I would seriously question the thought processes of anybody who considered it appropriate to try and use public transport under such circumstances.

'...When required, passengers with reduced mobility using a mobility scooter or wheelchair have priority to use the designated on-train wheelchair spaces over all other passengers regardless of whether others have reserved the place.'

When GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) state 'have reserved', above, do they actually mean 'are already using'? GWR are surely not stupid enough to allow reservation of the 'companion' seat(s), and thus by implication the wheelchair space, by anyone other than a disabled traveller?

NB. Possible pedantry alert. 

Also how would that work on a single track/platform site where trains run in opposite directions. It is entirely possible I am missing something obvious here!

An oversimplification of the situation? In this neck of the woods - Exeter - the land/sea temperature differential is producing some quite powerful onshore winds in an area where the MetOffice forecast tells us to expect essentially a flat calm.

You just have to make sure the turbines are in the right place!

Any opportunity to move Chris Grayling away from the DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) should surely be grasped with both hands?

How about Exeter to Great Yarmouth - with a change at Victoria Coach Station - due to an NUR national rail strike around 1980.

I dislike human actions/activities that unnecessarily impact upon or inconvenience the wider population (regardless of legality). Graffiti / 'tagging' is definitely on my list. I do not consider graffiti of any type as art, but rather vandalism or criminal damage, and take the view that, in more recent times at least, Warhol's '15 minutes of fame' chestnut is the primary motivation. On that basis I would support a policy of graffiti eradication by:
a) recording each new graffito so that tags and other patterns can be matched en bloc to individual perpetrators.
b) the subsequent 'immediate' (i.e. ASAP, certainly within 24 hours) removal of each graffito on the basis that many of those involved would very rapidly get bored with this nonsense if nobody ever got to see their 'work'.
c) a significant increase in covert police monitoring, largely overnight due to the cowardly nature of these activities , of graffiti blackspots so as to increase arrest rates
d) following any conviction the guilty party to be fined a substantial amount, say £100 per each graffito for which they were provably responsible, and subjected to an appropriate period of monitored curfew.
e) guilty parties to be filmed, and fully identified at the start of the process, cleaning up existing graffiti (under supervision, obviously) with the footage being posted on social media - I am a firm believer in the efficacy of 'naming & shaming'.

PS. I like Italy as a travel destination but would hate for the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) environment to become as badly 'tagged' - it looks absolutely awful.

Somewhat inappropriate, I feel, given that the deaths were entirely self-inflicted.

Surely if the Red Cow Level Crossing immediately north of EXD^» (Exeter St Davids - next trains) justifies an essentially full-time attendant then Poole High Street most certainly does.

The size of the images was the best I could do with the (free) resizing app available on my PC (a miniMac).

Italy? Yes - but that wasn't exactly difficult given the train livery in one of the pictures.

Cinque Terre? Some, but not all.

A few shots from a recent trip.

Transport SoS Chris Grayling currently on his feet in the HoC announcing the ending of the current East Coast franchise on 24th June 2018 and it's replacement by a public/private 'partnership' which will be called LNER^» (London North Eastern Railway - about).

A very brief excursion into the world of basic mathematics seems to indicate that the current pricing of season tickets is completely illogical; considering only annual tickets and assuming one return journey each & every day of the year (other calculations are available) the pence per mile costs for a very small subset of GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) trips to/from Paddington are as follows:
SLO 19.7, MAI^▸ (Maidenhead station) 17.6, RDG^‡(resolve) 19.9, GOR 13.7, DID^» (Didcot Parkway - next trains) 13.2, SWI^» (Swindon - next trains) 15.6, APF 12.7, OXF^» (Oxford - next trains) 11.1

Do Reading commuters realise they are apparently being taken to the cleaners? Do the people of Oxford know where the GWR bodies are buried? 

It would be very easy to find loads of other similar anomalies e.g. annual ticket NBY^» (Newbury - next trains)<>PAD^» (Paddington (London) - next trains) being about £500 less than RDG<>PAD; any meaningful fares review has to sort out this nonsense.

I will be contributing to the public consultation along the following lines (but have no great expectation that anything much will change):

1) All National Rail fares should be priced using the same base Off-Peak pence per mile multiplier so that the cost of a journey is entirely related to the distance travelled. These distances should be measured along the course of the existing railway so no mucking about with discounts for unavoidable 'doubling back', etc. (which if the rail industry has analysed their extensive 'actual journeys made' data properly shouldn't be required very often any way). The brand new ticketing system will be programmed to select the most direct (i.e. shortest & therefore cheapest) route.

2) Passengers purchasing tickets will be asked:
i) From which station are you departing?
ii) At which station are you leaving the train?
iii) Are you travelling First or Standard class?
iv) On what date are you starting your journey?
v) At what time are you starting your journey or at what time do you wish to arrive at your destination? (Ticketing system will produce a selectable list of services based on the response. Once the outward service is selected the passenger will be asked if a 'return' ticket is required and if so will run through the same script again.

Because all fares are solely distance related the nonsense around whether a break of journey is permitted ceases - the passenger just buys two single tickets covering A>B & B>C as appropriate. They would obviously be able to do the same on the return journey.

3) The railway system would be divided into wholly Peak (if deemed appropriate), partially (TOD limited) Peak and wholly Off-Peak segments. During the ticket purchasing process the system would calculate the total cost of the journey by adding together Peak and Off-Peak segments. The system would warn/advise passengers if any part of their proposed journey was priced at Peak rate and give them the opportunity to reselect the service. The prospect of having to pay £260 for a return journey between DIG & PAD^» (Paddington (London) - next trains) when only the outward RDG^‡(resolve)>PAD segment was actually classified as a 'Peak' service would cease.

4) There would be only one basic ticket type and, where possible, reservations would be provided/available via a clickable train seating diagram. Each ticket would only be valid on the initially selected service(s).  Passengers would be warned if they would have to stand. 'Advance Purchase' and other discounted tickets would not be available because the price for a particular point-to-point journey would be the same regardless of how far before the date of travel a purchase was made. In the event of a passenger missing a booked service through their error the itinerary could be changed for a small fee; obviously messed up itineraries due to late running connections could be changed for free.

5) Season tickets would obviously still be available - under the same general terms as currently exist but also priced on the basis of distance travelled.

6) Railcards subject to a thorough review with a probable reduction in the range available and ALL cards requiring photo ID.

There are probably loads of other things I will think of later but I have to say that the main reason I don't think significant changes will happen is because the ticketing system I would like to see would require the support of very good IT and history tells us that the government are absolutely cr*p at that sort of thing. 

Which immediately got me thinking that, along the same lines and consequent upon his latest pronouncements, our beloved Secretary of State for Transport should henceforth be referred to as Crass Grayling.