Lots of work going on today, so a nice big update here http://www.flickr.com/photos/willc2009/

Not too much to add to what you can see in the pictures. S&T^▸ (Signalling and Telegraph) teams were dismantling equipment linked to the old crossover at the south end of Moreton-in-Marsh station, ahead of lifting.

At Honeybourne, the footbridge foundations are complete as far as I could see, and there were signs warning that the road bridge would be closed for a short time after 9am on Tuesday, but not sure what work will be happening then. The 'station cat' has been identified by his owner, who spotted my picture taken last weekend. His name is Thomas.

Didn't go west of Honeybourne, so not sure what's happening closer to Evesham just yet.

They did actually.

D1072 was talking about the rail over rail bridge to the east of Honeybourne, which was renewed last year. The junction for the West Loop which ran up to the station diverged from the Cheltenham-Stratford line underneath the Cotswold Line bridge, hence it required the four-track width span he was referring to.

As I keep having to say here, year after year, yes they do - 280 proper human-sized seats, not 275 (3-car 165) or about 250 (166) for people whose arms magically disappear when they step through the door of a Turbo.


Newbury trains. And the Turbos are hardly clogging up the fast lines, given the leisurely schedules east of Reading these days.

Decision on what to do with them may be September.

If you retain all the existing HST^▸ (High Speed Train) services on the Cotswold Line, you don't actually need all that many 180s to replace most of the Turbo duties out to Worcester and Malvern, where there is surely the most pressing need for something better than a Turbo. So long as they are not crush-loaded, 16Xs are tolerable between Moreton and London, especially if an extra set is added south of Oxford.

Someone else will know about the diagramming but casual observation suggests that several Cotswold diagrams are self-contined through the day

Assuming you were able to turn out four 180s per day from five, then you could have one each for the 05.48 and 06.48 from London, with the other pair reverting to their old peak job of being a 560-seat queue-buster on the 07.31 from Oxford/07.15 from Charlbury, splitting them in Paddington then offers a set for the 09.21, in between two Hereford HSTs, with the other then going spare or doing the 09.50 to Moreton.

The first set out to Worcester is then back at Paddington by 11am to pick up the 11.21, the set from the 09.21 to Worcester would be back to pick up the 14.21 of Paddington and then you're into HST-time after that.

Since the afternoon peak and evening services from London on to the Cotswold Line are HSTs, you could indeed send a 180 or two to Henley/Banbury, etc in that period.

Mileage-wise, the bridge is just east of the 101-mile marker on the OWW^▸ (Oxford Worcester and Wolverhampton) line, sorry but can't be more precise than that. No idea about the old line underneath.

The platform at Charlbury was not widened, simply extended at the north end towards the bridge in the 1980s.

A mobile building to provide a base for FGW^▸ (First Great Western) staff on replacement bus duty at Moreton-in-Marsh over the next couple of weeks arrived in the station car park today.

Couple of pictures of new LED signals north and south of Moreton-in-Marsh now online after a spot of country walking today. Link is in the post above.

Plenty of progress at Honeybourne over the past week, with track laid through the station alongside the new platform, rails added to the sleepers on the Long Marston connection and lamp-posts put up on the platform, with surfacing work starting.

Foundations for the footbridge on the platform side are complete, as is piling on the car park side. Work on concreting the bases for the supports on this side looks likely to be completed in the next week.

Some pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/willc2009/

Assembly of the new crossover has begun in the station car park at Moreton-in-Marsh. The new LED down distant signal for Moreton-in-Marsh (ie for Worcester-bound trains) is being installed slightly further south than the existing signal. I think a new signal may also be going in for up trains just north of Moreton as there seems to be S&T^▸ (Signalling and Telegraph) activity just out of sight round the curve but I haven't had a chance to go into the field up there to have a look. A new power supply cabinet has been installed in a cage above the tracks alongside the London Road bridge (the one south of the station).

Like the cabin housing the token machine on platform 1, the older electrical cabinets around Moreton also have Xs showing they are to be removed marked on them.

Picture of the point now at http://www.flickr.com/photos/willc2009/

There is an article about the token signalling, mainly focused on arrangements at the Worcester/Norton Junction end of the line, in the current issue of Rail magazine.

The plot thickens. Looks like as well as the little island of semaphore signals, Moreton-in-Marsh is to have a little island of new bullhead track around its pointwork. More lorries had appeared this evening loaded with track panels and rails and among them were point sections for the crossover, which are constructed with bullhead rails. They were being stacked up next to the Network Rail depot. Some pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/willc2009/

A couple of big Xs have been marked on the cabin housing the single-line token machine at the north end of platform 1 at Moreton-in-Marsh, indicating it is to be removed next month.

That would be Chipping Campden bank.


I don't really want to get into this debate again in this thread but BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)) experienced substantial growth in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was allowed to invest in lots of new rolling stock, ECML^▸ (East Coast Main Line) electrification and Thameslink among other things, even under railway-hating Mrs T. Getting the railway's finances off the government balance sheet was a very powerful motivating factor in privatisation and is why to this day we have to pretend that Network Rail isn't really a state-owned business.

Some pictures taken today at Chipping Campden and Blockley showing progress on level crossing changes and installation of posts for new LED signals now online at http://www.flickr.com/photos/willc2009/

First, sort of, freight train on the southern end of the line for some time ran on Monday, empty scrap wagons from store at Long Marston to Dagenham, though the train had to go all the way to Worcester for the loco run round to be at the right end to head south. Couple of pictures here http://www.petertandy.co.uk/Recentpics.html


It wasn't even that under the GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway), Castles not Kings were used, and it's not exactly front-rank InterCity territory to this day, given the size of the places it serves - many off-peak trains aren't exactly rammed to the doors now - though its fortunes have obviously improved greatly in recent times.

And, to go right back to the beginning of the redoubling project, the aim was nothing to do with the supposed status of the line, what it deserved, etc... it was to deal with the shockingly bad levels of performance - in the low 60s per cent overall punctuality in early 2008, with some individual trains much worse than that. That there are other benefits for the route as a result is nice but they were never at the heart of what drove the process.

And it's very easy to pillory BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)), but at the time it was making service cuts and singling the line, the area it serves was a rather different place - long-haul commuters were rare beasts and telephone-number property prices not an issue. They wrung every last minute of life out of that track and had to, given the state of the nation's finances in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Perhaps, in the context, you might have given a clear explanation of what you meant in the first place.

Every prospect of that being the case, as LM^▸ (London Midland - recent franchise) 172s are now passing the fault-free trial running benchmarks and a preview run is pencilled in for early next month, so passenger service next month looks a good bet - at long last.

Paul,

No, it doesn't show new use of bullhead track. Those chairs on the two outer sleepers are for flat-bottomed rail. This section will probably be used during the track renewal, where two pieces of long-welded rail meet - see http://www.railway-technical.com/Expansion-Joint.jpg. The old siding underneath in my picture has bullhead rail and chairs, which look quite different.