As I read it, they do need planning permission ... see road.cc which reports and that Highways England have emergency powers.  It is suggested in the article that those emergency powers are being abused in many cases, as the bridges in question are on narrow lanes that a 44 tonner couldn't get down anyway.

Ah, yes, thanks.  It's faster than the norm, missing out Chetnole, Yetminster and Thornford.

Inspired by a post from TonyN ... GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) Served Stations close to the River Thames

Windsor and Eton Central
Maidenhead
Cookham
Bourne End
Marlow
Henley-on-Thames
Shiplake
Wargrave
Reading
Tilehurst
Pangbourne
Goring and Streetley
Appleford
Oxford
Kemble



There are many other stations close to The River downstream of Windsor and Eton - from Windsor and Eton Riverside all the way to Shoeburyness - with different operators.  The River can be reached in London by bus or underground from Paddington station served by GWR

If people like this page, we could follow on with stations close to other navigable waterways - different rivers, tributaries and canals.  I think we have just the expert on our team, too.

A step closer there - see Lynton-Rail

I think that is now fixed and hopefully without any other "funnies" being introduced.  Really a work-around for the iPad - looks like there's an "undocumented / unintended feature" on there relating to setting of the width of popup menus.

In curing this, I have also fixed popups for everyone else too so that they are resized to fit the content. Means that train changes between stations with long names no longer fold (was an issue, for example, with London Paddington to Worcester Foregate Street)

I heard from GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) yesterday that two extra trains are running from Westbury / Bristol to Weymouth on Saturdays this summer, staring on 10th July.   More importantly, they's coming back at times that offer good connections back to Melksham, Chippenham and Swindon which was lacking until this point.

Summer 2021 - days out by train to WEYMOUTH

Day return on any of these trains - £19.60 adult, £9.80 child
Adult tickets for groups of 3 travelling together - £12.90 each
Senior, disabled and many other railcards - £12.90 per person any day
Two together railcards - £12.90 per person at weekends only

Monday to Friday
Melksham   Westbury   Weymouth
09:10      09:26-09:32   11:00
Saturdays
Melksham   Westbury   Weymouth
08:59      through train   10:56
09:59      10:15-10:29   12:08
Sundays
Melksham   Westbury   Weymouth
10:05      through train   11:55
13:41      through train   15:51

Monday to Friday
Weymouth   Westbury   Melksham
17:23      18:53-20:06   20:21
Saturday
Weymouth   Westbury   Melksham
16:10      17:40-18:35   18:50
16:54      18:22-18:35   18:50 EXTRA from 10th July to 13th August (and perhaps later)
17:28      19:01-20:05   20:20
18:28      19*59-20:05   20:20 EXTRA from 10th July to 13th August (and perhaps later)
* - Estimated
Sunday
Weymouth   Westbury   Melksham
16:10      17:39-18:35   18:50
17:53      19:33-20:20   20:35

Services / connections to Weymouth were already good, 7 days a week, for the summer.    Return journeys every day of the week had a long wait at Westbury - the last thing you would want with the children, but good if you wanted to pop down to the pub at the Bottom of Station Approach for a quick bar meal.  On Saturdays from 10th July this is fixed.

Two caveats:

SOME elements relaxed ... awaiting news to update this thread.

Speaking with a member of Melksham Morris Dancers last night, she is under the impression that their event at Chippenham Station is confirmed and not dependent on the complete opening up ... there may be other events too which are not easily postponed at this point.

I have removed the long-standing provision day out for 26th June from this thread - holding off for a date as and when things are totally open.    Not stopping me make limited trips out though, if I have time!

Let's see ... not ScotRail, not TfL^» (Transport for London - about) ... yes, that would be allowed.  Don't you love the consistency of rail travel!

I have confirmation that the easement still applies:

'Thames Path' easement of CDR^▸ (Off Peak Day Return [ticket type] (formerly 'Cheap Day'))▸ route validity:
Twyford - Henley-on-Thames
Maidenhead - Marlow
Slough - Windsor & E. Central
CDR tickets issued to stations on the above First Great Western Link
branch lines are valid to return from stations on the other branches,
provided that the ticket is issued to the furthest point. This is to
enable customers to walk the Thames Path. This easement is therefore
sometimes referred to as the 'Thames Path Ticket'

Not only does it still apply - I am encouraged to publicise it.  A real opportunity for a great day out.  Thank you to my contacts at GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) for following up on this and in such a positive way.

There was also the electric coach option - but not without its problems.   From Cornwall Live:

Agreed that an alternative would be to remove the peak restrictions on Rovers and change their prices to be in line with BritRail.  Changing them from 7 and 14 day tickets to 8 in 15 and 15 in 30 would make sense too.

Two cancellations today ... Melksham calls:


I was at the station to pick up a visitor from the arrival at 11:30 and return him for the 14:32

Quite busy - I counted 14 on the platform just before the 11:30 arrived, and at least 5 people got off.
Exactly the same on the platform - 14 people - prior to the train arriving, and three got off.

Good to see it getting busier again - and these are trains that are not typically the busy ones, with numbers counted at an intermediate station.

OK - problem reproduced and confirmed to be something to do with the new code.   Having reproduced it, I can now fix - taking a look overnight as I have lots on today and don't want to do it while the forum's busy.

A week later, we have had eleven useful replies in our "how stuff works" area - at http://www.passenger.chat/25075 - thank you to everyone who's posted there. And we promoted "Modern Day Slave" (MDS) to a transport scholar so that (s)he could read and respond there.   Rather sadly, no follow up from MDS and forum logs tell me that (s)he hasn't been logged in, which would be necessary to view what's been written outside the public realm.   It is, of course, possible that 'partner' is a member and transport scholar here and has read the thread and responses.  Flagging it up here in public as it would be nice to know if the inputs were useful to the enquirer, and also to thank (from an admin viewpoint) everyone who's spend their time contributing. Even if the original poster has gone away, the responses form a useful resource for the future on this important topic which we can refer people to, just as certain other of such topics do.