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1981  Sideshoots - associated subjects / Railway History and related topics / Re: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly of Post WW2 Railway Station Architecture on: August 12, 2019, 22:07:17
Sampford Peverell is a lovely name! Shame they changed it - it's not even as if Tiverton is such a massive or well known place. Mind you, I don't really like the whole Parkway name and concept, so I'm biased even without having been there.
1982  All across the Great Western territory / Across the West / Re: Railway station ticket barriers could be replaced by sensors... on: August 12, 2019, 22:03:14
Yes, but the system being trialled in Italy requires neither cards nor tapping in and out. It uses sensors to detect the presence of a mobile device within a closed space (a train carriage or bus, could presumably also be used in a room). Therefore it doesn't require people to understand or comply with a system. If they're there, that's enough.

As for prevalence of smart phones: I work in a shop (that's a gross exaggeration: I do one shift a week in a charity bookshop) whose customers are not necessarily the peak early adopters. About 1/3 of customers pay by cash, most of the remainder use contactless, a very few still use chip and pin but I'd estimate 1 in 5 use their phone to pay. Of course those are (usually) only small amounts. What's interesting is that although most of the phone-payers are in their 20s or early 30s, it's also quite popular among those in their 60s or 70s. Usage seems to fall off between those ends of the age curve.
1983  All across the Great Western territory / Across the West / Re: Railway station ticket barriers could be replaced by sensors... on: August 12, 2019, 16:50:17
Yes, the UK (United Kingdom) press seem to have become fixated on the ticket barriers and their possible removal. Some railway systems don't have such barriers even at the largest stations, relying on checks on the trains, and of course very few if any buses have them. I've no idea about Italy though.

Putting the sensors in trains and buses and trams and so on, rather than using them to replace station gatelines, also means you can differentially charge for the same origin and destination pair; the sensors will know if you've taken a slow or fast train, sat in 1st class, etc. And, subject to making sensors available, they could also be used to integrate other forms of transport, such as hire bikes at stations, (in future) self-driving cars or even, right now, taxis.
1984  Sideshoots - associated subjects / The West - but NOT trains in the West / Re: Why do Welsh place names appear around the world? on: August 12, 2019, 12:57:11
Fair point. Wikipedia says:
Quote
The name is thought to be a corruption of "Moss-hall" or "Moss-haw" but its spelling was amended in 1812 to mark Napoleon's retreat from Moscow.[citation needed] The name may also be of Brittonic origin, and derived from the words maɣes, "field" and coll, "hazel" (Welsh maes-coll).[1] A stream called the Volga Burn flows through the village.[citation needed] Locally the land and forest around Cowans Law to the north-west is referred to as 'Little Russia'. The hamlet also shares the same latitude (55° North) as the Russian city.

If the Volga Burn is correct – and it does appear on Google maps of the area (but where do they get their names from?) – that would suggest more than coincidence, though of course it's possible the stream was named later in reference to the village, which originated as "Moss-hall". Of course Moscow in Russia is not on the Volga, which Russians would know but locals not necessarily.
1985  Sideshoots - associated subjects / Heritage railway lines, Railtours, other rail based attractions / Re: Vale of Berkeley Railway to reopen for passenger heritage use? on: August 12, 2019, 12:51:24
Our bloke made a big thing of how it just happened to occur while the bridge was closed for maintenance and also something about the gas pipeline running along the bridge: I can't remember now whether it was that the fire was more intense than would have been expected if the gas had been turned off as supposed to be (though of course the barges were carrying fuel), or that the gas pipe definitely hadn't been turned off despite the bridge being closed for maintenance. The coincidence of timing came out a bit conspiratorial TBH (to be honest). I wouldn't like to think the crew who died were victims of an underhand railway cost-cutting exercise.  Shocked
1986  Sideshoots - associated subjects / The West - but NOT trains in the West / Re: Why do Welsh place names appear around the world? on: August 12, 2019, 11:38:41
There are something like 35 places called Bristol around the world, mostly in North America but also Australia and even a small village in Peru. What's most surprising though is that in many places around the world, the grandest hotel in town is called the Bristol.

Non-locally there's the fairly well known but tiny hamlet of Moscow near Kilmarnock, but I don't think it was named by Russian settlers!
1987  All across the Great Western territory / Across the West / Re: Railway station ticket barriers could be replaced by sensors... on: August 12, 2019, 11:30:25
Sounds like a sort of super-Oyster (Smartcard system used by passengers on Transport for London services). If it worked, one app to calculate the best fare across all modes, held on a device 90% of passengers have already, could be massively convenient. The normal caveats about data protection, tracking and surveillance, fraud and hacking, and of course knowing how much you're being charged, all apply. As does the one about multiple operators working together.
1988  Sideshoots - associated subjects / Heritage railway lines, Railtours, other rail based attractions / Re: Vale of Berkeley Railway to reopen for passenger heritage use? on: August 12, 2019, 09:00:35
Ah well, a few more years ago I went to a talk by someone else (nothing to do with VoB or FoD or any other railway, a local historian type) suggesting that the Severn Bridge disaster might not have been unwelcome to the rail authorities of the time. Purely circumstantial evidence, of course.
1989  Sideshoots - associated subjects / Heritage railway lines, Railtours, other rail based attractions / Re: Vale of Berkeley Railway to reopen for passenger heritage use? on: August 11, 2019, 21:58:47
I heard someone give a talk about this a year or two ago. He said their long term desire is to see scheduled services running through to Gloucester.
1990  All across the Great Western territory / The Wider Picture in the United Kingdom / Re: Power outage strands trains on: August 11, 2019, 13:55:10
By the way. I'm just back from a late night walking of the dog around the recreation ground. I had to take a flashlight to see my way along the sidewalks and thru the gates. I was disappointed by all the trash around the soccer fields.
Soccer is a good example of words changing. Its origins are British, as an abbreviation of association to distinguish hooligan's football from the gentleman's union variety (or is it the other way round?).
1991  All across the Great Western territory / Across the West / Re: Great Western Main Line electrification - ongoing discussion on: August 11, 2019, 13:38:47
Redundant, yes, but no more so than a medieval castle. Their graceful shape is, in my opinion, worth preserving somewhere, though looks best from a distance. The towers at Didcot did function as a place marker both on the railway and more dramatically when seen from high on the Berkshire Downs. But perhaps we're wandering into another thread.
1992  All across the Great Western territory / The Wider Picture in the United Kingdom / Re: Power outage strands trains on: August 10, 2019, 22:19:55
"More power stations needing repairs than usual".........................??  Wink
...mean more stations without power!
1993  All across the Great Western territory / Across the West / Re: Great Western Main Line electrification - ongoing discussion on: August 10, 2019, 22:18:12
I'll kind of miss them.
1994  All across the Great Western territory / The Wider Picture in the United Kingdom / Re: Power outage strands trains on: August 10, 2019, 13:00:29
Continuing the international theme, overhead supply was deliberately cut several times in Poland in the early 2000s because PKP were hugely in debt to the electricity generators. Signalling continued to function though.
1995  All across the Great Western territory / The Wider Picture in the United Kingdom / Re: Power outage strands trains on: August 10, 2019, 12:58:10
The term used in India is "load shedding". I understand this has a technical usage but there it's used in a far broader sense to describe the (pretty much daily) interruptions to the electricity supply whatever their reason.
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