Yes, but the railway was shut for a while because of flooding:

http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/steam-railway-shut-for-rest-of-the-day-1-5250901

Some interesting inputs and thoughts there.  I too wouldn't be shocked to see us turn a corner with the speed (and sophistication, pehaps) of trains.  In the airline industry, supersonic planes are no longer flying in scheduled passenger service, and perhaps we'll end up with a 90 m.p.h. top speed electric train network (however the electricity is generated, in most cases it's going to be better to feed it through wires than carry your own generators).  Longer trains, yes - for that's how you get good throughput, but also signalling systems which allow inter-train distance to be less than the current (stopping distance + 1 signal section?).

Clock face services - almost undoubtedly (but will time have gone metric, with 10 hours in the day, and 100 minutes in the hour?).  Ticketing and information services much improved - the current uneasy mixture of what's still an early-use technology (electronics) on top of an archaic fare structure will - surely - be swept away.

Some redoubling, perhaps some extra loops, but the signalling and train length stuff above, and a consistent train speed, will allow far more seats to pass through each track than at present.  Hopefully 4 track now won't have to wait until 2063 to get the extra tracks.

People will still take time to load / unload.  So we may well see station widening, where alternate trains use alternate platforms; there are elements of that at Clapham Junction, and I can see stations like Chippenham and Westbury both going up to 4 platforms.   Hopefully 2 islands, with "regional" arriving (from Sailsbury and Bristol alternately), express pulling in across the platform for a 2 way swap of passengers, and then the two proceeding - to Norwich via the East / West link for the regional train, and London (central station, via Crossrail?) for the express.

I'm not going to predict / advocate huge re-openings (but some) ... nor closures, although I do question the reversal and intermediate station near the junction on the Looe branch.

He would probably be chuffed to see so many trains and so fast.  Looking at London to Bristol, in 1895 there were around 12 trains - from 135 minutes (for a nonstop service that went on to Cornwall). In 1949 there were 14 trains ranging from around 135 minutes for the journey upwards. There are now 33, many of them taking 100 minutes. By 2020, there should be nearly 60 trains, and there's an estimated journey time of 80 minutes.

Victorian Railways had their fair share of accidents, crises and the like - there are tales of station lockouts when too many people showed up for the trains the first time that the Derby was run after the opening of a station at Epsom, for example, so I suspect that IKB wouldn't have let a few problems like the ones we've had in the last week stop his quest.  But I do suspect he would have asked "how can we prevent this problem next time"?  And - yes - some of the early locos were distinctly naff;  that's what comes from being at the (b)leeding edge of technology.

Both the 08:30 (Swansea) and the 09:03 (Bristol) cancelled from Paddington due to "a member of train crew being unavailable".  The 09:03 to Cardiff may be rather busy.   The Swansea train is starting from Swindon (which ain't much use for Londoners who postponed their Christmas escape until today.

Is it shortage of crews, or large amounts of extra work over the past few days working trains up to and around line incidents?

Interesting call for me as "duty moderator".   I wasn't suggesting that anyone had pryed at all - just pointing out that was somewhere we shouldn't go.

Having made plans, there is a natural desire to stick to them rather than change a whole stack of other plans built on th etimings given, perhaps allowing an hour or two for delays.  And that may - as you suggest, John R, have emotional elements.  Or it may not.  

I abandoned the train during the chaos into and out of Paddington last week; in one direction, it really didn't matter whether I was on time or not, but in the other direction being an hour late would have resulted in me breaking my contract, and with course delegates from all over the world so *my* push back would have resulted in up to a dozen other pushbacks.  It was an unusually tight particular week. You may say "catch an earlier train" - err - the earlier train is 10 hours earlier, and I also need my sleep to fulfill my contract.  Each person / situation differs.

However and whether the young lady travelled, I hope all have a good Christmas.   Thank you to those in the industry who have to be out to help those who require to travel even in extreme weather (or in extreme equipment failure times).  Believe you me, even many of us with grumpy faces on that train that takes 80 minutes to Reading have a great sympathy.

Edit to correct typo

Hey, folks ... there are times when we have to travel on a particular day / to be somewhere at a particular time.   We don't know the particulars of why Miss McBrains had to travel today, and we shouldn't approach the limit of what's acceptable in terms of getting personal on the forum when we don't know, nor should we pry by asking.  The journey to Cheltenham may be for Christmas with family ... or it could be for a hospital admission tomorrow. And I hope the critics would be comfortable with their criticism if that were the case!

But if each event is just once in every "n" years and there are lots of elements, they add together as the reciprocal of the sum of the reciprocals, don't they?  (assuming the failures are independent)

With 100 pieces of equipment / items that can fail along the length of a railway, and with each have a 1 event in 15 year average failure rate, I calculate that there's going to be a failure every 1.8 months.   But change two of those items into things that happen more often - let's say an annual flood at Cowley Bridge and the sea wall giving problems twice a year, and your average failure rate becomes a failure every 1.25 months.   Now add in "person hit by train" somewhere outside London, 6 times a year, and you're going to see a failure to run the normal service every 0.75 of a month.

Investing lots of money into making your 98 items fail just once every 50 years rather than every 15 years, and the 0.75 becomes 1.09;  not a brilliant return for an awful lot of money.

The real gains come in sorting things out quickly, mittigating, and reducing the common occurrences.  You can also add in some more preventative maintenance.  And I'm going to speculate that if a piece of equipment's only going to fail once in 50 years, the people who come to fix it will be so out of practise it will take longer anyway ...

Thanks for that reminder about BNM's prize quiz - http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=11647 - and it really is worthwhile putting in an answer, even if you're only certain on one or two and have had to guess many of the others 

I'm a very bad smpeller as member here know very well ... and I tend not to notice the most horrifabulous corruptions as long as the sense is there.  What really "gets my goat" is being asked to spell the name of the station I'm at when I press the button on the help point to ask a question.   You get a feeling that (a) caller ID should tell the person you're speaking to where you are calling from and (b) the person you're speaking to really should know the stations that he / she is providing customer service for well enough to recognise their names.

"M-E-L-K-S-H-A-M (and I don't suppose you've been there by train yourself to help you provide customer suppot from first hand experience!  ) "

From Journey Check:


Today's 22nd December ... are they really suggesting it will be a week before services are back to normal, or is that a typo?

FGW^▸ (First Great Western)'s disruption page says

Bridgnorth ...

http://www.wellsteedphotography.co.uk/portfolio/railways/attachment/3/

Good luck with your journey, Bob ... and keep us posted with the situation on the ground.  Saturday is usually the quietest day on the forum, but I expect we'll be busier that usual today - much of it being guests searching for updates.

Liskeard to Looe

Due to flooding, Train Services on this route are suspended for the remainder of today and are likely to remain suspended until December 27th at the earliest. Rail Replacement Coaches are in operation on this route.

Err - you're certainly NOT quoting me there, Western Enterprise. Where is Hayes?    And I have deleted the name of the operational staff member involved.

Perhaps the quoted item (from CJB666) assumes the worst of Mr Xxxxx without full backup;  You'll find me appearing unconcerned at times of extreme pressure when at work - doesn't mean I'm not working my darndest.   And you'll find me chatting there with my friends / colleagues - often (in these circumstances) working out the best way to handle the circumstances to the maximum benefit of our customers.

Ongoing updates from member CJB666 on "London to Reading" - at http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=11737.msg122412#msg122412 .   I have chosen not to merge the threads, as the flurry of posts on that other thread could drown discussions and ongoing data on this one.

This thread .. to a very great extent ... risks duplicating the thread that's running on the same subject at

http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=11731

so I'm going to encourage general responses on the other thread - follow ups VERY welcome there.   I'll also remind people to be careful of their language - this is a public forum that your daughter may be reading 

This thread remains open specifically for replies to the original poster - if we stray too far here, then I'll relock the topic and force follow ups elsewhere!!