Ah - the community way of picking up the person and passing him/her to a paramedic on board is so much quicker    ... 15th May, Holt Junction (which if it were re-opened should be called Holt Halt!)

My goodness .... you folks remind me of this site: http://www.psul4all.free-online.co.uk/2014.htm

But I must admit, I got a certain pleasure from doing Swindon -> Oxford without a stop (or change) at Didcot in April.

There may be a certain logic in combining the two rather than duplicating analysis.   You can't be certain (yet?) that everyone will have a mobile device, an app, and be in an area of signal and be clued-up to use it ... but projection of the same data onto a local set of LEDs / display screen ...

or "1st ... does not stop here
2nd ... xx:xx to yyyyy"

Except that the train not stopping is the empty stock for the train to yyyyy 


At least FGW have given a consistent answer on that one ... we have asked too about some "funnies".   Items that relate to specific locations / geography would be expensive per-incident, I know ... and probably a code maintenance nightmare.  But there may be some generic things that would be possible.

I'm also minded to suggest that we're still very much in the embryonic stage of the information age, and there's a lot of other stuff and fine tuning that can and will come along.   Systems are so far ahead of what they were 10 or 20 years ago and they will be dramatically better still in a further 10 or 20 years.  Some of us - myself included - are just a bit impatient at times!

Steam again on the tube Met this summer

http://londonist.com/2014/06/heritage-steam-trains-run-on-the-underground-this-summer.php?

Many thanks for filling me in on the operation of 16x doors; interesting to note that 150 retrofit wasn't a show stopper. I am far better informed now`!

Two carriage units at Melksham, where the doors are not at the outer ends, call for accurate stopping but it can be  (and is sometimes) done.  I'm not sure how awkward that would be on a regular hourly basis.

Jeeze!   Same driver??

Can I just double-check here.

To me "No SDO" means that doors can't be opened / released along a part of the train backwards or forwards of particular points.   Is it possible to do single door opening (when not running driver only)?  And if a single door is opened in that way, it it then possible for the train manager to open a second door with an outside release, as is done on 15x units sometimes?

I'm looking into the art of the possible should these units head out further west and be serving the likes of Avoncliff and Dilton Marsh.

Welcome to the forum, Rapidash

1. When electric trains start running from Paddington to Reading / Newbury / Oxford, class 165 and 166 units ("turbo"s) won't be needed there

2. There are Network Rail plans to do works to clear 165 and 166 units to be able to operate on most lines in the South West

It has been suggested to us that we should not add 1. and 2. to get 3., but it strikes me that it would be an awful waste of resources to clear all the lines for turbos if they weren't going to actually run on those lines 

Fare changes are announced in a press release that was unembargoed at midnight - see

http://atrebatia.info/woe_bus_prices.pdf


Changes are from 6th July - at a first glance many changes look like sensible ones that sort out issues.

I was at the First Bus user group meeting yesterday evening and have some more background and will attempt to answer questions if anyone has them.   

First's expectation is that revenues will initially be hit (i.e. it is not a price rise in general, with winners and losers), but people will come back and come back in bigger numbers as the pricing is more tuned to current requirements and meets new markets.   Of course, that may lead to the need to provide extra services.

Another headline is that return fares GO ... just singles, or the ^7 WoE freedom ticket for the day.  I suspect that the WoE freedom replaced  the SW freedom and severely reduces the area covered for the price, but my reading of that needs confirming.

Distance pricing on interurban routes is sensible. It should reduce Corsham->Chippenham prices, for example, which have been silly.  Beware of distances quoted though - they are bus route distances, not distances as the crow flies.  So I think that passengers will end up paying a pound extra for that long and slow loop through the Chippenham suburbs (for example).

Used it again tonight ... and ticket was accepted without question.  A second passenger using it was on his way from Bristol to Melksham, have travelled Melksham to Bristol all the way by train earlier in the day.   And he was extolling the virtues of the new service ... a non-driver who's found it makes such a difference to Brighton and Bristol.

http://www.federationoffishfriers.co.uk/news/1352.htm?


I looked carefully though the article which is about having fish and chips on the train to see if they were limited to a restaurant car, or if the exercise was likely to end up a train-cleaner's nightmare.  And came to the understanding from the sentence above that the North Yorkshire Moors Railway will be conveying its passengers on board the steam locomotive!

 I should perhaps add that the current cost of tickets is sometimes especially unfair to part-time NIGHT workers.

Melksham to Swindon season ticket (1 week) - ^38.00

Melksham to Swindon every Tuesday for a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. job for 5 weeks - ^46.00
(that's actually a very reasonable differential between the standard and season fares)

Melksham to Swindon every Tuesday for a 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. (Wednesday) job for 5 weeks - ^71.50
There are places where tickets are timed as issued and valid for xxx time.  Why not here?

Ah, Chris ... I was simply enumerating the unfairness as the customer sees it, and not suggesting that these new tickets would make the case I was quoting much fairer!

If I buy some (other) product one at a time, rather than in bulk, I expect to pay more.   There's packaging, cost of sales, setup, support and so forth for buying 5 separate products rather than one bulk set.  If I need one of something this week, next week, the week after for five weeks, unless it's perishable (cucumber, strawberries ...) I'll buy multiples and store them to save money.

Trains are not like cucumbers.   They remain fit(ish) for the purpose for which they were obtained after 40 years, and whether a passenger who makes a bulk buy of five units stores four and uses them at intervals of a day, or stores four and uses them at intervals of a week makes, frankly, little difference in the cost of provisioning.


So the customer has to pay (in my example) 3 times as much because of the systems his supplier uses?


Which is exactly what happens when you but five at once up front, whether you use them daily or weekly.  In fact, you're buying further in advance for the weekly use, so perhaps you should get a better deal?

I do agree with you that these tickets, if we see them,  are unlikely to be as useful as some would wish - for people wish for what's perfect for them, and as has been pointed out elsewhere, reducing the cost for one group leads it to increase for another.

To put numbers on the issue.

5 days working in London from Melksham - Monday to Friday, same week, 9 to 5.   Fare - 250.50

5 days working in London from Melksham - Tuesday of 5 successive weeks , 9 to 5.   Fare total - 785.00