My quickest-ever google search suggests that Flipboard is this: https://flipboard.com/

It is installed by default on my phone, and picks up news stories it thinks I might find interesting... sometimes it's even right!

Why tongue-in-cheek? Isn't the crew member shown in this photo exposed to very similar hazards to those which led to recent deaths?

When we have a hot summer, no-one can say for sure whether that's climate change - or just weather.
When a glacier melts, everyone should know for certain that the climate is heating up.

Hard cases make bad law - but OK, let's look at Norton Radstock!

As the crow flies, it's 20km south of Bristol and 11km south of Bath. There is an existing freight line to Frome which, whilst potentially providing a useful connection to the Reading - Taunton Line, offers little benefit to anyone wanting to get to Bristol or Bath.

So how would you serve Norton Radstock? The S&D^▸ (Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway) line provides the basis of a route to Bath, though as you say things would become rather difficult at the Bath end. There is a potential for connecting with the Camerton branch at Midford though, which provides a route through to Bath via Dundas. This route passes within 1.3km of Peasedown; not ideal but better than nothing. This has been discussed before: http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=20967.msg257150#msg257150

The North Somerset line to Bristol is obstructed in places, but again could form the basis of a useful link.

I don't think you can really compare potential usage levels with those of fifty or more years ago. Any new lines would use clean, fast, modern trains, and would show a commitment to the communities they serve. They would bear no comparison with the slow and dirty steam passenger trains that slotted between crawling freight trains in times almost out of memory.

I think we'd all agree with that view. We might start to differ when asked to define 'sensible', though.

The post Beeching railway is shot through with anachronisms, probably mostly due to the fact that the process his report started was not seen through to completion. As an example, the Exeter-Barnstaple service stops at (or within a stiff walk of) a string of villages and hamlets, whilst to the east Exeter-Taunton services speed past Collumpton and Wellington. We all understand the reasons for this, but perhaps it is worth taking a couple of steps back and seeing it for what it is: ludicrous.

My question is: should any decent-sized community (and we can argue about what constitutes decent-sized!) be connected to the rail network by right? If we decide it should, then perhaps the £50Bn currently earmarked for road schemes could be reallocated to provide new links (such as to Calne) and capacity (such as would be needed for Wellington). If we decide it shouldn't, then let's stop pretending we care about runaway climate change or re-balancing the rural economy.

Quite so - but you should add 'Castle', who (I think I am right in saying) closed more route miles than the previous government despite an election pledge to stop the closures...

Indeed it is! I had to blur out the sign, which (perhaps remarkably) survives the station's 1972 closure:



The railway hotel is next door, and is a rather more impressive structure:



The station building, once HQ^▸ (Headquarters) of the Cockermouth, Keswick and Penrith railway, is now part of the hotel. One platform and its canopy survive; the other platform and other buildings have been demolished for car parking.

You are getting very warm. The building in the photograph is railway related inasmuch as that it was a railway station...

Calne is an interesting case. The town has a population of over 17,000, so it's not quite as big as Portishead (25,000) but it's not far off. Would it be worth the cost of rebuilding 9km of track to put it back on the rail network? As others have pointed out, the obstacles are all probably surmountable. There's even a trackless platform in just the right place for it at Chippenham! At the Calne end, it would probably be necessary to find a new site; would somewhere near the White Horse Way/A3102 roundabout work?

We were in the waiting room on Platform 1, which is on the south-west side of the station, looking east: https://goo.gl/maps/xai1ENHXATeDmNKbA . You can just make out the bridge of Abbey Road behind the signal.

Any thoughts on No.2?

Spot on! It is indeed. I have just spent the last 20 minutes stringing together a load of clues to help the others, but you've put us all out of our misery!

No.2 is in the same neck of the woods...

(oh, and I see what you did there... fur... very good... )

Last time I went to Weymouth, I didn't go out the front of the station - our train did a rather odd manoeuvre involving backing up and then heading off down Commercial Road - which was a lot of fun and had the added benefit that my eyes were not assaulted by the truly abysmal station building.

Actually, from the dates I suspect that it was in the process of being built (if that is the correct term for assembling an architectural wart) when I last passed through. It is a product of the era that brought us the Serpell Report and the dequadrification of Filton Bank. If it acts as a magnet for ne'er-do-wells, then little wonder - its architecture is so similar to that of a Young Offenders' Institute, they probably feel right at home.

Difficult to know how it could be scaled back drastically, really - there may be scope for a bit more cheeseparing, but at some stage it would cease to be a high-speed railway, at which point probably everyone would agree that there was no point in doing it. And then what?

Image No.1 is not served by GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway), and as far as I am aware it is not served by a First subsidiary either - though it may have been in the past.

The cafe is a caféxpress.

Red Squirrel was out and about last week - but where did he go?

1. Barrow in Furness - Adelante_CCT


2. Keswick - PhilWakely