Seems to be happening a fair bit this week, guessing GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) are down on a few Turbos!

Indeed - quite useful when it is done too! Also much easier to do now we have IET^▸ (Intercity Express Train)'s where the TM^‡(resolve) doesn't have to walk up and down the train to make sure all the doors are shut!
Though would be nice for the decision making involved in this kind of thing to be more transparent to passengers.
Talking of Oldfield Park and Keynsham, my local stations, there have been times where it seemed to me (based on NRE^‡(resolve), RTT^» (Real Time Trains - website) etc) that a London service should be stopped but it wasn't, and other times where it hasn't made much sense for a service to be stopped when it has!

Or The Lamplighters which is much nicer than either and is nearer the station!

There are some staff that are very good! The woman who is usually the guard on the 8.21 MTP - BRI^» (Bristol Temple Meads - next trains) for example (it does make me wonder how rotas are worked out because nearly every time I get that train, usually 3 times a week, the same person is the guard) who manages to make her way through most of the train despite the short time between stops and the business of that service.  But in general I agree, at least there should be TVM's on more of the stations etc.

GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) have done coupling and decoupling in service for years though, even at places like Temple Meads where the platforms have severe curves.
If it hasn't been an issue before, and only is now an issue on the new trains, then surely the trains are the issue?
If the procedure is convoluted then surely that is a Hitachi problem?

As someone who often uses this line, I have to agree with the revenue protection issue on the route. There are no TVM^▸ (Ticket Vending Machine)'s at most of the stations, and the stops are so close together it is tough for the staff to sell tickets to everyone who needs one. That is before you look at those who try to actively avoid paying.


Oh we can hope! haha.


I think for me (as I said, I use the line fairly often):

• Because the service is often irregular (it isn't just every 40 mins, it is much more irregular with some 30 min gaps and some 50 min gaps, and no doubt some others too) and prone to delays and part cancellations (thanks to the single track), the low fares are quite important in keeping people using the trains rather than decided to give up and use another method of transport.
• Much of the most well used parts of the line are pretty close to the City Centre / Temple Meads - many people decide to use the train instead of the bus or walk simply because it is so cheap you may aswell. Increase the fares too much and you lose that.
  

I accidentally managed to be involved at Temple Meads, only realising that I'd be at the station for the last one to pass through as I was on a train from Montpellier to Temple Meads ten minutes prior!
Was great to see a bit of history, and thank you to the station staff for making sure everyone was safe and not in the way of the more general public (thankfully at 8.30pm on a Saturday evening, Temple Meads was a lot quieter than Paddington looked like it was 2 hours earlier!). Also thank you to whoever was in charge of making letting it come in on P3 in the old part of the station, that made for some quite nice pictures and a much more appropriate sending off for the HST^▸ (High Speed Train) (although obviously not the last Bristol will see, long live the Castle Class!).

Saw this article earlier, I'd love to have a bit more detail. Like did everyone coming through the entrance and exit barriers on P3 (as that is where it looks like it was, not the "entrance hall" as the article claims) have to go through it? What about the consequences of delaying people (e.g. if someone missed a train because of the extra time taken by this what would happen)? What about people with (potentially large amounts of, or just bulky) luggage?

When people actually use them correctly (loading the ticket up before boarding the bus), they are so much faster than buying your ticket on the bus. The only thing that can beat it is Oyster^▸ (Smartcard system used by passengers on Transport for London services) / contactless in London. The problems are that the app (at least the First one) quite often crashes, or is slower than usual to load, so something that should take less than 10 seconds actually takes more than 30 and that you are basically reliant on the real time bus times on an app / at the bus stop being accurate for you to know when to actually load up the ticket. Personally, if the app reliability and real time information can be improved then that solves any issues with the mobile tickets. Paying by cash still takes a lot longer, and you can really feel it when say 5 people board with their mobile tickets then one person pays in cash.

The service I was on this morning, the 8.50 Oldfield Park to Bristol Parkway, terminated at Filton I know that much.

But other than that, based on what NRE^‡(resolve) and RTT^» (Real Time Trains - website) are saying, services that terminate at Parkway normally are actually terminating at Filton, but services up to Gloucester and Great Malvern are running through as normal. So probably just thinning out the services slightly to make up for the issue!

NRE does also say tickets being accepted on the 18, 72 and 73 buses, though no idea what bus the 18 is (First certainly don't run an 18 in Bristol), the 72 doesn't even go that near Filton or Parkway, so the 73 is the only really relevant one there.

So Metrobus have tweeted out an image of a fairly detailed route map for the M1.
Not sure if this is new or not, but it is more detailed than anything I have seen anyway, and I can't help feel even more annoyed considering how close to Temple Meads and Parkway it comes, but is just a bit too far away from either to be useful for them!
https://twitter.com/metrobusBristol/status/1065978379005059072

The main problem with the XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise)) services at Swindon during the blockade was that, for at least the ones I noticed, they were timed to wait at Swindon for between 5 and 10 minutes. This caused delays to me twice during the last couple of weeks whilst my train had to wait for the platform to become available. Shouldn't matter if are talking about "normal" services through Swindon that don't hang around, but it does need to be thought about.

Are there any plans to add platforms to the new main lines at Stapleton Road and Lawrence hill / is there enough room with the new track layout to do so in the future if it becomes necessary / desired?

Also totally agree about the single track on the Beach line. It is already a problem anyway, but hopefully with removing one source of delays and adding the ability to keep units at  Stapleton Road or Lawrence hill whilst they wait for a Bristol bound train to pass the junction we have a little wiggle room.

Already saw a slight benefit this morning with the Severn Beach line train I was on running 5 minutes late towards Temple Meads. In the past this would have held up the Great Malvern to Weymouth train that normally runs 7 or so minutes behind, but is usually delayed if that Severn Beach train is running late. Today it used the new main's, meaning it arrived into Temple Meads just after I did (rather than 5 minutes or so later), and so my connection was a nice walk over from P1 to P7, onto the train, then leaving a minute later, no waits needed! Of course, I know at some point (probably sooner rather than later!) this will inconvenience rather than help me as I can no longer rely on the Weymouth service always being behind us as long as we hit Narroways first, but it is nice to see the reliability improvements so obviously this soon.

A couple of articles on the Bristol Post site that seem to concur with the vandalism of the Metrobus buses happening in service with rocks being thrown at buses. A few photos showing the damage, including broken windows too. Looks like the yobs who have been attacking the 75/76 buses and the A4 Bath - Bristol Airport buses have found new targets.