Simon Calder's started a Twitter thread, someone's responded with Oldfield Park to Bath Spa at £3:50, which is a fare that discouraged me from catching the train a couple of weeks ago (walked it instead). The thread's reminded me that at the time I was wondering if short hop train fares had overachieved. Also, for the time being, some are up against the £2 flat fare on the buses.

Mark

https://twitter.com/SimonCalder/status/1776168682525253925

That reminds me, in another era, a friend, at an ungodly hour, witnessing a lorry driver getting something wrong and managing to drop a London suburban rail bridge parapet onto the track. Friend was straight off his bike, grabbed the rear light and was down onto the track and hot footing it* to caution any approaching train, red bike light in hand. His round's newspapers were delivered a little late that day.

Mark

*750 volt DC^▸ (Direct Current) electrified track, so, cautiously hot-footed.

From the very recently departed** days when train toilets still discharged onto the track, someone, attempting humour, added to a notice 'Do not flush the toilet when the train is at a station' ... 'Except Woking'.

Mark

Preserved railways aside, is this actually extinct on the national network?

Passengers in some numbers instructed to take trains at the station for terminal 4 to the next stop at terminals 2/3. Didn't go well, as no visible staff presence there and very full platforms - people with luggage waiting - meant that it wasn't easy to move from the platform to the concourse. Also, the signage between the national rail platforms and the Piccadilly line was absent.

For this station, the maps on the National Rail website don't exactly shine.

https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/stations/heathrow-terminals-2-3-rail-station-only/

Mark

Woking was a hat-tip to a piece of 70s graffiti. That aside, it's understandable that a train with a large suspect device might be moved from Winchester, but Basingstoke was a curious choice of destination.

Mark

Intention was to take it to Woking?

Mark

This has caused grimness for people attempting to leave London Heathrow by train. An affllicted correspondent has resorted to the Piccadilly line for the second time in a week, having needed to do the same on the way out.

Mark

Bus and Train User has a blog post that consolidates a number of issues with travel (he even caught a bus departures board mixing the... bus departures with a wildly out of date travel advice segment and then a third segment displaying... some random item from the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page) local news). Not helpful for anyone flying off a train at Northampton and needing to check the buses.

GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) doesn't escape scott-free either: at a time of large scale disruption to the network it was presumably the twitter feeds scheduled marketing let one loose on the subject of an easter-bunny-dropped easter egg hunt on their trains, complete with an alarming image, the exercise 100% guaranteed to annoy the majority of travellers, and may have resulted in the twitter feed's human staff signing off sick in despair..

Blog, complete with easter bunny on train tweet, here:

https://busandtrainuser.com/2024/03/31/seen-around-20/#more-57648

More on the origin of that bunny thing and its strange egg-laying powers from Wikipedia here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Bunny

Mark

Statements from the railway of the sort "The Westbury to Swindon railway line is closed ..." aren't very helpful as there's no such thing, the messaging would be better if it related to the train service rather than the route run by the service.

The use of "Both lines are blocked" is another puzzler, and wouldn't it be good to retire the orphan phrase "More trains than usual needing repairs" unless its qualified by the cause e.g. "The weekend's weather damaged many of our trains and therefore more than usual need repairs."

Much of this messaging often comes across as 'The railways are generally crap' which isn't the case. Perhaps GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) needs an internal discussion, reset its style of communicating and improve this at a stroke.

A good example: Network Rail Scotland's messaging on the Easter break, even if it uses the mysterious "Improve your railway", starts by emphasising the positive. From Twitter:

"The vast majority of Scotland's Railway isn't affected by our #EasterRailWorks this year, but if you travel from Glasgow Central or on the West Coast Main Line, check your journey - we're spending £12.6 million to improve your railway."

Mark

Travelling on three buses on Friday and had sight of several more, despite buses in Bath being slightly few and far between.

Bath's park and ride was busy,

Faresaver's services in and out from Wiltshire full and standing during the day and well in to the evening, ditto a bus out of Bath to Frome at around two, while another I saw to Wells also filling alarmingly well.

At the bus station, a couple of the automatic doors between the bus station building and the buses seemed to have an issue: the driver of the one I caught to Frome, ten minutes late in leaving, found himself repeatedly needing to leave his cab to operate the external push button for it as a series of pleading faces appeared behind the glass, so I volunteered to alight and stand by the button so that he could get the constantly reforming queue onto the bus and that way we managed to escape from the bay - even then as we'd left the stand the face of the unluckiest-passenger-in-the-world (TM^‡(resolve)) appeared miserably at the closed door. We were then further delayed as a visitor had decided to sit on the ground by the barrier, blocking the bus exit to the bus station and needed to move. It didn't appear to be a welfare issue - she seemed to have just decided that the kerb there would be a good place to sit.

Buses serving the city were not so busy - though there were still people travelling. First had a Sunday service so the routes that used smaller buses either weren't running or were running infrequently - the 6a in from Larkhall, hourly and making its infrequent and irregular appearance down at the railway station (but not the bus station) not much used as a lot of people have forgotten what it does / expect it to be packed and so do not consider it at all, so it runs empty.

Mark

Can't recall the last time that section closed owing to flooding. This year's Devizes to Westminster canoe race (setting off tomorrow) sounds as though it will be hairy for some.

Mark

Paddington to Reading now closing(?) through Saturday night and Sunday morning to allow emergency engineering work to the track.
Post from GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) on Twitter.

Mark

https://twitter.com/GWRHelp/status/1773388868168888527

Grimness now reported on the Elizabeth line owing to overhead electrifications issues at West Ealing... a relative's just needed to leave the train at Paddington and head for the Piccadilly line for onward travel to Heathrow.

Mark

That useful... was it Portsmouth to Liverpool... regional railways train... that appeared possibly a little before privatisation and disappeared as soon as was (indecently) possible thereafter... as no franchise appeared tasked with what what the then Regional Railways conspired to do, more's the pity.

That train dropped by Bath Spa at around 8:30am, can't recall if it then missed Newport altogether* before heading up the Marches line, across to Crewe and then to Liverpool.

Mark

* In the days before the Maindee curve at Newport got the MVP** treatment.

** "Minimum Viable Product"***.

*** Perhaps 'MVP' should be a new target for a Coffeeshop TLA^▸ (three letter acronym) buster. Wikipedia indicates that an MVP may be put in place when the viability of something need to be proved - that is, to maximise the benefit, that should be quickly followed by a plan A, B or C and I'm not quite confident the DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) or various other transport bodies get the principle of a follow-through - including the benefit of including a little passive provision, or at least not to heap expense in the way of further enhancement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product

Just had this marketing email from GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) who are holding a 72 hour flash sale. The prices seem to be a little awry, yes?

Mark

London Paddington to Bath Spa from £14.40 Standard Class Advance Single*
Save up to £9.60 compared to an Anytime Day Single