A premature ride on Mid Cornwall Metro

Thursday 25th April 2024

Mid Cornwall Metro is a £56.8 million project providing a new hourly Coast to Coast link with direct trains running between Newquay, Par, St Austell, Truro, Penryn (for the Exeter University campus) and Falmouth.

The aim is to upgrade the Newquay to Par branch line first, facilitating a doubling of the current two-hourly frequency to an hourly daily service (currently just three journeys run on Sundays) beginning in May 2025 with the new through service to Falmouth introduced in 2026.

That will provide three (instead of the current two) trains an hour on the main line between Par, St Austell and Truro while between Truro and Falmouth the new direct service will take over one of the existing two trains an hour on that branch.

The Government has just confirmed a £50 million contribution from its “Levelling Up Fund” ensuring the project can go ahead. The other £6.8 million comes from Cornwall Council chipping in £2.7 million and other funding from various pots including Restoring Your Railway £1.5 million, Active Travel £1.24 million and Digitalisation of Ticketing £1.05 million as part of a wider project involves introducing tap-on/tap-off ‘Pay-As-You-Go’ ticketing in Cornwall.

The infrastructure improvements include reinstating the second platform at Newquay…

… as well as “accompanying station and interchange arrangements” which is just as well as my recent visit found the facilities a disgrace for a popular coastal resort attracting huge numbers of holidaymakers and visitors every year in addition to its 25,000 resident population.

The former entrance is dominated by a vape shop…

…with a dowdy stepped pedestrian entrance in the corner to the left of Burger King…

… or a level access from the adjacent tiny car park…

…alongside a long closed café.

Improvements are long overdue including better siting of bus stops for improved interchange.

A second passing loop will be added at Tregoss Moor on the single track line between Newquay and Par which, as well as enabling the hourly service, will facilitate weekday direct trains to and from London in the summer in addition to the current weekend offering. This really wlll be a boost for Newquay’s tourist offering.

Level crossings will be enhanced and a new signalling panel installed at the Goonbarrow signal box which controls the line.

‘Active travel’ enhancements will be deployed at Newquay, Roche and Bugle which I’m guessing means a bike rack or two.

Finally, at Par, there’ll be a new accessible lift installed on the footbridge which will be very welcome.

There’s also mention of improving interchange with buses at Par but I’m not sure there’s much that can be done as both bus stops outside the station already have decent shelters (their seat benches could be upgraded) and there’s already a digital display showing bus departures as you exit the station.

Confusingly for visitors, buses on hourly route 25 serve the bus stops on both sides of the road as they do a loop of a residential area south of the station and retrace the route back again. A map at the bus stops or on the digital display explaining this would be very helpful.

Trains arriving from Newquay into Par face east, so once the through service to Falmouth begins they will need to pause while the driver swaps ends to continue westwards on the mainline via St Austell to Truro.

The timetable on this section currently offers two trains an hour on a very approximate half hourly frequency so the new extra train an hour is likely to be slotted in between these existing paths rather than an attempt at a 20 minute frequency which would only upset frequencies west of Truro and east of Par.

Once the new direct service begins trains will use the through platforms at Truro with the bay platform only seeing the hourly shuttle to and from Falmouth. The project includes more ‘Active Travel’ enhancements at Penryn and links to/from the universities both there and at Falmouth.

It sounds like a great project so while I was in Cornwall last week I thought I’d take a ride to try and get an idea of its potential, being cognisant this is April rather than peak summer.

There’s currently only one morning southbound ‘peak’ journey and that’s the 07:12 from Newquay to Par.

The 21 mile branch line to Par is a rather twisty circuitous affair taking you in a south easterly direction with the end to end journey taking 49 minutes giving an average speed of 26 mph. There are five intermediate stations with the first, Quntrell Downs, six minutes after Newquay and the other four (St Columb Road, Roche, Bugle and Luxulyan) all request stops.

The section of track just north of St Blazey, on the approach to Par, through North Hill Wood is rather delightful and where there’s a slow speed limit possibly around 10mph on the viaduct over the river.

Interestingly the map below shows a section of “dismantled railway” which until 1955 linked St Columb Road with what is now a stub of a branch from the main line ending near St Dennis for freight trains, which could have provided a quicker link from Newquay to St Austell if it was still in situ, albiet trains would need to reverse direction at St Austell which might restrict the main line.

We left Newquay on time and the guard soon came round to establish if the four of us on board wanted any of the request stops – and normally he’d sell tickets as there’s no ticket machine at Newquay, but he explained his ticket machine wasn’t working so the service was on ‘free vend’ that morning.

We stopped at Quintrell Downs but there were no takers with none at St Columb Road either, so we skipped that station but a passenger boarded at both Roche and Bugle bringing the passenger count up to six (including me) as we skipped through the last station, Luxulyan, and arrived into Par on time at 08:01.

On alighting I noticed one of our passengers waited on the eastbound platform for a connection at 08:13 to stations towards London Paddington, one passenger left the station and the other three and myself waited on the westbound platform for the 08:11 to Penzance.

This was a nine coach Class 802 and had plenty of room for the dozen or so passengers boarding at Par including many college/university students as well as people going to work.

That train arrived into Truro on time at 08:34 and a large number of people alighted. I lost sight of where the three other passengers from the Newquay branch went, but they definitely didn’t catch the next train to Falmouth at 08:45, but 30 passengers did – around 20 being students who alighted at Penryn.

It was noticeable that train brought in 80 passengers when it arrived in Truro at 08:42.

We arrived at the terminus at Falmouth Docks on time at 09:06.

It had taken an hour and 54 minutes from Newquay including a ten minute connection at Par and 11 minutes at Truro. Obviously in the new scheme of things that connection time at Par will reduce to, say, three minutes while the crew change ends, and perhaps a minute dwell time at Truro giving an end to end Newquay to Falmouth Docks time of one hour and 37 minutes.

There are no proposals to increase the line speed on the Newquay branch and I’m guessing it would be impractical to do so as the curves and topography are very constraining, so 97 minutes is about the quickest time achievable.

The current use of the branch line obviously reflects the infrequent timetable and lengthy journey time so the new hourly service will definitely make things more attractive as happened on the Falmouth branch when a half hourly frequency was introduced following the installation of a passing loop at Penryn in 2009.

But Par is not a huge draw in itself so, aside from seasonal tourists heading from and returning to areas outside Cornwall, most local passengers will want to travel from Newquay to St Austell or Truro and that potential won’t be fully realised until 2026 when through journeys are due to commence.

But they’re already catered for by the county’s well funded bus network.

Go Cornwall’s hourly route 25 takes 56 minutes from Newquay bus station to St Austell bus station which will be quicker than the train even taking account of the three minute pause at Par instead of the current ten minute connection giving a Newquay to St Austell time of 59 minutes. Furthermore, the bus penetrates Newquay’s residential area making for a more convenient pick up.

Buses between Newquay and Truro offer a variety of routes but the quickest is the hourly Go Cornwall route 93. This takes 58 minutes and includes a more convenient end point in Truro’s bus station rather than the city’s more inconveniently sited railway station.

The new direct ‘coast-to-coast’ train will take 76 minutes.

And then of course there’s First Kernow’s commercially operated routes U1/U1A which already provide a ‘coast to coast’ service between Newquay and Falmouth via Truro and Penryn.

The journey time between Newquay and Truro on the hourly U1 is 83 minutes (the hourly U1A takes 90 minutes) as the routes are not direct, taking in Treloggan, Perranporth and St Agnes (U1A). From Truro to Falmouth the journey time is 54 minutes (the train is 21 minutes) but crucially the bus serves the large campus at Penryn (33 minutes from Truro)…

…whereas the railway station is a considerable distance away (15 minutes walk) making for a comparable overall journey time for students especially if using the 93 from Newquay to Truro and then the U1/U1A from there to Penryn.

With an 11 minute connection from the 93 to the U1/U1A in Truro, a Newquay – Penryn journey by bus takes 102 minutes compared to the train and the Penryn walk taking 105 minutes.

The train manages to beat the bus for passengers travelling on to Falmouth but the bus takes you conveniently to The Moor in Falmouth, right in the retail centre…

… whereas neither Falmouth Town or Falmouth Docks stations are conveniently located, and as already highlighted, the bus does a better job at the Newquay end of the route too.

And while the £2 fare cap applies for bus journeys (or an equivalent Transport for Cornwall subsidised cheap fare offer) and the train costs £13.80 (any time) or £9.30 (off-peak) for a Newqauay to Falmouth return, the new ‘coast to coast’ rail option (and its £56.8 million funding) may not be the draw its protaganists hope it will be.

And if that becomes the case it’ll be Cornwall Council picking up the financial tag as the deal with the Government for the £50 million funding is “the Council are required to cover the first three years operating cost which has an estimated maximum cost of £4.5 million”. This will be covered by transferring £2.7 million from capital funds to revenue funding towards operational costs and the £1.8 million remainder coming from the Council’s public transport subsidy budget.

Finally here’s a summary of the project in diagrammatic form as presented to a meeting of Cornwall Council’s Economic Growth and Development Overview and Scrutiny Committee last November.

Roger French

Blogging timetable: 06:00 TThS

Comments on today’s blog are welcome but please keep them relevant to the blog topic, avoid personal insults and add your name (or an identifier). Thank you.