This has been a long time acoming. It's how the Government intends to achieve their stated goal of ensuring that any new development achives an overall net gain in biodiversity both from features incorporated in the development itself and what is a very complicated off-setting regime.

It is being looked at particularly by farmers and landowners who have poor unproductive land that struggles to make money from agriculture.  They hope that by carrying out habitat improvement for wildlife at the cost of developers who cannot offset on-site using these Defra formulae they will make more money than simply applying artificial fertilisers and pesticides to poor grade land.

It might work.........

Presumably "Churchward" after the noted Great Western CME of the opening years of the last century?

He, as one of the great innovative railway engineers would be turning in his grave at the current state of the railway vehicle construction industry in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom).

1 is Shrewsbury signal box. I think I would get it even without the Shrewsbury sign on the front !

2 is one of the Southern Railway double decked electric trains

Ah, should have checked with Prof Google.

Try Mallaig.  It was North British/LNER^» (London North Eastern Railway - about), rest were Highland/LMS^▸ (London Midland Scottish - 1923 to 1948).

3 Hopeman - no station

Which, applying the house rules, makes 3 Taunton

I wondered whether to post here or in the thread on Gloucestershire's proposed cricket ground move!
Having watched the progress on construction for an extended time, I used the station (at last) for the first time today.

It was my first visit in a very long time to the "Select Car Leasing Stadium", which shall always be the Mad Stad for us, to see Reading play. The club has being doing badly off and on the field for a while, as anyone who takes a passing interest in the game will know. An old school friend and I decided it was time to show some support, and I thought I would try the new station as a way of getting there - a very reasonable £3-55 return from Goring and Streatley now I have a senior railcard.

On the way out everything went smoothly. Sadly the Turbo out from Reading had been vandalised with paint (or tagged as foolish people who should know better call it), as had an Electrostar in the depot and most of the ex-Viva Rail Marston Vale stock that has replaced the 769s in the area reserved for rebuilt oddities. GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) thoughtfully put on 3 car units. I went early to meet up for a pre-match drink, but there were already a number of supporters on the train.

One thing that struck me was the absence of signage on the convenient direct pedestrian route form the station to the stadium. Perhaps it was understandable as it pre-dated the station, but I would have thought that both destinations would have been added.

On the way back things were not quite so good. The middle coach of the Reading-bound train had been locked out of use as someone had been sick over one of the seats, and it was held awaiting a fast train at Southcote Junction, so I missed the connection to Goring I hoped to get. Memories of commuting days - I got down to the platform just as doors closed..... Never mind, I used the half hour to do some supplemental Christmas shopping at Hotel Chocolat - one of the highlights of the "new" Reading Station!

There were about 100 who got on the train back to Reading, possibly a few more. On the opposite platform there were rather fewer, but still possibly 70-80 waiting for the next Basingstoke-bound train. I guess there may have been more later, as quite a few supporters have a post match drink at the stadium hotel bar. The long queues to leave the car-park are an incentive to stay for one. I'd guess the crowd was about 10,000.

A thought for those commercially minded folk at GWR - perhaps sell tickets with a discount via the football club, and invest in a few signs between the station and the stadium? There looks to be a possible source of revenue that could be better exploited here.

Oh - and the station was as others have already described. The only negative point was the presence of wet-floor warning signs on the footbridge indicating possible a roof problem there. And the reception desk affair near the entrance is no more "getting the staff closer to passengers" than had it been an enclosed ticket office. It's somewhere for staff you walk past when you enter the building.

Not just the railway, Trowres. This applies to the banking system and almost anything else we encounter where once a person and their skills and discretion were valued and important. A lot of the appliances and machines we buy are the same. There's a huge societal problem with IT upon which we rely but when it doesn't work the old fashioned manual work-arounds are not there. The availability of "manual" back-ups to these systems is discouraged by cost control. And while Health and Safety (and other regulations) are generally well-intentioned, and founded on experience of things that went badly wrong before, they can sometimes (often?) be an obstacle to the swift resolution of problems.

Two matters strike me - the lack of any available rescue locomotives and staff to help resolve this incident, and the appalling regulatory regime that results in TfL^» (Transport for London - about) being able to run 9 coach trains from Abbey Wood to Maidenhead and Reading with no toilets, yet GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) cannot run a 2 coach train with toilets (but ones not suitable for the disabled) over short branches in the Thames Valley, Greater Bristol area or the Cornwall and Devon branches.

2 - Woking?

No 2 - class 27

To be fair, TG, Broadgage was not saying that everyone would be obliged to travel by train, merely that major new stadiums (stadia?) should be close to railway stations. It begs a question as to what "close" might be, but it is now an accepted part of planning decision making to consider the impact of transport provision, and to refuse permission if there's not adequate public transport (the provision of which might be as part of the proposed development). If it is a national sport (as county cricket is) I think it is reasonable to expect a major new stadium to be reasonably well placed for rail access, which might be by a good bus connection to a station with adequate capacity.  

For no.4 meant to be 2023, but has not yet happened?

Last Thursday was a good (or bad depending on whether you enjoy it) day for this thread. Reach (formerly Trinity, and before that Mirror Group) closed 13 local news websites, including Berkshire Live and those for Hampshire, Oxfordshire, Dorset and Wiltshire.

The website for the Reading Chronicle (another Reach product that has been a good source of material) remains.

2 - Southampton Central?