That does look horrendous and I wouldn't give it house room (the e-bike wiring, not the lovely paint job on the Class 57!).

I've never understood how singling was other than a very short-term economy measure, allowing a section of track that needed replacing to be abandoned instead or perhaps to keep the track away from a slipping bit of embankment. In the longer term the remaining single track gets twice the usage so will broadly wear out twice as quickly, there are points/switches with far more moving parts than plain track to maintain at each end of the single line section, and the signalling needs to be more complicated with more to go wrong, to cater for those points and allow for trains going in both directions on one track.

Perhaps the biggest saving is ironically at stations, with fewer platforms and associated lighting etc to look after and maintain (as with track, each will be used twice as much as on a single line but I'm guessing deterioration is caused more by the weather than footfall), and nowadays with the increasing emphasis on access for all a sensibly positioned platform on one side of the single track could avoid the expense of a footbridge and accompanying lifts.

Some people are easily put off! Driving and parking was probably a nightmare too given the crowds; would they have resolved never to drive anywhere again, or just put it down to exceptional circumstances?

...but beware Lumo's RyanAir-esque luggage policy, which I think is unique among British rail operators.

One unintended consequence of this may be daytrippers leaving the IoW ferry at Portsmouth Harbour and getting on the painfully slow Victoria train to London rather than the direct Waterloo one. Unless the differing journey times are clearly shown on journey screens it would be easy to be misled if you're not familiar with railway geography.

Incidentally, is the current operation of the Victoria trains terminating at/starting from Portsmouth & Southsea rather than the Harbour a recent thing? Sure I've often seen - and nearly caught without thinking - trains to Victoria when I've come off the ferry myself.

When there's a choice between conspiracy and incompetence I generally go for the latter. In this case I suspect the people making the decisions really aren't aware how difficult/impossible it sometimes is to get a TVM^▸ (Ticket Vending Machine) to sell the cheapest (or best, even if it's perhaps not quite the cheapest) ticket and I don't think ticket office closure is deliberately designed to increase revenue in that way.  It's just possible that we may finally see TVM software improved but there's really nothing to beat the combination of experience and fuzzy logic that a good ticket seller has to cut through the dross and sell the right ticket.  Sadly I suspect real fare simplification ain't gonna happen as enough passengers currently benefit from some of the current quirks and will lose out that the DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) will be unwilling to make the significant changes needed. 

That's to stop people carrying them as insurance against a revenue check and hoping not to use up a day, only filling the date in if they see revenue staff approaching, so if they spot you writing the date on then you're treated as having no ticket. For all the railway's many faults, I would expect a sensible approach will be adopted and if they're not available to buy at a TVM^▸ (Ticket Vending Machine) then you'll be able to buy one on the train (sorry, "on-train") but will be stood over until you've dated it, or perhaps it will be done for you.

It works okay for me, though there are some odd quirks where it shows live times half covered by a menu and you have to press an extra button to see it properly; that may just be an incompatibility with my old phone I suppose. I find it rather better than the Arriva equivalent, which has an emphasis on planning journeys assuming you're a novice traveller, rather than just seeing times from a particular stop when you know what you're doing, particularly awkward if you're not in the area of the stop in question (eg on a train 5 miles away but getting there soon).

I mostly use the generic Bus Checker, which does what I need fairly well, and only have the company-specific ones because there's sometimes a disconnect in the live data for non-TfL^» (Transport for London - about) routes serving stops inside London and occasionally elsewhere.  I don't tend to load tickets, particularly with the current £2 cap, so can't comment on that side of things.

I'm not familiar with the term "American" as a measure of mess! Am I misunderstanding something?

Hmm. I would have thought the old sawtooth(?) arrangement coped better with a larger number of buses and made it far easier to get close to the kerb so I'm surprised they've changed it. Reversing off the stand perhaps isn't ideal but fine if public access to the roadway behind is avoided by good design of pedestrian routes.

The 2018 photo was presumably taken from the footbridge to the hovercraft terminal. I hope the different viewpoint doesn't mean it's no longer there; I have many happy memories of watching the rather more impressive (ie noisier) SRN6 arriving and leaving in my yoof.

Time for a trip to the IoW now the pier, bus station and railway upgrade work has finished, though I still here of occasional problems with the new trains.

It's unfortunate (but presumably not connected?) that they chose the same day to send out a press release about using "Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil" in their Class 68 locos.  They seem to have got away with it and the diesel fuel problem doesn't seem to have been splashed over all the HVO reporting.

If the passenger has an Oyster^▸ (Smartcard system used by passengers on Transport for London services) card the inspector can check on the spot. If contactless they can't do that, but the system feeds back that the card was checked on a bus (so was being used for a journey) and if the end of day processing finds it hadn't been tapped in then a "penalty" is charged.

As I understand it the lady was arrested not for fare evasion but for refusing to allow her card to be checked by a revenue inspector when asked and then trying to leave the scene without giving her details. Revenue staff have remarkably few powers to detain etc (and persistent fare dodgers know this so constantly get away with it) so as in this case they occasionally have police backup. Quite why she chose not to co-operate - and what if anything led to that - isn't clear and perhaps should be getting more attention.

The police may then have taken the view that someone trying to avoid a check may have more to hide than just an unpaid fare. They often discover weapons, drugs or pickpockets in such exercises, and having a child with you doesn't necessarily make you innocent.  The Met police statement I saw online was remarkably poor at explaining their part in the exercise, leaving many people thinking they had been called out specifically to deal with and arrest a single fare dodger.

The important bit which I haven't see clarified anywhere is exactly what happened before all the online videos. I would hope TfL^» (Transport for London - about) are also looking at their revenue team's behaviour in case that was a factor.

Network Rail don't set the fares of course. It would be rather worse if the DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) were using air travel in preference to rail.

The other silly bit about this is the TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) charging the very people who provide the tracks they use to run the trains, but then Network Rail charge the TOCs for using the track so I suppose it's tit-for-tat. When it was all one company the Network Rail staff would have had bearer passes to use for duty travel and wouldn't even have thought about air travel unless the journey was impossible by rail at the relevant time.

I'm increasingly finding that I prefer what you might regard as local trains for longer journeys, rather than the purpose-built long distance trains.  Most can now top 100mph and have air-con, the seats are often comfier and the windows bigger.  First Class on all but a few routes is a disappointment for the price anyway and catering is dying out.  I'd much prefer not to have to get my refreshments before I get on the train, but at least the choice is often now far better than it was.  A reservation is no use unless you want to be tied to a specific train (I'd rather trains were long enough not to have absolutely every seat full), and could anyway be offered without too much effort on the 387s if GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) wanted to, ditto catering.

I'd say it IS broadly more convenient and flexible, and most people will have no more trouble getting out their bank card or phone than a paper ticket, though I fully agree that for some there will be little or no benefit.  There will be some cost savings though the infrastructure doesn't come cheap!  So far as tapping in is concerned, I was involved in the GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) branches work and we spent a lot of time trying to get a fair compromise as to when off-peak taps started.  This does have the advantage that if the last peak train is running late you can catch it at an off-peak fare whereas with most paper tickets you can't.