Great Western Coffee Shop

(http://www.mbob.co.uk/rforum/swixmas.jpg)

As usual no trains on Christmas Day - but GWR came with a mince pie of running a passenger service to rival Santa.

The 18:04 from Paddington to Penzance was started from Reading due to earlier disruption and was then, because of the ongoing flooding near Exeter, diverted via Honiton.

It finally arrived in Penzance just two minutes before the witching hour.

From Realtime Trains

(http://www.mbob.co.uk/rforum/pnzxmas.png)

And because there are no cancellations, train service alterations etc to-day, GWR's website is proudly proclaiming (for the first time for several days) that there is a .....

"Good service on most of our network".

Has the flooding subsided then come back again?


A whole series of these ...



I suppose two wrongs make a right ... every cloud has a silver lining ... other cliches apply ... Thank Goodness it's not the final day of the five day Christmas travel window what was planned until recently!

The line at Staffords Bridge did re-open for a time this morning but closed again around 3pm and expected to be so for another 24 hours after the recent rain worked its way into the river system.

The main line between Taunton / Tiverton Pwy and Exeter St D is Closed yet AGAIN due   height of river Exe at Staffords bridge; water takes about 12 hrs to get from Exmoor to Exeter.

Over the years I have been aware of an increasing build up of deposited gravel & sand etc in the middle of the river, just downstream of this bridge. This material must slow the flow of water and adversley effect the speed and volume of water actually approaching and passing under this bdge. Yet there have, very surprisingly, been no plans to remove/ dredge this deposited material from the riverbed. It would not be difficult or costly (by NR standards) to do this in the Summer.

An improved slightly lower spillway on the outside curve/ bank of the river as it approaches Staffords bdge would help by allowing excess water off and into the field and down to the new drainage culvert etc built for NR by its Contractors at great cost a year or two ago.

Indeed ... your prediction is correct



Many thanks for that insight / detail.  At times, it feels that we have a fair weather railway!

Oh dear ... as of now:

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/gwrbase_ex.jpg)

Current version of that map at: http://new.passenger.chat/map/_CAACAABAAA.jpg (as I write, identical, but it will change over time as trains past their run-by date and (hopefully) relatively few are added.  Clickable version and tailor your version of the report via http://new.passenger.chat/better/map.html&basemap=CAACAABAAA

From that map ... http://new.passenger.chat/better/map.html ... I have been using the current data as an effective test. Click on a station for details ( or start by substituting a three letter station code in http://new.passenger.chat/better/map.html?stn=WSB ) and you're provided with a rich seam of onward data such as:

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/wsbex2_20201228.jpg)

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/wsbex1_20201228.jpg)

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/wsbex3_20201228.jpg)

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/wsbex4_20201228.jpg)

It may be on the "Christmas Day trains" thread ... but it's ready for next year!

Good work, Graham, but is it possible to source better street maps, as those ones are pretty awful for legibility and information?

There are reasons behind those / they are in early stages ... BUT I will look to add other more mainstream options.

Is that fair comment, or just an impressions? There's a well-known bias in our idea of how common things are now relative to the past, due to our not knowing how often things did happen before our lifetime (and sometimes not even within it). This is not helped by that way that most media reporting suffers from the same bias.

But, looking for some historical basis, I searched the BL Newspaper Archive for reports of floods in Devon affecting railways for 1900-1949. There did seem to be fewer floods, though the ones reported were big ones. As always, it's hard to know what that represents - though you'd have thought that the more local press of the day would report even quite small local floods. There was mention of trains being delayed, but rarely of lines being closed.

My impression at least is that is that in that era a train would not stop for any flood unless it was deep enough to reach the firebox. This, from a long piece in the  Totnes Weekly Times of 17 February 1900 starting with "The biggest flood in the memory of living man..." supports that;  railway operations were indeed conducted differently then:

I stated it as an impression - the words "it feels" in my original text - so feel it fair.

On one had, yes, things are very different these days with trains not being run through water.  And on the other, things are very different that we have the information at our finger tips 24x7 telling us of issues far, far from home that would not have come to out attention 20 or 30 years ago.

Even then, they hedged their bets by saying "most" !

Severe case of thread drift ... however, I will complete (gee - I hope!) the Christmas flood list here

Screenshot from Tracksy

Love the sense of humour on the diagram.
Thanks goodness they have a diversionary route  - really needs double line ;D

Whilst 1C92 left St Erth for Penzance at 23:52 on Thursday 24th December 2020 this was closely followed by 1X01 (from real time trains) at 00:08 a service that called at a location called "Naughty Boy" to drop off coal.   ;D ;D