Thanks for trying, Chris. I can well imagine that it hasn't been the easiest day for getting hold of people. Yeah, not time-critical at all.

The National Rail website is currently offering the following brilliant advice:

I'm enjoying the continued HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train) on the 1445 Paddington to Swansea, but does anyone know why it's been consistently in reverse formation since last Thursday? It hasn't even been the same set each day (although I'm glad to get 43002 again this afternoon). I understand that the diagram originates in St Philip's Marsh -- why don't they just run this train out of the other end of the depot if it's back-to-front?

The reverse formation causes prolonged stops at Cardiff Central, where the station design channels people to wait on the wide bit of the platform at the Down end (accentuating the issue of the exits being at the front at Neath and Swansea). The scrum at the door next to the buffet that results is ridiculous.

From the Rodalies to metro line 4 at Barcelona Passeig de Gràcia has to be a good contender. Terrible station.

The weird thing is that the 210 makes the mirror image to the 46's hairpin turn a little further north in Hampstead. It's as if someone's perversely mismatched the route segments.

I imagine less than half one's time actually being on the move is pretty typical. For instance, here's my journey into work:

Raw data:
Walking from my house to the station   13
Waiting for the train   5
On a moving train   40
Intermediate stops   3
Changing trains   4
Walking from the station to my office   8
Being early for work/desk breakfast   24
(for a total of 97 minutes)

Interestingly, Google predicts enough traffic to think that driving from my house to my office would take 75 minutes to get there for my start time (going up to 85 on the way back). So once one adds in finding a street just far enough out of town not to cost some extortionate daily rate in parking, then walking back in, driving would be a very slow and not very practical option. (But when having a nice commute by train is a factor in where one lives and works, this was probably going to be an inevitable consequence.)

As for improving bus journey times, I don't know Bath well at all, but if it's anything like Cardiff, the key issues will be bottlenecks on the outskirts of the city centre. For instance, Cardiff Council could improve bus journey times no end by banning cars from all of the bridges over the Taff except the A4232 and the M4 (and any council that tried this would immediately lose the next election).

The other thing that makes buses really unattractive is the way that so many British cities have radial routes that get into the centre and terminate, rather than continuing out the other side. This gets particularly ridiculous when one throws in pedestrian zones, so that buses will tend to terminate from both sides on the near side of the centre (forcing a long walk to interchange) or on silly one-way loops with a massive layover half-way round (a recipe for circuitous and slow journeys – I don't know why bus companies don't understand the basic point that most passengers do not want to travel in circles).

Looking at the court listings for Newcastle-upon-Tyne Crown Court for 6 February suggests it may be this case:

06-02-2019   Newcastle-upon-Tyne   9   T20170858
T20181030
Db Cargo Uk Ltd
Details:   For Sentence - Case Started - 10:52
For Sentence - Case adjourned until 11:15 - 11:08
For Sentence - Resume - 11:29
For Sentence - Case adjourned until 14:00 - 12:59
For Sentence - Resume - 14:08

I keep thinking that it must be my last HST^▸ (High Speed Train) ride, but we got one on the 1648 back from Cardiff again tonight. Unfortunately, the 1548 was cancelled; so I got the classic shot of why HSTs are the best trains on the network:

I too am pleased to be wrong, to have found the buffet car on leaving Cardiff, and to be able to relax with my beer on my Thursday evening journey home.

Quite possibly related to the tearful young lady I once witnessed being lent the guard's mobile phone on a Virgin West Coast Pendolino, back in the days when Virgin also had Cross Country. New Street had been having one of its "this is a platform alteration" days, and the Euston train ended up on the platform the Southampton one was previously meant to be on. So this lady with her ticket to Leamington Spa ended up on the right coloured train, which then stopped at International and Coventry as expected. Unfortunately, she then discovered that the next stop was Watford Junction.

Probably already had mine on the 1648 back from Cardiff (1445 ex Pad) last Wednesday (13 March):

Or maybe Cllr Skates is just grandstanding.

The underlying problem is that the section 106 conditions for building that stadium were woefully insufficient.

Also incredibly unhelpful, seeing as the last train back from Bristol arrives at 0008.

So what this really is is daisy-chaining a semi-fast Rugeley-Birmingham service, a semi-fast Birmingham-Northampton, and a semi-fast Northampton-London.


I don't see the same scope for daisy-chaining-style through services, mainly because the non-InterCity services between the edge of Network SouthEast and Bristol were so comprehensively killed off.

But I'd offer Severn Tunnel Junction and Pontyclun as two ORCATS^▸ (Operational Research Computerised Allocation of Tickets to Services) raids waiting to happen, if GWR were ever so inclined.