101 miles: the rough distance we had driven to our holiday spot in North Wales. 84 miles: the distance drove when a strange intermittent rattle & squeal started on gear changes, which over the next 17 miles would become more and more frequent. 32 yards: the distance from the holiday spot the clutch gave out completely, and I could no longer select any gears. It's an unquestionably frustrating turn of events, but hey, if you are going to break down then 32 yards from your destination is a nice place to do it! Still, we had the decision to make, we had lost our transport for a week in Wales and we're very outdoorsy and explorers - we have never been ones to sit in the sun, at least not for more than an afternoon, and as creative as I can be in terms of finding things to see we were in an area we had explored quite well. So we spitballed alternatives, borrowing a friend's or a family member's car was suggested, but I was not too fond of the idea of taking someone else's motor down tiny Welsh lanes, a rental was suggested, but rentals often get laughably expensive in the UK. Speaking of laughably expensive, we did weigh up the option of taking the train everywhere, but my experience of UK trains is less than stellar - grossly overpriced and uselessly unreliable. But, I weighed it up and found that a return to Barmouth town would run us a few quid each, probably less than the cost of the Jeep's fuel, so we just might have a saving solution in the form of Transport For Wales (TfW).
The good
As the title suggests, getting around on the rails saved our nearly cancelled holiday, and I am immensely grateful for that, so before I get into my gripes, I want to sing the network's praises. Firstly, the prices were considerably cheaper than I was expecting, I remember our visit to Italy where we had to use the train to get around and I was pretty gobsmacked at how affordable it was, well the prices on TfW were actually really reasonable in a similar vein - the advantage of a government-owned rail service for sure. It was nice to not have to worry about that, with a same day return between Harlech and Tywyn should cost about £8 according to the Trainline, a distance of roughly 35 miles by car, if I were to do a similar train journey local it would be more than double the price.
The trains were perfectly reasonable too, each time there would be a couple of carriages that were clean and in decent maintenance, nothing special but perfectly functional. Plus, every single one was on time! Every ticket except one was booked through the app and worked perfectly (the exclusion also went smoothly, it was just booked in the Barmouth ticket office), even in spottier areas of signal. I also loved the request stops, a nice feature which means settlements that would otherwise be forgotten have a connection to the network - something I am familiar with, our town is less than 1 mile from a train line which I would happily walk to, but the actual nearest station is a 50-minute walk away. It all went smoothly for us, allowing for visits to Porthmadog, Harlech, Barmouth, Tywyn and a few places in between.
Improvement needed
Okay, positives aside, let us talk about the drawbacks to the Welsh network. Firstly, the frequency of trains, while perfectly tolerable for a short stay as a tourist, would be frustrating to deal with if I were commuting by train around here. The routes run roughly once every 2 hours, and last I saw in the news they were planning to cut the frequency even further. It did cause some friction for us even in our short time dealing with the train schedule, with us being tired after a long day's walk and being slightly too far from the train station - we were forced to debate which was preferable, rushing our already exhausted legs just to make the train or be forced to kill another 2 hours when we were kind of ready to just get back and relax. Luckily, like most problems in life, this was solved by a visit to the pub for some grub and refreshments, but that would be less than ideal on a frequent basis. This infrequency also means that peak commuter time trains will generally always be full - which could arguably be helped with longer trains during those services too.
Secondly, and perhaps most crucially, is the poor state of interconnectivity within Wales. Now, even before this all happened, I was aware of the lack of links between the North and South basically forcing a connection through Shrewsbury. What I didn't know about was that the middle/west coast section of Snowdonia is basically cut off from the top. To me this is inexcusable, with no really viable connection between these two sections without taking a massive detour or hopping on a bus/heritage railway it meant any plans we had for going further north were basically scuppered. It is not like they couldn't solve this issue, either by connecting their lines using the sections of land that previously had held tracks, or creating a new connection, bypassing the edge of Snowdonia and connecting Porthmadog/Criccieth up to Bangor. Of course, connecting the Aberwyswyth to somewhere south would be a pretty essential improvement too. Unfortunately, most routes on the track are single lines that need splitting into two if they are going to become viable for more traffic, and I doubt anyone is going to eat the cost of doing that...
A point on the lack of demand...
The counterargument for all this is the lack of demand for more trains, bigger trains and new connections, but I think this can be explained away quite easily: people don't use the trains because they aren't viable, not the other way around. I certainly wouldn't be doing my daily commute on them unless I was forced to, and depending on where you work/live you might not even have the option. The concept of induced demand will always dictate what happens with these types of situations, the good ol' Field of Dreams: "If you build it, they will come". Imagine the improvements for locals during the summer if the trains suddenly ran more frequently, on better-connected routes and with more capacity - their current fleet has a capacity of 200-ish people, considering the average coastal visitor would probably be the old 2.4 children then each train has the potential to remove 100 cars per route. Considering how often these towns grind to a halt on a sunny day, it's worth considering. But of course, thinking about your average Liverpudlian planning their holiday next week in Porthmadog, they can either hop in the car on the North Wales Expressway and get there in about 2 hours, or they can take the train, pay about £100 to get the family on a 6-hour train line with one change in the middle - which do you think they will go for?
Honestly, I loved my train holiday, watching the beautiful Welsh countryside and coast zip by in comfort, no longer rowing gears and navigating Welsh lanes was a nice change of pace. Stopping for a beer without having to drive is a nice perk too. Ultimately though, I wouldn't go out of my way to do this again, it is a nice fallback option, but I really believe without some changes I don't think it could be considered much more than that...
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