Yes, I was impressed to see a nine-carriage IET^▸ (Intercity Express Train) at Worcester Foregate Street the other day...

...on a Bristol Temple Meads service which until recently would have been two or three carriages. Meanwhile our Cotswolds service had five which would have been rather cosy after Oxford.

Not as good as this Paddington-Hereford, though, which RTT^» (Real Time Trains - website) swears has 18 carriages.

Charlbury to Finstock is £1.66 per mile (£2.70 for 1m50ch). To add insult to injury you can only do it once a day…

Plus a further 60% off child fares with the Network Railcard or Family & Friends Railcard (and the season ticket Gold Card, I think?).

Taxis were being laid on at Oxford - not sure whether they then picked up further passengers from Charlbury.

We have one of these, though from traindepartures.com (which is rather cheaper) not ukdepartureboards.co.uk - I bought it as a present for Mrs F who commutes into Oxford every day.

It's a fun little thing in itself, and genuinely useful in that I'll often glance at it when walking through the house and get a heads-up of any disruption. My main issue with it is that you can either set it to show all departures from a station (e.g. Charlbury), or all departures that subsequently call at another given station (e.g. Charlbury to Oxford), but what I'd really like is for that to flip during the day - so that in the morning it shows Charlbury to Oxford, and in the afternoon it shows Oxford to Charlbury. In theory I could probably code something to reset it every 12 hours but that would require a fresh supply of Round Tuits.

According to the GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) website: "The emergency services had reported a member of public on the wrong side of a bridge in the Ealing Broadway area."

I would love to know how you get on the wrong side of a bridge. Tell it "your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries"?

It's a really interesting project. The Heart of Wales Line is not a massive area for cycling tourism - there's some MTB/bikepacking usage, and one fairly obscure National Cycle Network route (the Radnor Ring, NCN 825). So it really only makes sense in a growing-the-market type of way. But if they can pull that off then it'll make the line more viable in itself.

Rutland is a lovely choice and often overlooked. I grew up there, but hadn't been back for about 20 years before we visited again last autumn. Since my childhood Oakham has sprouted a bypass, which has made the town centre much more pleasant, and it now has a better range of independent shops (and pubs!) than I remember.

And if you want a bit of rail interest you can take the once-daily (in each direction) train from St Pancras via Harringworth/Welland Viaduct... another change from 20 years ago, when it was used only by freight trains and the occasional weekend diversion.

Yes, I know - though it would probably have worked the Paddington barriers after 10am and Cotswold guards are a tolerant lot...

0952 from Paddington left 25 minutes late as a result of waiting for an incoming driver.

I wouldn't mind, but I'd just paid an extra £19 to excess my ticket up to allow a pre-10am departure (I'd originally bought it with a Network Card)... 

GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) turned back the 0552 from Paddington at Moreton, and sent it back down the line roughly in the place of the Halts train - a good bit of work. The Cotswold Line really has been torrid over the past few months though.

Some apps do indeed alert you to a cancellation of (or other change to) the service you're booked onto, whatever the ticket type.

It does indeed - I used it on Saturday! But it can't get to Charlbury station, because there's a weight limit on the river bridge (though the occasional RRB^▸ (Rail Replacement Bus) does chance it), and it's a 700m walk from the nearest bus stop. The 801 calls at the Moreton station bus stops.

Chippy is getting a bus-rail connection again - but this time via Moreton-in-Marsh, not Kingham.

It was reported at an Oxfordshire "Active Travel Round Table" yesterday that Pulhams would be running a new Chippy–Moreton service, and I see it's now on the Oxford Clarion Twitter account:

https://twitter.com/OxfordClarion/status/1764954623243067794

15.52 Paddington–Great Malvern cancelled at Didcot today due to a fault on the train.

That will mean seven coaches worth of people trying to squeeze onto the halts service, which is already showing as "Full and Standing" before even leaving Oxford.