Or possibly it was going to change anyway, but I’ll happily claim the credit. After finally getting annoyed enough about freezing on a bench at Andover for an hour I sent this message to South Western Railway

When South West Trains were running the franchise trains only stopped at Whitchurch and Overton every 2 hours on a Sunday. You’ve carried on this policy, can I ask why?* It adds a significant amount of time to travel. 2 hours if coming from the west, or 90+ minutes from the east (going through Overton and Whitchurch, changing at Andover and coming back up the line is quicker).

But it doesn’t appear to save you anything, there can’t be any real cost to stopping at these 2 stations (and Grately which gets the opposite trains stopping), the time is irrelevant as it’s a Sunday and the trains take long stops at Yeovil Junction and Salisbury. The trains also stop at the small stations west of Salisbury.

Bit it does seem like it would cost you in terms of lost passengers, if someone looks at a journey and thinks they’re going to spend nearly 2 hours waiting at Basingstoke station if they miss a train by a couple of minutes then they’re not going to do it.

* I did ask a guard, he thought it was stupid and said I should contact you

And eventually got this response

So hopefully in May I’ll have to find something new to moan about, shouldn’t be too hard.