Yes you could do that but you still have to get it North of Rugby and South of Aylesbury.

The route from Rugby to Birmingham is heavily congested. I am not sure how much capacity there is on the Trent Valley route either. 

As for capacity south of Aylesbury...


They did indeed do improvements.  To do that they had the advantage of a much less busy system.  I am sure the users of FGW^▸ (First Great Western) Coffepot would understand the need to close Wooton Basset to Filton for an 18 month (?) blockade to sort the problems out like they did in the mid 70's. 

You could also do that to sections of the WCML to do widening.  What was that about a 365/24 railway?

If they want us to book more by machine they are going to have to make the machines more intelligent so that they can give the same advice the booking office is required to give as part of their franchise.

presumably he just searched the database of posts for that time. Simple.

When they got to build Swindon the GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) were running short of money. The contractor offered to build the station for free if he had the catering concession and made all trains stop for 10 minutes at Swindon.

This situation lasted until the 1890's when the GWR decided they needed to loose their reputation for being slow (the fast route to London then was to take the Midland and South Western Junction Railway (MSWJR) train from Swindon Old Town to Andover and take a London and South Western Railway (LSWR^▸ (London South Western Railway)) train to Waterloo).  The GWR therefore had to buy out their contractor.

Not necessarily. If another HST is being stabled at Cheltenham rather than coming back to Old Oak Common depot then that will not be maintained. The HSTs still all need to be maintained or they will become more unreliable.

Lots of the tracklaying machines on the line behind B&Q in Swindon yesterday.

Platforms 2 & 3 had what appeared to be timber supports holding up the platform edges. It appears to me that platforms 1 & 2 appear to have been resurfaced now. Can anyone confirm this and has this timber now been removed from the platform edge?

Thanks II I had not appreciated that.  Nevertheless without the additional benefits of better stock utilisation that comes from electrifying an isolated short branch in an otherwise electrified area, it will be more difficult to build a case for a line with only an hourly service.  Initially it was not considered that it would be economic to electrify to Swansea with only an hourly service. 

I do not believe that Barrow has had through trains in recent years.  The route from Carnforth to Barrow and Carlise is much more self contained.  The case for electrification is therefore more difficult to make.

We appreciate it is a genuine concern that you have. We are just trying to reassure you that it was safe. Inconvenient, yes! Annoying, yes! But perfectly safe.

What we are saying is over 150 years of railway signal development has tried to learn from each accident to make systems safer and safer as time has gone on.

Unlike a car a train can only make a turning if the signaller sets the points and the points can only be moved if the signals are already set so that there cannot be another train coming along the line.  In the days when there were levers it would be physically impossible to move the lever because an interlocking bar would be in the way.  If you want to see how this works a visit to the STEAM museum in Swindon is recommended. You can then even try for yourself!

Nowadays it is done with electronics which fail safe by stopping everything if they go wrong. Hence the chaos when things do go wrong. But it is safe chaos!

The most recent weakness fixed was signals passed at danger using the Train protection and Warning System as Graham has pointed out. This means that if the driver, for any reason passes a signal at danger the train will stop automatically.

Ahh that makes sense now.

The driver did not have to change ends as the train reverses at Redhill. So it was due to turn right to go to Reigate but the points and signals were set for it to go straight on.

Shouldn't the driver have noticed a signal with some sort of indicator saying which way the route was set before he/she got there? In which case shouldn't he/she have been able to stop and advise the signaller of the error?

Whatever way the route was set so there was no risk of an accident.

I thought it was more a matter that they did not get an order to tell them to stop.

I realise it is no fun but if you are stood next to an item of mechanical plant that is also making a lot of noise then the horn needs to be louder I am afraid. The construction industry has one of the worst records for health and safety of any industry and the railway maintenance part of that has not had a good record. I have never had to do it but I know one man who had to go and see a colleague's family to tell them their husband/father would not be coming home. I did not know him before, but he was always most particular about health and safety after then.

There is a solution to you sounding horns in the middle of the night though.  That is to shut the railway during the day to do the work at a more sociable hour.  It would be safer to do it in daylight as well.

I am sure that their bid had a commitment to investigate the reopening the line from Princess Risborough through to Cowley and Oxford.  When they found this to be too costly they proposed the Bicester route instead. So a route to Oxford was in a list of projects for consideration, just not via Bicester.

Of course there is no perfect operator, there are not enough trains an not enough track capacity, particularly as you get closer to London. That leads operators into difficult decisions balancing slower stopping services and faster long distance on the same tracks.  Ideally we would separate them with an extra set of tracks for say the fast trains.