unused passing places at Barmouth and Porthmadog are brought into use. However this would effectively mean that the line was running at capacity – which would almost certainly lead to loss of reliability. A better way to improve service frequency would be, in my view, a closer integration with the Traws Cymru T2 bus service from Aberystwyth to Bangor via Machynlleth and Porthmadog. Indeed that service already offers a 1 hour 28 minute journey time between Machynlleth and Porthmadog – considerably better than the rail journey time, although it does take a much shorter route through Dolgellau.