I don't agree, it is obviously too much, but when you consider fare income was £8.6bn it is about 1% of that income.

What I would be interested to know is do Toc's still receive money for delays from Network rail (and others) and how does that work with their fixed fee contracts?

Under franchising a lot of the toc profit (this was true for GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway)) was made up of delay payments from Network Rail as the amount paid to the customer for delays was always much less than that paid from NR^» (Network Rail - home page) to the toc. Of course not all compensation comes from NR as the toc will also be responsible for delays and therefore compensation.

If you look at the map in the pictures you will see that Varamis Rail have highlighted the London - Bristol route.
Would be interested to know whether this is just a suggestion or whether they have any customers lined up.

Well looks like a GWR IET went to Euston today.
https://x.com/TerrierMcD/status/1769691037558059255?t=CVVTnxxoYsbWZxbGrHSTwQ&s=03

There are pictures of a GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) IET^▸ (Intercity Express Train) at Waterloo station today as part of a test run for the Old Oak Common HS2^▸ (The next High Speed line(s)) closures, apparently one is also due to visit Euston this week.

https://x.com/SWTrainspotter/status/1769659039867081051?t=1dM3g_rktSn6YAt75TnqeA&s=03

The 1Z46 special from Kidderminster to Canterbury was 7 minutes late leaving Shrub Hill at 0609 but 138 minutes late leaving Norton Junc at 0825 https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:U91961/2024-03-13/detailed

Don't know whether 1Z46 was the cause or was just badly impacted by the incident, but appeared to be okay when I saw at Didcot Parkway.

Apparently the section to Bedford mentioned in yesterday's budget https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-68491452

I am not convinced that £240m is enough to actually do all the required work, and would like to see more detail about the funding, but it does say that trains will be running from Oxford to Bedford by 2030

How many crew can you get in a crew storage area ? what type of crew are stored there? how long can they be stored for? and has this been agreed with the Unions?

According to the usually reliable Oxford Clarion on twitter https://x.com/OxfordClarion/status/1742528741627007417?s=20 GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) have asked permission to start an Oxford to Bristol sevice from Spetember 14th 2024.
Service will start as 2 trains a day on a Saturday calling at Radley, Culham, Appleford, Didcot, Swindon, Chippenham and Bath.
Operated by Class 802 trains.

That may technically be true, but isn't the fragmentation of the railways, as you describe, a major problem and it gives to many people an excuse to pass the buck so that no-one takes responsibility and nothing changes.

I would hope that employees of NR^» (Network Rail - home page), GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway), tfl, etc. worked together to ensure that those passengers on stranded trains were communicated with and evacuated as soon as possible.

Until the fragmentation of the railways is resolved then things will not improve for passengers and costs will continue to rise.

No 1 is Euston and is No 4 some sort of battery electric tram?

Or just reinstate the Didcot to Oxford shuttle service to run every half an hour.

Of  course if they hadn't cancelled the half-complete (maybe more) Didcot-Oxford electrification then none of this would have been happening.

Given the recent level of reliability of the Worcester line services its good that GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) haven't decided, from the December timetable change, to halve the number of services on the Didcot to Oxford shuttle and replace them by stopping the Worcester services at Didcot parkway instead.

Oh wait......

Given that when fares go up the standard line 'about paying for investments in services' is trotted out maybe we will see a reduction in fares to match the reduction in services.

According to the Evening Stanard it has been saved.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/one-day-travelcard-saved-transport-for-london-tfl-trains-fares-b1115574.html

It will apparently rise in price (I am not surprised), if the rise is 'small' then this has to be good news and good news about the railways is in short supply at the moment.

I don't think it is as simple as that as most projects have a change of requirements, but certainly there needs to be a major rethink about how we develop these big infrastructure projects in this country as they take too long and cost too much.

As an example I was reading an article yesterday about the bills required to support the building of HS2^▸ (The next High Speed line(s)) https://www.hansardsociety.org.uk/blog/hs2-fiasco-what-does-it-mean-for-parliament

But some of the details from that are staggering and this is a flavour "The Bill covering the first phase of the HS2 route from London to the West Midlands alone was 440 pages long. It was accompanied by 11 volumes of drawings setting out hundreds of plans and sections, and a 2,800-page book of reference, running to a seven volumes, which set out a description of every parcel of land identified on the plans plus information about their owners"
and the environmental statement was 46,000 pages long and weighed 1 tonne

Imagine how much that cost to write, review and defend in parliament and the courts.

And parliament spent 1300 hours to approve HS2, and all could be stopped by one man without the need to discuss with anyone else, is that democratic?

Surely should be Southampton-on-Itchen