RAIL operator South Western Railway (SWR) has ‘reworked’ its proposed timetable for the end of this year, following concerns raised during its public consultation.

The train operator launched a public consultation between September and December last year to gather feedback on its December 2018 timetable proposals.

The consultation focused on west of Southampton to Weymouth services, and involved passengers, councils, MPs, user groups and travel partners, with SWR planning to use the information to shape its final timetable proposals.

A new report published by SWR has revealed some of the key issues raised by respondents and how the train operator plans to address this.

There were concerns that direct trains between Weymouth and London Waterloo would be halved. In the report it says residents wanted to see more, not fewer direct services to London and that they felt journey time saving doesn’t warrant the loss of a whole direct train.

In response, SWR said: “We have reworked the timetable and will maintain two direct services at the loss of some, but not all, of the journey time saving. We estimate the journey time reduction to be an average of 10 minutes quicker for the faster train in each hour between Weymouth and London.”

There were also concerns that direct services to the capital from Upwey and Moreton would be discontinued altogether. This means passengers from these stations would have to get the new Portsmouth stopping train and change at Southampton.

However, the train operator says: “We proposed a second slower Weymouth service that will call at these stations to ensure a direct service to and from Waterloo all-day.”

The reports adds that these stations will be served by one service per hour in both the London and Weymouth directions.

SWR also proposes that one of the retained two direct services between London and Weymouth divides each hour at Southampton Central to allow 'connectivity to be retained' and to improve 'end to end journey times.'