Two-day rosters with a hotel room in the middle would come before that in aviation. Thankfully the days of quasi-random for-your-inconvenience mid-route stops at Shannon Airport types of location are long in the past.

That's just bad planning. It's not exactly the Trans-Siberian Railway. There's really no need for train crew changes mid-route on a line that is only 3 hours long – if they were done at Paddington and Swansea instead, no-one would even notice them. Sounds very much like the crew booking on place is in the wrong location.

So how much is the Government charging the Government?

Plymouth North Road has to be a strong contender.

Paignton to Kingswear. One of those routes that really should still have main-line trains, but the steam does add to the atmosphere.

I'm not surprised that the station site still looks like that. What surprises me is the jump to using extra rolling stock, rather than inter-working with the Newbury local service, which already seems not to have very tidy turnarounds.

And then there's the manufacturer, Alstom. As I understand it, the contract was to build and maintain the units.

Thank you, Graham! I've certainly enjoyed lurking for some time. So here's to de lurking!

Many years ago, I was on a full-and-standing Cross Country train. In the buffet car, naturally, as it was more pleasant to stand and drink beer leaning against a counter than to stand beerless in an aisle. Got talking to the guard, who was bemoaning not being able to meet his ticket sales targets, due to not being able to get through the train. So I asked him if a zero excess counted toward his target. Apparently, it did; so I got him to excess my ticket from Birmingham Stns to Bordesley. Maybe it's silly jokes like that that are partly to blame for reluctance these days.