Whatever happened to the subway?  I presume it was taken out of use when the overbridge was built.  Was it filled in, turned into cable access, or something else?

Taking a slightly different angle - station security.

When I visited a control room, it was sometimes necessary to identify an individual possibly for some misdemeanour such as fare bilking or anti social behaviour.  With everyone covering their faces, is this going to lead to cases of mistaken identity and the potential negative fall out on social media etc.  "I was stopped by an officious BT policeman when I was doing nothing wrong etc..."

Hiding behind "regulations" is a well established cop-out.  It should not be beyond the whit of man to develop a comfortable seat which resists fire.

Things we may not see again on local and Inter-City services - comfortable seats.  Are what we have now an improvement?  Really?  The DFT^▸ (Department for Transport) wonk who specified them should be forced to sit in them until retirement (if they haven't already gone)   

Obviously no mistake was made, and it will be too expensive to change them.

You don't know the railway industry that well do you!   

But the gravy train still runs to time..

Possibly, but the railway is primarily run for the avoidance or minimisation of penalties, rather than for the comfort of passengers.

Offer to pay half, whilst claiming that the fare was short formed. 

And it's not even 1st April!

Probably a victim of “Value Engineering” - where the value is engineered out in order to save money in the construction phase.  Only having to spend twice the difference in maintenance - but that’s someone else’s budget.

Peculiar decisions regarding Temple Meads and Oxford, but diesel IEP^▸ (Intercity Express Program / Project.)'s will no doubt lessen the blow until station refurb funding becomes available..

I believe that the mainline OLE design (Series 1) is designed for trains running at 140 mph with two pantographs up.  One of the consequences is that the contact wire has to be thicker and tensioned to a higher force.  These criteria wouldn't apply on the Welsh Valley lines, and so I believe the intention is to use a design called Series 2 which would be for lines where the maximum speed would be 100 mph.  Therefore the requirement for the "masculine" design of masts and booms could be relaxed somewhat.  Absolute wire height and associated bridge clearances would still need to be addressed as these are dictated by the requirements of the new European Technical Standards for Interoperability.

Will this also apply to pushchairs and people with large 4 wheel suitcases in the peak too?

Yes certainly.  However, I do wonder if us "armchair experts" are looking nostalgically back through rose tinted glasses.  I don't know if any of the senior forum members were actually around before the last war, when the Great Western Railway was the Great Western Railway; and not the wartime British Railways or the post war Western Region of a nationalised British Railways.

Without researching the actual figures, I would presume the fares were lower as a percentage of average take home pay. Certainly the network was bigger and went to more stations, but did all the trains run exactly to time all the time, and did every passenger always get a seat?  Did every engineering possession complete on time and did signals never fail?  Brunswick green, copper and brass locomotives look fine when polished and charging through the countryside at speed.  However a station full of them makes it a pretty toxic place to be for anyone working there long term.

I suspect that every time has its own problems, and these are just ours.  In a few years we'll be griping about something else.

Seems to be that way for the minute.  Style over substance?  Make it look different on the outside, and on the inside nothing has changed.  Symptomatic of the FGW^▸ (First Great Western) rebrand perhaps?  (Oh the cynicism of one so young!)