Sadly another person hit by a train. Nothing moving east of Reading other than one toTwyford.

Sadly, it's not so unusual though to find a public consultation that seems to have been put together by a woolly-minded PR^▸ (Public Relations) consultant trying to impart the current government's mindless slogans (sorry - that should be "policy objectives"), reflected in the criteria said to apply.

I think applying these criteria as set out and repeated below means-

1 -  Alignment to ‘levelling-up' objectives - i. e. none in London or the South of England - all pass this test.
2 - Connected and easy to get to across the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) - well, all are on the railway system! But I'd guess Birmingham scores best, with York and Newcastle (subject to restoring direct trains to Reading  ) also doing well
3 - Opportunities for Great British Railways - what on earth does this mean? - places with lots of currently empty railway accommodation? (for which I leave our industry insiders to comment/advise) or places where it is likely to be easier to recruit good quality staff ?- which probably counts against Crewe, Doncaster and Derby. Citizens/natives of those towns are invited to correct me if I am wrong!
4 - Railway heritage and links to the network - all have as much railway heritage as you can get, I cannot work out what the "connected to the network element" adds to criteria 2.
5 - Value for money - depends on the availability and suitability of any current surplus railway accommodation - beyond my knowledge - see 3 above.
6 - Public support - this is a circular argument - when you vote, you have to bear in mind public support, but until everyone's voted, how will we know which location has most public support?

So my vote is -stop messing around - employ someone who knows what they are doing to survey the available office space (both Network Rail assets and others) near Birmingham New Street, York and Newcastle Central Stations, prepare a report and submit it to the board of GBR^▸ (Great British Railways) or Shapps (whoever really takes the decision) and then follow their recommendations!

Agreed Stuving - an example of where using a word that I imagine was not originally a verb (retail - an adjective?) into a verb to save a word or two ("sell tickets") makes things less clear, not clearer.

Mind you, it's easier for me to understand than "A GEKS-Törnqvist index using a mean splice on the published series with a 25-month window, is used for calculation of these low-level stratum (elementary aggregate) indices."!

Transport Focus have published their report based on their survey of bus pass-holders (and those entitled to bus passes) and how the pandemic has affected their willingness to use buses - see - https://www.transportfocus.org.uk/publication/getting-free-bus-pass-holders-back-on-board/

It will be interesting to see whether this effect endured.

BTW^▸ (by the way) - this reminded me that I am now entitled to a pass myself, so I went to the Gov.UK^▸ (United Kingdom) website, which gave me a link to my local authority's website for information - but this was broken and didn't work.

Grahame's general point about the inadequacy of this is well made.

Firstly "Due to a short-notice change to the timetable between Reading and Guildford the line is closed." has to be nonsense. Someone did not wake up on Sunday morning and say - "I know what I'll do, I'll change today's timetable so no trains run between Reading and Guildford"! Or at least I hope they did not! There's presumably a real reason - staff or rolling stock shortages, emergency engineering work or something similar. Perhaps Sunday was meant to be a trial day running the service entirely with 769s but none of them worked ?

Secondly, while it would not help those trying to get to a number of the intermediate stations, for those prepared to change trains once there was still (with the GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) and Cross Country services) two trains an hour for most of the day between Reading and Basingstoke, one an hour between Reading and Farnborough Main Line that might help those trying to get to Farnborough North or North Camp, and quite frequent services from Basingstoke to Woking and between Woking and Guildford for those wanting to travel between Reading and Guildford. I don't know what proportion of the Sunday North Downs traffic is between Reading and North Camp/Farnborough North or Guildford, but this might help quite a few.

Add to this that there are two trains and hour from Reading to Ascot and hourly trains from Ascot to Farnham calling at stations not too far distant from North Camp and Farnborough North (namely Frimley and Ash Vale), and which also might be convenient pick up points if you were being picked up from Blackwater on arrival, and suddenly it's not quite the total wipe-out of rail access to the area it seems at first.

Wouldn't it be better for someone to summarise this and post this to help passengers?   

While on the subject of Greta...

Some 200,000 converge on Somerset for Glastonbury,  very few using the train due to the strikes.  Performers fly in from all around the world to entertain them. WOW! Just think of the enormous carbon footprint of the event.

But as Greta is attending it's all OK isn't it?

How thoughtful of Network Rail - a special exit for all those smugglers you keep being told about when you visit Cornwall!

To give an idea of the acreages involved, last night I had a conversation with a local farmer who is part of a consortium running a gas (for energy)-producing digester. The consortium has about 5000 acres under cultivation for various crops, half of which are for feedstock for the digester.

Apparently there is seen to be a market for the gas in Germany. Although there is quite a digester industry there, the gas currently goes straight for use for electricity generation.

If this is typical, I imagine that the odd use of maize for gamebird cover is inconsequential by comparison.

As a recently retired lawyer (albeit one that only dealt with criminal matters for a brief period in 1980/1!) I think Oxonhutch is right. The offence is "travelling on railway without paying fare, with intent to avoid payment", under the Regulation of Railways Act 1889. Making off without paying for something is an offence under the Theft Act 1978.

I expect Chris B has also hit on the other reason why "fare dodging" on the railway was not disclosed by the figures.

Here's something that I have just spotted on Youtube-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ch0w71ovxbM

I cannot see this happening here, and you will see that it's not available on high speed services, and there are concerns at how funding this will affect the finances of participating transport undertakers mentioned towards the end. But with a somewhat higher price (and no threat of industrial action) perhaps something to contemplate for the summer months?

Does it show my ignorance of the railways that this surprises me considerably?

While I have not been commuting for the last month since retirement, the general impression of Thames Valley mainline services since the easing of lockdown has been of a lot of 8- or 12- car formations running for GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) moving a lot of fresh air between Paddington and Didcot. These trains have often been covering trains that not that long ago (off peak) would have been served by 2- or 3-car Turbo trains, or 6-car trains at peak times. I would have thought too that the Elizabeth Line was now taking a reasonable proportion of the passengers formerly using GWR east of Reading.

I appreciate that we have had ex- C2C and Gatwick Express trains helping out since the problems with the IETs^▸ (Intercity Express Train). Is this just going through the motions for a permanent (or longer term) lease of these units? I see that the GWR logo has been applied to the sides of some of the C2C units.

It is all a little ironic given the shortage of diesel stock off the electrified network.

Having just followed the link from "On This Day" today and found it led to this, another change of gauge overnight  type story similar to the elimination of the broad gauge on the GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) from the US (OK, in a few days, but an enormous mileage converted) also from the 19th century, in sad contrast to the recent electrification of the GWML^▸ (Great Western Main Line) -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4v81Gwu6BTE

The thought occurred to me that I had not seen or heard anything lately about electrification of the GWML. So I went to the Network Rail website, followed through the links to "Western Route" - and found nothing.

So that's it now is it? No electrification to the centre of Bristol, anywhere south west of Bristol or to Oxford?

Coming in from further left field...

I have often wondered why non-one has taken the old French carnet system (which if I recall correctly enabled you to buy bundles of tickets at non-rail outlets ) further.  Why doesn't someone develop a system whereby you can buy tickets at Post Office and convenience stores, perhaps through a computer terminal?

I know that there seems to be a move towards making all sales through mobile phones, but (as I have moaned before!) not everyone wants to have one and it seems to me that there's far more social exclusion in effectively limiting rail travel to those with  mobile phones than a lot of the other alleged sources of social exclusion we constantly hear about. It's not just the cost, by the way. There was an elderly person on the radio recently complaining that her arthritis made using touch screen mobile phones almost impossible, yet in her home town most car parks operated the (awful?) "Ringo" system that involves "downloading an app" to her phone, rather than the much-easier-to-use contactless credit card machines that are now, mercifully, spreading.

So - a challenge for a modern user friendly railway - outlets for tickets at shops please - and a simplified fare structure so you don't get stuck behind someone trying to split their ticket to London at Slough when using it would be nice, too.

It's not the only Berkshire Live article on the Elizabeth Line about which that can be said.

There's a link to another one embedded in the article with the clickbait title "House prices explode in Slough, Reading and other Elizabeth line stations". Having recently retired from providing services to the housebuilding industry since the 1980s I thought I would check it out (https://www.getreading.co.uk/news/property/elizabeth-line-house-prices-explode-24012349).

I do hope that the credulous readers of (or contributors to?) this site have not piled into investing in residential property beyond Burnham. The article quotes house price increases of 62% in Taplow, 61% in Maidenhead, 50% in Twyford and 62% in Reading between 2012 and 2021. For comparison, the Nationwide House Price indices for Greater London, Outer Metropolitan and Outer South-east increased by 67.7%, 65% and 66.5% respectively between the second quarter of 2012 and fourth quarter of 2021. So while Langley, Slough and Burnham have "won" with increases of 73%, 81%  and 75% respectively over the same period, it looks like the correct headline should be "Elizabeth Line has had no positive effect on house prices west of Burnham".

I'd rather read Industry Insider and BobM for informed views of the effect of the scheme!

It always struck me that the extremes on either end of the political spectrum have more in common with each other than with those closer to their side of the centre - as the tragic history of the 20th century graphically illustrates. Now  they are all united by their love of hatred.....and the two most aggressively expansionist nationalistic regimes are the "harking back to the good old days of the Soviet Union" Russians and the Peoples Republic of China.