Even extension to Reading doesn't solve the problem that Crossrail doesn't work West of Paddington.

To the East you have 24 tph through the centre diverging 12 to Shenfiled and 12 to Abbey Wood.

To the West you have 24 tph coming out of the tunnel with only 10 tph proceeding beyond Westbourne Park. Which currently is suggested to be Heathrow 4 tph,  West Drayton 2 tph and   Maidenhead 4 tph. Which means 14 TPH^▸ (trains per hour) terminate at Westbourne Park.

Given that it is meant to be a Tube style service (turn and get train within say 5 minutes or less) if you want staions West of West Drayton you can turn up at say Bond Street and possibly have to wait 15 minutes for a train and let 5 trains trains go by. Also depending on the sequence  of the trains you may find that you cannot get on your first train because it's full of people for Ealing to West Drayton. As happens now on the semis to Reading.

The only thing an extension to Reading will bring is non disruption of the very heavy commuter flows from Twyford and Reading to stations East of Maidenhead to Ealing. It will eliminate the need for change and retain through services.

Also it will still give a direct westward conecting service to Reading from stations between Ealing and  Maidenhead without requiring a change.

Cross rail desparately needs a second Western terminus.

When you consider how overcrowded we think the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) is the most startling statistic is that there are only 5K people served by train in the 30 miles from Westbury to Bedwyn.

Like the model railway, very prototypical.

Diesels under the wires!

I'm still trying to get my pictures onto the board.

My friends did get from London to Wernigerode in a day and arrived on time at 22:29.

BMI flew us both ways in a tootpaste tube, Embair 145, 54  seats half empty both ways. Even London Airport Terminal 1 at 08:00 was very quite, a bit busier at 17:00 on way back. Hannover airport was dead both ways. My prophesy of BMI going bankrupt nearly came true as they've been taken over by Lufthansa.

When I work out how to do I will post photos and fuller account in the Lighter Side.

Lets just say the HSB love playing trains.

The trouble is my GW^▸ (Great Western) atlas gives miles and chains so it's out with the calculator.

Direction 1 London Pewsey and Bedwyn

Direction 2  & 3 are via Trowbridge

2 is Melksham to Swindon
3 is Bradford on Avon to Bath Bristol

Which makes 4 & 5 is Frome
 
Direction 6 is Salibury Dilton Marsh Halt

Judging by milages and without getting out my other 1" to the l mile atlas Swindon Melksham/Weymouth is the original route.

I would suggest 3 is most heavily used as you have the Salisburys and Weymouths.

Poor Melksham is least.

I am sure that a good mix of fast/semi/stopping servce could be devised for Plymouth and West/Torquay to all intermediate staions to Reading via Westbury. However, whilst there is shortage of DMUS and electrification is still a dream we are stuck.

A possible solution is allegedly the 100 Mark 2 coaches in store although what condition they are in and how much it would cost to restore them I don't know. Also are there sufficient suitable locos to haul the say the 16 6 coach trains you could make?

But it's probably cheaper than buying 100 DMU^▸ (Diesel Multiple Unit) new coaches. Ian Walmsley (head of Porterbrook Leasing) suggests, in a personal capacity, that the IEP^▸ (Intercity Express Program / Project.) will cost 3 million per vehicle making a 10 coach set 30 million where an electric  loco would be 4 million and a coach 1 million making 14 million for the same number of seats. Even if you make it two locos one electric and one diesel (to haul the set off the wires) that's still only around 20 million per set. So if you buy 50 IEP (electric only) then you pay 150 million, wheres  you could get 75 sets of coaches each with two locos. Also if you buy only electric IEPs you still have the problem of through trains into unwired territory.  Definitely more bangs for your bucks. Quote is from Modern Railways November.

Very interesting British Waterways are trying something similar along the Lancaster canal in Preston. Totally dead land accessible only from the water or through peoples back gardens where they are demanding rents for those that have the temerity to cultivate what would otherwise be derilict land with no use at all.

The thing that puzzles me is that Networkrail says the "market rent" is ^500 a month. How can that be if there is no access except through the garden of the house onto which the plot ajoins. Unless the land has potential railway use I cant see it has any value.

You also say that there are problems with flytipping and  access to rail land which presumably means that one end or the other is open to the railway but without seeing a map it's difficult to judge. That could be cured with a fence and a gate if necessary for rail purposes.

It's also another case of non joined up government. With Defra and the NHS telling us to eat five a day a people like Jamie and Hugh FW encouraging us to grow more veg this type of land would seem ideal to bring into cultivation. In fact if you look into the history I wouldn't be at all surprised that it wasn't bought into in the war as part of dig for victory where large areas of land by the railways was turned into allotments. Not sure whether thay are still there but until quite recently there were several plots by the Up Relief beween West Ealing and Ealing Broadway.

Perhaps Networkrail could be paid in veg boxes for their staff.

Good to hear for the 73s, their Diesel engine although only 600hp  was a similar design of English Electric unit as the Thumpers.

However, although not fast on diesel I've seen them pull the Sussex Scot from Clapham to Reading on diesel and push a Cross Country complete with 47 on the front from Basingstoke to Reading.

But to get back tio the thread. FGW^▸ (First Great Western) bid for the franchise, so tough, it was their decision to bid so they have to live with it. I thought that's what capitalism was all about, you take a risk you succeed or fail.

I think this is very important question and goes to the very heart of providing a rail services.

Namely what pattern of services do you provide to give direct trains to and from as many stations as possible.

East of Westbury you have Pewsey, Bedwyn, Hungerford, Kintbury and Newbury.

Now from the West, FGW^▸ (First Great Western) can fill  a lot of trains from Taunton to London with only a stop at Reading. So FGW have no incentive to stop them a Newbury only for them to be crammed with Reading/London passengers. They could be set down only at Newbury but I doubt there would be enough passengers per train to justify the stop. Also that would just make the TMs^‡(resolve) job impossible sorting out the Newbury people who shouldn't have got on the train.

So you are looking at some kind of Taunton - Reading stopper, but there are too many stations to serve to give a reasonable running time from say Castle Cary to Reading/London. So perhaps what you have to do is run a semi fast from Taunton all staions to Westbury then Newbury Reading/London.

So that still leaves Pewsbury to Kintbury out in the cold. So perhaps the Bedwyn service could be extended to Westbury. However that adds another 112 miles per return journey (say at least 2 hours per train)  just to serve Pewsey and give people from the West a service to intermediate stations with a change at Westbury.

One possible way of doing it would be have have an hourly stopper Newbury to  Taunton with the same overall running times but with different patterns of stops odd and even hours. I'll leave it to cleverer people than I, to work out if you could serve all possible combinations every 2 hours.
 
So perhaps the current service is not so bad, at least there are now through trains from Bedwyn to Pewsey.

I think it's about time we got tough on this.

Automatic ban for the driver and a minimum of ^250,000 compensation to Networkrail, more if it's a mainline.

As I've posted elsewhere the Departemnt for Roads should visit Magdeburg.

They have two ways of preventing this happening on the long viaduct South of the town.

The best is 600 volt tram lines and on non tram routes a sturdy RSJ^▸ (Rolled Steel Joist, which can also be called ) across the road on RSJ legs designed to take the top off the lorry before it gets anywhere near the bridge.   

I like the tram idea you get deterence with excellent public transport.

The one thing that worries me about the scheme is that it could suffer from the Leeds Hauptbahnhof syndrome of the late 50s for those of us that remember such things.

For those of you that aren't familiar with the scheme, it was to close Leeds Central which was a terminal station and concentrate all traffic in the Joint Staion on the through line to York. The main work was putting in links around Whitehall Jn area to allow GN services from Wakefield and Bradford access to Leeds Joint.

In some ways it was the reverse of Reading instead of a flyover, the bridge into Central  over the lines into the Joint staion was removed and lines to Central  dropped down to link with lines into the Joint.

It suffered from rising costs and the start stop syndrome. So cost a lot more and took far too long. However, would there have been the growth of rail traffic through Leeds if there were still stations in the city? It probably prevented the closure of the Leeds suburban services to Harrogate, Ikely, and Bradford (both ways) under Beeching.

However, it also probably prevented other schemes where such rationalisations could have been carried out from being considered because of the uncertainty of whether they would take too long and cost too much.

Networkail has to get Reading right, keep up to the timescales or even decrease them and keep a lid on costs or even lower them.

They are going to need some very tough contracts which expect great things from the contractors and very astute contract managers to enforce them. It mustn't become a gravy train for the contractors like the WCML^▸ (West Coast Main Line).

I would say yes dets and marker boards are still essential. If you rely on the signalling system then you are relying on a lever collar, cover over the button or locking the signal via the software and the signalman's memory alone. Even if the track circuits are shorted or disconnected to keep the signal at red then there comes a time at the end of the possession that they have to be restored to working order which frees up the signal.  Marker boards and dets are basically a back up for the signalman's memory, so if for some reason (mistake) a train does enter the possession the driver and the track workers are alterted.

Presumably the PICOP^▸ (Person In Charge Of Possession) uses a mobile to lift the possession after removing and safely stowing the boards and dets so perhaps more emphasis on doing this from a safe place rather than from the site which might involve a walk along or across the lines to get to safety.

Dets are still one of the most effective safety measures to stop trains in an emergency.

I believe one of the reasons why returns in the South East were made Day returns only was that people were buying Period returns and because it was the start of demanning stations they  were using the return half for multiple journies during its validity or until it was checked and clipped. You could also use the outward half for three days if it wasn't collected.

Thanks TerminalJunkie I've just realised part of my confusion is thet I keep thinking Off Peak  are day tickets similar to the ones we issued to London on the Southern in the 60s and not replacement Savers.

I assumme the anytime day single ticket is valid on Virgin as well as Arriva. In which case I don't see the point of giving the other fares as I hadn't asked for a return journey.

I think BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)) dropped them because they caused so much trouble. You had to ask every passenger who asked for a day return. "When are you coming back?" and when you issued the pink ticket say "You can't come back between 4.30 and 6.30", but even so they still turned up in droves at Victoria at 5.00 and were very miffed when told they had to wait to 6.30. "The booking clerk didn't tell me" was the cry.

They were some of the first tickets isued from machines, the ones with six rolls of tickets and you pressed the lever down and the ticket isssued which you tore off. Each station usually choose its six most isued tickets. Forgotten what the machines were called.

I remember  the day return from East Croydon to London in 1964 was 5/6 so you had a pile of 2 bobs and half crowns on the counter so when they gave you a 10/- note you gave them one of each as change. You could get a fair old rhythm going,  someone asking  for a ticket to Oxted which you had to the rack for really interupted the flow.

I see FCC^▸ (First Capital Connect) has bought them back for Northbound Thameslink although I believe TFL^▸ (Transport for London) has banned them for Zonal stations.

Interesting I didn't think ATP was installed at Oxford.