I'm sure "Worcester Area Re-signalling" was in CP5^▸ (Control Period 5 - the five year period between 2014 and 2019) a while ago, now it's vaguely in CP6^▸ (Control Period 6 - The five year period between 2019 and 2024), give it a couple more years and it will be in CP7 and so on...

Hereford to London via the Cotswold Line, anytime single ^41.50, 150 miles (or thereabouts) thats 28p per mile. And, since it takes three and a quater hours it's only 22p a minute. Bargain.

I've always thought that the problem with Worcester is that it's at the end (more or less) of four separate routes (Snow Hill, New Street, Cotswolds & Bristol) so it's not at the top of anyone's list. The only bodies that seem to really care (City Council, CLPG^» (Cotswold Line Promotion Group - about) etc) sadly lack any real power.
Also, of the five lines into and out of Worcester (the above plus Hereford) only one of them is double track all the way to the next big place. So, it's a tricky problem, but nobody really cares. Recipe for success if ever there was one.

It would take more than a canopy to protect me from all the "unpleasant experiences" I've suffered on a station platform over the years!

Ah, I see, so they plan in extra capacity to cover for unexpected events. Do things ever go so badly wrong that they have to chuck it all out and start from scratch?

So in essence, in order to change a single service, all conflicting services also have to be changed; thus, it's impossible to change one service without re-writing the entire UK^▸ (United Kingdom) timetable!
This reminds me of something I once read (on Wikipedia or some similarly reputable source) that the scrapyard just to the west of Birmingham Snow Hill has had a once weekly service to South Wales since the 19th century. Is there any real evidence for services that have remained unchanged for such a long time?

A great many topics on this forum concern the impacts of timetable changes. For example:
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=11481.0

This got me wondering how one goes about changing the timetable, and I rapidly came to the conclusion that it is a very hard problem. Is this indeed the case or am I just a simpleton? To be fair, being as I am a resident of Worcester I initially looked at this city. I wonder if Worcester is especially nightmarish and other, more self contained areas might be easier to analyse?

Despite not being a granny, I shall somehow miss loitering on (the old) platform 4 trying to guess which of my fellow loiterers were waiting for the same train as me.

Thanks for fascinating insight into hybrid vehicles!

WCML^▸ (West Coast Main Line) overloaded. Upgrading is not good value for money, so build new. If building new, might as well push the boat out.
The French have one (several).

I was two of those!

I do agree that Great Malvern to Brighton is a service that few would miss. I often travel from Worcester to Fareham (both stops on this route). I have never used this direct service, it just never seems to be the best option. I now tend to drive to Cheltenham to pick up a Cross Country fast to Bristol. The Worcester to Cheltenham service just isn't reliable or frequent enough.

I would have thought a significant disadvantage of bi-modes vs pure electric would be the cost of maintaining them. This would be made worse by the fact that the engines would be shut down most of the time so would spend a disproportionate amount of time warming up.

Lets hope there isn't a Eurostar style check-in process or it will be quicker to use the WCML^▸ (West Coast Main Line).

I'm sure I saw a proposal somewhere to divert all of the WCML^▸ (West Coast Main Line) slow services into Crossrail tunnels and thus free up the slow lines from Willesden Junction for use by HS2^▸ (The next High Speed line(s)) into Euston. Thus in a stroke finding something useful to do with the Crossrail 16 TPH^▸ (trains per hour) terminating at Paddington and saving ^4Bn from the HS2 price tag.
There's probably a catch...