Well I have the email, and the offer is for Advance Singles for travel between Oxford and Paddington between 11th Jan and 2nd March from ^6.
Given that I live in Didcot and don't fancy travelling to Oxford to get a cheap ticket it isn't of much use.
Maybe  I was sent the email because I live in an OX postcode 
Although I don't really understand why you can't purchase advance tickets, towards London, from Didcot, given that I believe that you can purchase them on all the trains that go through Didcot towards London e.g. Cheltenham, Bristol, Oxford, Worcester etc.

A picture of the six options can be found here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-35039433
 

Moving on the discussion from the Goring gap, Network Rail (NR^» (Network Rail - home page)) have sent out a few twitter messages that the first wires for the GW^▸ (Great Western) electrification were installed last night.
NR also said they did 1000m in 35 minutes, but unfortunately don't say where this is or how much was done.

http://twitter.com/networkrailgwrm/status/665110025325682688/photo/1
http://twitter.com/networkrailgwrm/status/665109748438728704/photo/1


 

Wouldn't it be cheaper (and hopefully easier) just to move the Chilterns AONB^▸ (Areas Of Natural Beauty) boundary so that the railway is no longer within the boundary of the AONB, looking at the map it looks like it only needs to be moved a few 100 metres 

  I dont want to be pedantic but isn't a class 43 power car?
naming a class 143 after a WW1 veteran would be a bit of an insult

Based on the number of passenger journeys  I would be of the opinion that bus deregulation has been a total failure.
To do this compare the number of journeys made in London, which is not deregulated, and the rest of Great Britain which is deregulated:

          London Outside London
1985      1.152     3.650
2014      2.364     2.284     
All million passenger journeys (from https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/bus01-local-bus-passenger-journeys)
And this is with an increase in population from 56 to 64 million over the same period.

The other point I would make is it is also expensive for the taxpayer as the bus companies take all the profit. This means that there is no cross-subsidy between profit making and loss making services a gap that has to be filled by the taxpayer or closure of services.

At Didcot Parkway they have started to cut back the platform canopies and I assume this is for clearance for the electric wires. As far as I can tell they have only done platform 4; although platform 1 doesn't have any canopies to cut back.

According to Modern Railways the Vivarail D78 Class 230 trains are going to be trailed on the Plymouth to Gunnislake branch.
Apparently GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) are quite keen but Dft are not.

As noted previously:
 
St James Park certainly wasn't the first as Didcot parkway was painted green a few weeks ago.

As well as the rebranding of trains FGW^▸ (First Great Western) have also started rebranding stations.
A lot of Didcot Parkway station has been repainted in recent weeks into a dark green, although there are still some pieces of station furniture in FGW pink/purple.

I believe that there is also a rail crossing at Porthmadog where the Welsh Highland crosses the Cambrian Coast line, although of course there are no HST's just Garratts and class 158's.

Because it is a meaningless statement, instead of compulsory redundancies people will just be 'volunteered'.
I worked for a bank, many years ago, that was heavily unionised that had the same agreement and lots of people were still made redundant. Of course there will be handful who object but they will be in the minority and everybody else will just take the cash and run.
Also it is very unlikely that Network Rail will go bankrupt so quite easy for NR^» (Network Rail - home page) to guarantee this. 

If you think this is true then it will go-ahead as
a) It will give the Govt an excuse/reason (take your pick) to introduce the new strike laws promised in their manifesto
b) the amount offered to NR staff, assuming RPI^▸ (Revenue Protection Inspector (or Retail Price Index, depending on the context)) is greater than 1%, is more than has been offered to other Public Sector employees and they wouldn't want that. (Note RPI is currently 0.9%).
c) The ever increasing NR debt is going to have to be addressed and higher pay awards are only going to add to that, so the Govt will want to try and keep that in check using pay awards as has happened with the rest of the Public Sector.

thanks for the responses and what is EAS? and I may also take a half term holiday that week given that I commute from Didcot to Oxford each day

Just had a tweet that suggested there would be no trains through Oxford for 9 days in February 2016.
Anyone know anything more?