Great Western Coffee Shop

Moderators please feel free to move this thread as I was not sure where to place it. PRTF covers a large area now including the Yeovil line as far as Salisbury.

They have produced an interim report called 'On Track', outlining potential work in preparation for a submission to Government in 2016. It is examining many improvements including a Dawlish Avoiding Line, Northern Route via Okehampton, passing loop(s) on the Yeovil Line and much else. It is 40 pages long and can be found here:-

https://peninsularailtaskforce.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/prtf-final-draft-for-consultation.pdf

Well worth a read in tandem with the Great Western Route Utilisation Strategy.

One two many letter 'r' in thread title. I know sum us wesscundry folk do frown on grockles and emmets, but we'em not all insular.  ;D

Ma 'pologies fur me accent. Tis wat apens wen a 'Janner' types too quickly! Lol.  ;D

Having worked out what I think bignosemac meant, I've amended the title in the original post - but left the spelling unchanged in subsequent posts, purely for context.  ;)

Surely they've missed the boat though?  The Great Western 'Route Study' (that's replaced the RUS) has just been published.  That's how NR see the future up to 2043, allegedly. 

What is it that the PRTF are hoping to have an input to?

Paul

Of course, grammatically, "Pensisular" would be correct. It's an adjective, while "Pensisula" is a noun being used as an adjective. At least, that would have been the case in the past - as in the "Peninsular Steam Navigation Company" (and later the "Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company").

These days people seem happy to use the noun even when the adjective exists, and especially so if it is a name. Changing the form of a name seems to worry people, and not only to make an adjective. Plurals involving more than just adding "s" are getting rare to - remember "Germanys"?

The Route Study will be updated again within the decade (or two Control Periods to be more precise, I think), so things can change before 2043 is reached

This is the preamble to a 20 year program ask for investment into the railways of the Peninsula and I apologise, I did mean the Great Western Route Study that was mentioned in a post recently.

In June 2016 the full report will ask Government for funding over several control periods to improve services to the far South West. In some ways certain people may say, a bigger achievement in getting Government (of any political persuasion) to realise, that the South West does not begin and end at Bristol!

We can feel very far away here.

Please note that grammatically some words above can be spelt differently. So for completeness and not wishing to offend, alternatives can be seen below, though if I have missed any please feel free to add them!  ;D

Program can be programme
Peninsula can be Peninsular depending on use as previously commented
Apologise and realise can be spelt with a 'z' rather than 's' if one is inclined to American or Canadian English

You shure?

Yes! Typographically very challenged, but grammatically fine.

The link in the OP was to the final draft of the Interim report.

The actual report has now been published. It can be downloaded via the following link:

http://peninsularailtaskforce.co.uk/prtf-on-track-2/

Interesting to see that DAL, which up to now has always been the Dawlish Avoiding Line as far as I can remember, is referred to in this report as the 'Dawlish Additional Line' (p29) or the 'Dawlish Alternative Line' (p32). Good. Shame they can't be consistent (it looks more professional which breeds confidence) but either way it should now be abundantly it clear to those who have refused to understand it thus far that any plans for the LSWR route would supplement, not replace, the GWR route.

In terms:


My italics. Probably won't stop twopenny-halfpenny local politicians trying to bang a wedge in for 'divide and rule' purposes, though.

Makes a very interesting read. There was extensive coverage on BBC Spotlight South West (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06gy5vv/spotlight-13102015)

I agree with absolutely everything said in the document, but my cynical self suggests that few of their recommendations will see the light of day in our lifetime......
- lower fares;
- better reliability
- faster journeys (100mph average speed Paddington-Plymouth)
- electrification;
- dawlish avoiding line
- okehampton route reopened
- double track east of exeter

I thought the PRTF was a pressure group formed by local authorities & this report is effectively a wish list to put said pressure on central Government to continue improvements in the SW. No?

Yes!

Be interesting to see what/whether NR look & assess this report appropos their Route Study

[rant]
If the railway system had been built using the the GRIP process and Control Periods (or Five Year Plans, as Stalin used to call them), then by now we'd have just about got to the point where funding was being sought to launch a preliminary investigation into seeking funding partners for a study into the possibility of linking the GWR to the B&E at Bristol, perhaps using a curve. Obviously the scope of this would be value-engineered so as to disallow passive provision for the subsequent addition of through platforms...
[/rant]

Grammatically correct, but in terms of usage, ambivalent. The adjectival form, if it exists, is preferred when referring to a direct attribute of the related noun, but when it is an indirect attribute (in this case "peninsula" referring to an attribute of the geographic area with which the Peninsula Rail Task Force is concerned, rather than an attribue of either the rail or the task force itself), then the noun form is at least as common, if not preferred. I would say that the usage adopted by the above-mentioned P & O company is the exception rather than the rule; the company itself was certainly British rather than Oriental, although it ran Oriental cruises - for a contrary example, see the Orient Express.

I'm still waiting for a definition of 'pensisular', introduced into this thread by stuving.

A derivation of the Spanish verb 'pensar'?

An oblique reference to Luxembourgish composer Henri Pensis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Pensis)?

The Peninsula Rail Task Force has just released its report "Closing the gap The South West Peninsula strategic rail blueprint". Mirror [here] (http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/prtf_20161122.pdf) - I will update that when I find the permanent online location {{see next post}} - appendix [here] (http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/a_prtf_20161122.pdf).

The full 'Closing the Gap' report and appendix can be found on the Task Force website Grahame here:

https://peninsularailtaskforce.co.uk/closing-the-gap-the-south-west-peninsula-strategic-rail-blueprint/

Was that what you were looking for?

 :D

Indeed, thanks ... there are links from that page.

Both the Report and the Appendix make interesting reading. It will be interesting to see what transpires over the 10/20 years. Time for some proper infrastructure projects to happen in the SW when compared to the rest of the country.

Only skimmed it, but indeed, it seems that they've been quite canny to be, 1) very conciliatory, 2) not ask for an awful lot of money (compared with say, Welsh electrification), 3) working with the existing planning framework and tied it in with existing projects and work that's going on further east (well thought out, not rocking the boat), 4) dropped in a reference or two to Crossrail 2 (i.e. you can afford that, surely you can spare us the equivalent of CR2's stationery budget), and 5) point out that having reliable rail links to London might be quite important militarily if the Scottish devolved and the whole fleet had to decamp to Plymouth.

If you compare it to the Welsh Assembly that seems to have spent the last 5 years writing a rail strategy seemingly without any real idea of who would pay for it, whether Westminster would devolve the necessary powers and indeed whether much of it would be heavy or light rail, then it starts to look very sensible and hard to refuse.