Stratford Railway Station – where the sign says it’s always closed
The Stratford Herald has been examining the state of transport in the town. Here Richard Howarth reports on the frustration with the train services.
THE major tourist town with a cinderella railway service – one also freshly condemned for offering “intolerable” reliability – remains another key issue in Stratford’s transport landscape.
In a comparatively small town, with a creaking road network, the railway could take much more of the burden.
Once a stop on a main line between Birmingham and the South West, the current tourist economy has had to depend on Stratford being a terminus at the end of routes from Leamington and Birmingham.
At times there has been positive news – the saving of the direct route to Birmingham via Henley on two occasions, for example, or a bold decision to run more direct trains to and from London by Chiltern in May 2019.
But at other times Stratford has muddled along with a service unbecoming of its international reputation – the Chiltern vision was strangled by covid (plus the fact it tended to be quicker to drive to Warwick Parkway and get a London train there); and hopes to revive the route south of the current station to Honeybourne were dealt a seemingly fatal blow when it failed to get backing from the Government’s pot of money for investigating reopenings.
So that leaves very few direct trains to and from London in a week – the timetable mainly offering the Leamington shuttle as the way to get to the capital – plus the two routes to Birmingham Moor Street and Snow Hill, the Henley line and the alternative route via Soilihull.
For regular commuters and shoppers that should mean a compelling case to get out of the car and use the train. But there has been another wave of worries flagged up about the reliability of the service to go with the concerns about the ticket office at Stratford station being regularly closed, as reported by the Herald at the start of the year.
Chair of the Shakespeare Line Rail User Group Peter Morris told the paper this week the state of play with services on the Birmingham lines was “a sad story” and that every autumn and winter it was the same, with the same old excuses.
And last week he wrote to operator West Midlands Railway about what he has described as the “intolerable unreliability experienced by customers trying to use the railway over the past three months”.
He referred to evidence from a survey of group members who use the services when they received what they termed, “unprecedented and unsolicited comments and complaints from over 40 members about train services managed and operated by West Midlands Railway”.
And he said: “We were surprised that so many respondents used our questionnaire’s ‘other’ column to lambast you – the operator of train services between Stratford and Birmingham. Of course, we would not hesitate to forward any positive comments received; alas, there were none!”
In a press statement the group highlighted that before sending the letter, they pointed out their first step had been to raise the issue at one of the regular meetings with West Midlands Railway and other user groups, on 10th January in Birmingham.
But the statement says: “The response WMR gave at the meeting fell extremely short of alleviating passengers’ concerns by offering any form of solution or apparent interest.
“No senior managers of WMR saw fit to grace the meeting with their presence.
“Trying to use the ‘driver training’ excuse three years after that matter was first identified is no longer credible; if it’s true, it shows abysmal management of staff resources, which appears to continue unabated”.
Mr Morris confirmed they were also copying in other organisations with an interest in the performance of the services.
And he added: “We believe that actions must take place immediately so that confidence in train services in the West Midlands area can be rebuilt and that this endemic problem, which was worsened in the run-up to Christmas 2023 with the fifth incarnation of a collapse in train service reliability towards the end of the year and across the festive period, can be halted without delay”.
A spokesperson for West Midlands Railway said: “We are sorry for the disruption to services at Stratford in the lead-up to Christmas which resulted from a number of factors including higher than usual sickness levels among train crew.
“Performance has improved since the turn of the year but we share the frustration of our passengers that national industrial action is continuing to impact journeys.
“We are committed to improving performance by increasing driver availability as we continue welcoming more passengers back to the railway.”
In terms of the ticket office, the company told the paper in January the office had been closed due to staff sickness but, “We hope to reopen the ticket office soon”.
Answering further questions from the Herald this week about that process and whether the lack of sales would mean the ticket office was at risk of closing permanently, a spokesperson said, on this occasion, the ticket office, “has been operating to reduced hours recently due to staff sickness”.
He said they expect the availability of ticket office staff to improve in coming weeks and stressed there were, “no plans to close the ticket office at Stratford”.
