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Sideshoots - associated subjects / The Lighter Side / Re: Where was Red Squirrel - 20 Jul 2021
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on: July 23, 2021, 14:54:32
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Had some fish and chips from the chippie in Winscombe with trainer of this forum on the picnic tables by the station. Great sense of deja vu as we did exactly the same some 6 or 7 years ago when we were both rather fatter and less fit than we are now...both pushing 70!
Pushing 70 is the best way of dealing with it. It keeps it over the horizon for a few more extra years!  |
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All across the Great Western territory / Looking forward - after Coronavirus to 2045 / Re: UK government's Transport decarbonisation plan
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on: July 23, 2021, 08:26:14
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Well, most inland waterways are narrow in important places - like locks. The wide bits, like rivers, don't go very far on one level.
Some narrower than others. There are also some wider waterways such as the Aire and Calder Navigation and the Manchester Shop Canal. The Thames in London might also be useful. Is that Manchester's answer to Oxford Street? The ship canal, of course, could still be carrying huge amounts of goods if we wanted it to (ie the economics allowed it), but these days it is also becoming a wonderful peaceful location for wildlfe, though a compromise between the two should be possible. |
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273
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Sideshoots - associated subjects / The Lighter Side / Re: Where was Red Squirrel - 20 Jul 2021
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on: July 22, 2021, 17:27:57
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Looks lovely. Presumably a park somewhere, maybe with an historic railway connection. I've just come back from Royal Victoria Park here in Bath and there are many bits very similar to that, but I don't think it is there, and I can't match it to any old railway lines I know in this neck of the woods (Bath and Bristol).
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275
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All across the Great Western territory / The Wider Picture in the United Kingdom / Re: car uses rail line to get away
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on: July 21, 2021, 14:22:22
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Or perhaps the driver was following the new amendments to the highway code whereby yellow means "go faster"
And red means "go if it has only just turned red"
And white zig zag markings on the road means "priority pick up/drop of zone for school run"
And orange flashing beacons atop black and white poles mean "warning pedestrians in road. Increase speed to avoid them"
And a level crossing sign means turn left here. Also, could the moderators remove that incredibly annoying apostrophe in the thread's title, as I doubt that the rail line belonged to the car use. |
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276
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All across the Great Western territory / The Wider Picture in the United Kingdom / Re: Withernsea - never the same since the railway closed.
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on: July 20, 2021, 08:15:22
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I have briefly visited both towns and have cycled all the way down the Holderness coast, which is a fascinating area. The coast here is eroding faster than anywhere else in Britain, and many roads are dead-ends that are crumbling away in a mass of jagged pipes into the sea. It is very flat and all susceptible to flooding, as the land itself is slightly lower than the low bank that separates it from the sea, with long views over agricultural land to distant villages.
Hornsea and Withernsea are the largest towns along the coast, but both are very small compared to almost any coastal resorts elsewhere in England, and to me neither felt attractive and certainly felt depressed. Hornsea Mere, just inland from the town, is a noted wildlife haven, while Withernsea does have a wonderful tall lighthouse, situated away from the sea right in the heart of the town. Both will probably end up being washed away sometime in the next century or two, as it would be almost impossible to effectively protect them from rising sea levels and more extremes of weather.
When Hull was a major port and industrial centre, I can imagine they would have been busy with holidaymakers, but these days, even with the return of the staycation, I doubt that they would generate enough tourism to make a railway line that viable. Aldbrough, which lies between them, is a prettier village, but is even quieter. Spurn Head, some miles to the south, is definitely a place to visit if the weather is kind, full of wonderful coastal plants and layers of sand, and to me was the highlight of this whole area, but won't ever be connected to public transport (and nor to private cars these days, but you can cycle or walk there).
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277
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All across the Great Western territory / Buses and other ways to travel / Changing (or not) place names on bus routes
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on: July 20, 2021, 03:25:02
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As an aside, why is the explanation for "XC▸ " styled as "(Cross Country franchise trains (now run by Arriva))"?
As others have suggested, "New Road" syndrome. Here in Melksham, the New Inn has closed down recently and is boarded up ... I will jump in and put a lick of paint on that expansion. Please dont tell me that's the New Inn in Berryfield. I will have to rewrite some of our bus timetable proposals... Why? Most bus operators have a few stops named after pubs that closed - or changed their names - or were demolished - more than twenty years ago. For some years after we moved to Bath, our local bus service had its destination on the front of the bus as Kingsway Post Office. Not only did this post office not exist, and hadn't done so for some years before we moved there, but the building it had been in was just a private house that nobody would have guessed had ever been a post office just from looking at it. |
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All across the Great Western territory / Introductions and chat / Re: Mask wearing rules & advice, Thames Valley & South West England from 19.7.2021
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on: July 19, 2021, 19:21:43
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Can’t say I’ve noticed any real change in compliance on GWR▸ trains today against last week. Perhaps over time fewer face coverings will be worn, but as yet there’s little evidence of a change since it has gone from ‘law’ to ‘recommendation’.
Good to hear & good to see people acting responsibly. Let's hope it stays that way. Yes. I'm interested to hear what others think based on their public transport journeys this week?Just a short return bus journey into town today. Almost everyone wearing masks, apart from one teenage girl, who just after the bus started, shouted at her friend next to her "Take your mask off, it is making me sweat". Not sure of the logic there, but I was pleased that her friend didn't take hers off. |
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All across the Great Western territory / Buses and other ways to travel / Re: Mask policy - Stagecoach buses from next Monday
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on: July 17, 2021, 17:12:46
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Just to add to what I said above.
It's not what I want, but I can see a very good case can be made for mask wearing to be a requirement for public transport for some time now, at least until we can be as close to 100% certain the pandemic is under complete control. In that scenario, at some point ideas such as mask-only carriages, as suggested elsewhere, could be considered, but the time for that is not now. Right now, what we desperately need is caution.
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All across the Great Western territory / Buses and other ways to travel / Re: Mask policy - Stagecoach buses from next Monday
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on: July 17, 2021, 15:58:15
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TaplowGreen and froome are of course entitled to their opinions. My worry I guess is that, after a long period of everyone pretty much holding the line of an "irreversible" unlocking roadmap - notwithstanding of course the delay to the final stage - over the past few days Boris Johnson, Savid Javid, and Chris Whitty have all started to subtly weave into their narratives the same "Except if..." get-out clause, which is "Variants".
Essentially, the decision to make France the only country on the amber list from where people coming in or returning to the UK▸ will have to quarantine is an experiment into how this get-out clause could work in practice. What they are effectively saying is because the Beta or South African variant is present in France, and there is a possibility - no more than that at this stage - that it could evade the vaccine protection, then it doesnt matter whether you are fully vaccinated or not, you must still quarantine. In turn, if this leads to a more widespread use of this interpretation when such a variant comes along when formulating the rules of daily life in the UK, leading on to the regular lockdown of millions of fully vaccinated UK residents, this also risks making the "speed up immunity amongst enough of the population to make a return to the 'old normal' a reasonable proposition" argument completely redundant.
So I ask again, what exactly would the point of the current mass vaccination programme be in that scenario? My own answer would be that at some point you have to start putting your faith in the level of protection that the vaccines will still give you and start moving on with life again, otherwise there literally is no alternative to the current "lockdown, release, lockdown, release, lockdown..." rut we have got ourselves into.
There is a supreme irony here for me, of course. As you know, I work in the public transport system over here in France, and after the first lockdown ended, we were faced with the difficult task of how to both ensure the safety of our passengers, and to reassure them that it was indeed safe to use our services. On the trains, we resisted the temptation to follow the UK's lead and issue a kneejerk reaction "train travel is dangerous" edict, which as a result has kneecapped the future prospects of the UK rail network for at least a couple of generations. Instead the French government issued a blanket law requiring masks to be worn on all forms of public transport, which remains in place to this day, and is likely to remain in place for some time to come. It is enforced extremely strictly - At a staffed station you wont even get on the platform without wearing one, and if you join a train at an unstaffed one without wearing a mask you will soon be told to put one on in short order. Surveys and feedback tell us this is the single biggest factor that persuades Covid-fearing waverers to take the plunge and catch the train, and is thus also a big factor in our passenger figures remaining relatively stable, at least at our local/regional service level. As a result, we are able to move away from the negative spectre of service cuts and continue to take forward our rolling programme of reopenings and new service introductions.
Obviously, I dont like the fact from a personal and civil liberty perspective that the mask is so ever-present wherever I go on the network, but I also passionately want that network to survive and thrive into the future, so I just have to be pragmatic and accept it for now, although hopefully for no more than absolutely necessary.
I just hope that we arent back here posting much same thing after having had much the same kind of winter as last time round. For me, that would be the biggest fear of all.
I actually agree with most, if not all, of what you say, particularly your 4th paragraph. If the variants hadn't complicated matters, I would have expected us to have opened up fully here some time ago. However, they have appeared, and currently have the potential to both spread very quickly and possibly, at least to an extent, evade the effect of the vaccines. Right now, the UK feels like it is going backwards very quickly, with many more people ignoring mask wearing and social distancing, while cases rise at an alarming rate, and deaths and hospitalisations are also rising. It certainly doesn't feel like the right time to try our current experiment in opening up and advising caution. |
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All across the Great Western territory / Buses and other ways to travel / Re: Mask policy - Stagecoach buses from next Monday
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on: July 17, 2021, 08:05:37
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Agree re: Autumn
If I'm honest (and I know it's a personal thing) I don't really feel that my basic freedom is threatened by wearing a mask on public transport or in other areas where larger numbers of people come into contact indoors in a confined space. I'm happy to live with a bit of minor inconvenience to preserve my own and others lives.
The volatility of the situation is understood by most I think and those willing to take a gamble on booking summer holidays abroad this year have to accept that sometimes gamblers lose.
I do sympathise/empathise with those unable to visit family however, having been kept apart from my own for nine months.
We perhaps shouldn't be too surprised that we are where we are taking into account 60,000 at Wembley last week and at football matches, Wimbledon etc for several weeks before with associated carousing...................and tomorrow there will be 140,000 at Silverstone.............we reap what we sow.
I agree with this. Personally I don't like wearing a mask, and occasionally it does cause me minor difficulties, but in the grander scheme of things, I have no problem doing so where it appears to give greater benefit. Public transport is, and no doubt always has been, a major carrier of diseases and viruses, because people are in close proximity and are the carriers. We've always accepted this, though it will undoubtedly have put some vulnerable people off from ever using it, and the pandemic is now making this situation more clear, as suddenly in 2020 we found out we were all relatively vulnerable to this newcomer. To answer Lee's last sentence - the point of the vaccination programme is to speed up immunity amongst enough of the population to make a return to the 'old normal' a reasonable proposition. The question is whether we are there yet. As Taplow Green says, we are reaping what we have sown. |
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282
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Journey by Journey / Cross Country services / Re: Lack of Common Sense?
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on: July 15, 2021, 17:04:59
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Its only for 6 days
Even so, we have this nonsense every summer while works take place around Bristol. I'll repeat what I've said before on this - it makes far more sense to me to route those from Bath (and there is a large demand) who want to travel north to go via Swindon rather than via Temple Meads, as the latter gets very busy and can be confusing for those who don't know their way round. The route via Swindon and the Stroud valley is also a far more pleasant experience than the long trawl through the Bristol suburbs. If a diverted train is stopping at Bath anyway, the extra delay caused by allowing passengers on and off would be very small, probably less than a minute from what would happen anyway. |
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Sideshoots - associated subjects / The Lighter Side / Re: Where was Red Squirrel - 10-07-2021
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on: July 13, 2021, 14:27:34
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I don't know if these were official back when the photo was taken, but I've kind of assumed the one in Redland (which is more of a garden I think than an allotment) is merely tolerated, as were those at Montpellier, rather than officially allowed.
The Redland one always looked just like any other allotment for the years I lived in Bristol (I was there for 35 years up to 2006, but can't remember now when I first travelled on the line). It often looked very productive, and I'm pretty sure it will have been officially sanctioned. The Montpelier ones, I think, are more recent, though there is a small allotment site hidden away just above the railway tunnel there. I had allotments for many years on the vast Ashley Hill site that overlooks the main line and its junction with the Severn Beach line. |
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All across the Great Western territory / The Wider Picture in the United Kingdom / Re: Flash Flooding at London tube/train stations
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on: July 13, 2021, 14:20:05
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It seems obvious to say that, with climate change, the potential for flash flooding, particularly from summer thunderstorms, will only increase, quite possibly dramatically. Urban stations are those might likely to be at risk, and those in London especially so, given that the average temperature at these will be higher by a matter of degrees than other cities and towns.
I grew up in London and my local station as a child, Clock House, was once several feet under water (as was our garden which backed onto the railway, with the water lapping against the top step to the back door). That was in the late 50s or early 60s, and no doubt the potential is there for far worse now.
How robust are the drainage systems at urban stations? Is it assumed that water will mostly just drain through the ballast?
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