Railways around Coventry

A Coventry Rail Users Group is being set up and the first meeting will be at the Litten Tree in Warwick Row, Coventry, on 21st Jan at 7.30pm

The station at the Ricoh - 'Coventry Arena' - opened this morning, as has been widely reported by the press. Unfortunately, the Press Release that has been issued has been viewed by many in the news reporting industry, as being somewhat ambiguous. It is still being reported that the station will be CLOSED on football and rugby match days, as well as major events, thus preventing fans/concert goers from using the basic rail service that exists at the moment. This is incorrect. The rail service will run as timetabled, seven days per week. However, due to the fears of overcrowding immediately after the end of a big event, Coventry Arena station will be closed for one hour only. This means that only one train in each direction will not call at Coventry Arena. Every other train will and therefore the service is available for journeys to the Ricoh. This is somewhat different to what has been reported. Being realistic, this isn't the best of situations in the short term, but as rail stock becomes available the situation will improve. However, what we should also remember is that there is life outside of sports events and concerts in that part of the city I have spent today speaking to various news organisations asking them to correct their reports, something they have been happy to do after providing them with the necessary evidence. This is one example.... One radio station has gone so far as to apologise in writing for their 'mistake' and made it clear that they wished to report accurate information. It's a pity that not everybody saw it the same way. At least one asked if it mattered - 'does it make any difference???'

I'm not convinced this will ever be used much, even if they do get bigger trains.

Hello Flapdoodle, As things are right now, it is hard to see what passenger traffic will self-generate, but when the plan for a station was first discussed, at the time when the shopping area was first mooted for development, the train companies were not interested in a station unless there was a park & ride facility. Hidden away at present, that still might be under someone's blotting pad.

Hi all A picture interlude. "The Bacon Butty Return Special" The silly thing is that we got to the Belgrade in twenty minutes, on one bus as was usual, whereas coming home, required two buses & the train. It was fun on a dry bright day, swapping platforms as the 11.42 departure from Cov was shown as leaving from platform 2, but five minutes before, a platform change was announced. So we had to come back to platform 1. As you can see from the smiles on my friend John, we did not have much luggage to cart around.

Hi all A picture of City of Coventry being serviced.

Hi all All aboard the Ninky-Nonk to Coventry from the Ricoh, in pictures. The last picture poor quality just to show the service is being well used. The timing for our trip to B'ham was perfect. Leaving the Ricoh on the first "FREE" to us oldies, is 10.28am, which gave us nice time for a coffee at M&S, arriving at B'ham after changing at Cov, at 11.20am. With business sorted, we were back home for 1pm.

Hi all I enjoyed another ride aboard the Ninky-Nonk from the Ricoh to Coventry this morning. The first available train for bus pass users is 10.28am being the first after the 9.30am free pass threshold time. Just a nice time to enjoy a M&S latte before commuting. Those that have not used Coventry station buses for a while will notice that the bus stops are now to the left hand side of Eaton Rd, all with digital timetable displays. Every train that I have boarded so far has been well used, with passengers joining at the Ricoh. Because the first train for bus-pass users is so late, it is quicker to go to the town centre on the bus, but I do enjoy the novelty, as well as showing off in the M&S café. Well, you know what I am like! PS There is a down side to this. The popularity of this service is due mostly to the journey time. The return ticket price of £5.10 return from Nuneaton is matched by the journey time of 22 minutes from Nuneaton, compared to the No.48 bus service of around an hour at peak journey time. We might see a scaling back of bus services in consequence to this. From the Ricoh to Coventry station, the journey time is 8 minutes.

Hi all Jubilee class, Rodney, paused at Coventry, 1962

From BBC News: Rugby fans originally told they could not use a new station at Coventry's Ricoh Arena can use a trial rail service this weekend. Rail firm London Midland is running the service for fans going to the Wasps' game against Harlequins on Sunday. Rugby and football fans had been told they could not use the station, which opened in September, as it shuts for an hour after major events. But a trial service is being run on Sunday and on 12 March. The hourly passenger train which serves the stadium has 75 seats - the stadium has a capacity of 32,600. London Midland said it would be running match-day specials between Coventry and Nuneaton, calling at the arena, and would include a six-carriage train providing an extra 1,000 seats before and after the game. Steven Fisher from London Midland said the firm had no additional trains for match days, but had chartered services to test the idea of running rugby specials. The two trial days will be reviewed before any next steps are decided on.

And about time too.

The second running of the "Wasps Specials" on Saturday 12th March consisted of 67005 (in Royal Train Livery) and 67028 (EWS Livery) with a rake of TSOs (Tourist Second Open) coaches in the old Greater Anglia livery. They ran in addition to the regular London Midland service which had been strengthened to two coaches. Peter.

Coventry Telegraph report: Ricoh Arena matchday trains in doubt after trial runs lose an estimated £30,000 Wasps and London Midland lose £30,000 on trial Ricoh Arena train services, which could put an end to matchday rail travel until late 2017 Plans to offer matchday train services to and from the Ricoh Arena for Coventry City FC and Wasps supporters may have been derailed after two trial runs flopped financially. It is understood London Midland and Wasps suffered losses of around £30,000 after jointly spending a total of about £40,000 on special charter train services for the matches with Harlequins and Leicester Tigers. The train for the Harlequins game in February is estimated to have lost about £18,000 as just 650 people paid £2.40 for return tickets on the six carriage charter train. The matchday special for Wasps' victory over Leicester on Saturday was better used with an estimated 2,000 people taking advantage of the service. But that was still nowhere near enough to cover the running costs - leaving the rugby club and the train operators roughly £15,000 in the red on that day. Having suffered significant losses from the two trial services, the prospect of further matchday or event day charter trains being run appears bleak. That means supporters will once again be left unable to use the £3.4million Ricoh Arena railway station to travel to and from matches as the station will close for an hour after every major event due to safety concerns. Why do they need charter trains? The regular service can only carry 75 people an hour so that's not allowed to stop at the station after matches and concerts as too many people might try to use it, causing obvious safety problems which you can read more about here. Train operator London Midland can't find enough diesel rolling stock to increase the service, hence the need to hire trains in. London Midland did warn they wouldn't have enough trains for a matchday service five years ago. What happens next? Wasps and London Midland have shared the £40,000 bill for matchday specials for the games against Harlequins and Leicester. They were never going to recover that from passenger fares, but after losing an estimated £30,000 over the two days, they now have a decision to make about whether they want to do it again. What do Wasps say? Andy Gibb, MD of the Ricoh Arena, said: "We were very pleased with the Rugby Special train service which was trialled at Wasps' games against Harlequins and Leicester Tigers. "These initial services were a great success operationally and have been very well received by Wasps' fans. We're very grateful to London Midland for the tremendous work they put in to make this happen. "We will meet with London Midland again shortly to discuss plans for future events at the Ricoh Arena, and will announce the outcome of these discussions to supporters and ticket holders in the normal way." What do London Midland say? Francis Thomas, spokesman for London Midland, said: "The reality is that we have been prepared to look at every possibility. We need to review how they worked operationally and financially. "The big challenge for us is that hiring a locomotive and six carriages is very expensive. The example I would use is that if you used your own car to go to the shops then you only have to consider petrol, if you hired a car to go to the shops there would be much more cost attached. "We'll have to look hard at this and see what the future holds. We said we would give it everything we had and we have." He added that about 50 of the people on board the Harlequins service were train spotters, and couldn't be counted as regular customers. Mr Thomas also suggested it might take time for people to consider using Arena Park Station as people have been getting to the Ricoh Arena by alternative means for over a decade. He said: "We're committed to running the timetable we have in place. There are no diesel trains to run an increased service. The only way we'll get more rolling stock is if electrification projects are completed, and that won't happen any time soon." Is the Arena station a waste of time and money? In the short term it doesn't look great but in the long term it could still prove useful. Electrification elsewhere on the rail network should free up more diesel trains to allow London Midland to run a proper matchday service for Wasps and Coventry City fans without the need to hire in trains at great expense - but that won't happen until the end of 2017. There are also plans to extend the platform at Coventry Station** which will allow longer trains to shuttle between the two stations. The station has been defended by Coventry city councillor Kevin Maton here. Who paid for the Arena station? Taxpayers like you. The station was built as part of the NUCKLE line upgrade which was funded by Centro with £5m, £4.75m from the Department for Transport and £3.85m from the European Regional Development Fund. ** Not correct - a new platform is planned to be built west of Warwick Road bridge where there is already an electrified siding. Because there is only a narrow passage under Warwick Road to get to the station entrance, and the fear that hoards of passengers coming from the Arena would block it, the original plan was for a flight of steps up to Warwick Road. Passengers would then have to go down the existing steps into the station. They've ditched that idea and this month work will start on building a new pedestrian tunnel under Warwick Road.

I've been trying to discover information about Coundon Road railway station. Does anyone have any details or photos? The first passenger train ran from there on 2 September 1850. The last passenger train to use the station called on 18th January 1965.