On the extraction point, there's plenty of local traffic between the stations missed out by this proposed service to keep the current GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) service well used throughout its length. Indeed,  it might even encourage more who live along the North Downs route to use the train to get to Gatwick even if it means changing trains at one of the proposed service's stopping points.

That looks like it would be an attractive alternative for getting to Gatwick from Reading compared to the current GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) Turbo service - assuming decent rolling stock. 

Seeing the discussion above (and being very glad that our "stay at home over bank holiday weekends" policy was vindicated again!), can I make what might be a controversial suggestion on social media?

If you have a smartphone, and access to social media, you will have access to the train operator's own website and on-line information system. The world of social media is an ever-fragmenting one, making it ever more difficult to keep all their subscribers informed by their means.

So, wouldn't it be sensible for train operators instead to concentrate on keeping their own sites up-to-date (and more importantly, supplied with full and up-to-date information on all train problems, so that (for example) Grahame would have been able to find out whatever caused the two cancellations immediately it happened - or at least have been warned about them in good time.

There's no need for train operators to maintain teams looking after all the various social media outlets, just one well-resourced one supplied with up-to-the-minute information from "Control" and the depots and staff on the ground. Perhaps if there are spare staff as a result, they can be employed in liaising with bus companies and taxi operators to summon help, and perhaps recruiting and running a back up system of out-of-hours emergency services from them run on a retainer contract basis.

There's no reason why anyone should expect X, Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram or any other such service to be a main source of travel information, any more than they should rely on them for up-to-the-minute football scores or commodity market prices. Just have plenty of posters and notices at stations and in trains with the operator's web address - or better still, screens with live information relevant to the site or train in question.

OK, if no-one else has done it - I'll nominate no. 6 as the Melksham one - and let someone else pick the Taunton one (if it's there!).

I don't object to being called a commuter - rather proud of the fact that I used the train as my default means of getting to work for over half my working life.

I agree though that dividing into "business" & "leisure" is wrong. Where does that leave travelling to medical appointments, collecting the car from being serviced, travelling to pick up a new door lock (perhaps shopping generally for those of us for whom it's a necessary chore rather than a pleasure!)? Or does much of my train use now fill the missing one per cent in those figures?

I would suggest that these figures might suggest there's room to increase the business/travel to work volume, with pressure on some to return to the office....

This could also have Beaufort-like descriptions of what to look for to avoid having to count seats (like the "white horses begin to appear on waves at sea" or "some trees lose branches" notes you used to see).

Suggestions - for "Busy" - "passengers begin asking anyone with bags on seat to move them or saying "is anyone sitting there"?

For "nesting/nearly every seat taken" - "Announcements made that there are still a few seats available at the front/back of the train"

For "full and standing" - "on-board train staff no longer walk along the train, anyone with a bicycle in a vestibule gets black looks from fellow passengers".

"Stuffed" - "Between Paddington and Reading".

But there is! Here in the Thames Valley, I can get through trains from Reading to Gatwick airport, or from either Reading or Oxford to Southampton, Bournemouth, Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, York and Newcastle. And some of these trains are very well patronised too - as a former North Downs commuter, I can attest to how popular the Gatwick trains are for holidaymakers from beyond Reading notwithstanding the poor rolling stock (Turbos) and lack of publicity for the service. I used Cross-Country reasonably regularly for business travel to Birmingham and less frequently to Manchester, and introduced the service to colleagues in Guildford who used it and found it equally useful.

These services are used less frequently than they should be for a number of reasons.

1 - They are almost invisible to the general travelling public. If you book to travel (for example) from Guildford to Manchester , or from Bristol or Banbury to Gatwick, I bet you'll only be offered a journey via London. There's no visible national advertising of the services - I see TV^▸ (Thames Valley, or TeleVision, depending on context) advertising for LNER^» (London North Eastern Railway - about) (weird red-headed dolls dancing upside-down on carriage ceilings), SWR^» (South Western Railway - about) (cartoon seagulls and pigeons) and even GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) (the dreaded Famous Five), but nothing for Cross-Country, or from National Rail telling people - do you know you can get to the South Coast, South West or the London airports from most of England without having to travel across London using the tube? I think most casual rail passengers assume that if they want to travel to these destinations from the Midlands and the North they must go via London.

2 - We are slipping back to the position on XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise)) that we were in just before the Voyagers were introduced, when services were run using tired old Mk2^▸ (Mark 2 coach) stock, with worn seats and often announcements apologising for lavatories being out of action. A Preston-Portsmouth service then called at Reading at about 8am used a two-car class 158 train in Regional Railways livery, manned by staff in new red Virgin uniforms. I recall that in the first year after Voyagers were introduced by Virgin, reading that the Reading-Birmingham route experienced the largest increase in passenger volume of any route in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom). The Voyagers do now need a refresh (which I understand they are due to get).

Yes - XC often take longer than via London, and it's a shame if there are no deals currently equivalent to those offered by the London bound/originating services, but I was able to work on them (and others also seemed to have no problems), and I am not over 6ft tall so could fit in the seats comfortably, so as far as I was concerned it was a no-brainer. My concern is that XC/Reading Gatwick/Portsmouth-Cardiff services and the like will become even more "Cinderella" under GBR^▸ (Great British Railways), as they do not have (forgive the expression) the "shroud-waiving" cachet of "Northern Powerhouse".


There's no reason that they should not be used for any journey of less than 30 minutes, the crucial decision someone has to make is balancing the time taken against the volume of passenger traffic generated. I think it's about right on the "eastern arm" services from the South Coast via Reading and Oxford to Manchester or from Reading to Newcastle. Yes, this means it's a semi-fast by overall standards, but it's still (for example) the quickest journey from Reading to Basingstoke - and long may it be so.

There's also nothing wrong with having services that hardly anyone uses from end to end, but which provide a series of overlapping useful middle- and long-distance links along its route. It's actually one of the good points about longer-distance cross country routes - kills the proverbial two birds with one stone! And for most of us, I'd guess we don't mostly travel on services between their ultimate origins and destinations, whether one of those is London or not.

Turning to Grahame's query of the factors-


Speed - inevitably, threading across the grain of mainline services there will be some compromises, but at least you avoid the unpleasantness of the tube, and for some London terminals, a not particularly convenient route between them. Do also bear in mind that a large proportion of travellers do not live on the platforms of London terminals or the major city-centre stations. I think I have posted before about a former work colleague from what was then the Manchester office of the firm I worked at, who had a meeting in Reading that I was also attending, who assumed he'd have to get to Manchester airport, fly to Heathrow, then get a taxi to Reading. He did not realise that there was an hourly service from his home station (Macclesfield) to Reading. Even at XC speed it was quicker!

Comfort is subjective, but be careful what you wish for - some of these routes might be seen as ideal for cascading 5-car IETS with ironing-board seats!

Luggage space - from my leisure use experience, Voyagers are no worse than most inter-city stock, and XC staff generally helpful but 165 Turbos on Reading-Gatwick, a service that does have a high end-to-end patronage in peak holiday periods with luggage is simply woeful. I expect this would be true on other services using DMUs^▸ (Diesel Multiple Unit) on longer distance services to airports and resorts.

Costs - more special offers please, XC /GBR.

Facilities - for XC, it was a shame that Arriva took out Virgin's catering when they took over, but with the mixed pattern of distance of journeys, I doubt anything beyond restoring a Virgin-style hot snack service would pay.

Marketing - see above!

Does anyone use them? See above - YES! we/the relevant TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company)/GBR should be encouraging more to do so.

So that's why Trump wanted to hit an island full of penguins with high tariffs - or had he seen too many Wallace & Gromit films?

This came up on the MSN newsfeed on my laptop- - and no, said storm was not going to affect anywhere north of Spain!

Similarly, the word "unique" is also overused by media folk, often betrayed by the contradictory "more unique" - it seems they think it means "somewhat unusual".

A favourite of railway operators' electronic signage staff is "Delayed", which seems to mean "Late, don't know how late, and cannot (or cannot be bothered to) find out why or when it might turn up"

When I first visited the Republic of Ireland in 1974, I was told that driving tests had only "recently" been introduced, and before that all you needed was 10 shillings and a trip to the post office to get your licence. I've since looked it up - it was 1964 when tests were introduced. However, for years there was a chronic shortage of test centres, and in 1979 the government introduced a moratorium - if you had held two provisional licences, you got a full licence, no need for any further test!

Picked up on the Berkshire local news section of the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page) News website-

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1wdje7ve9wo

I'll leave you all to pick up one incorrect caption....

Sorry - I've looked it up - the Suffragette Line. Not sure I could have guessed that!

4 - Barking Riverside (?)

In the breathless world of shock horror probe Reach local newspapers (or perhaps some cheap AI they now use to write this stuff?) - it does, as it will (partly) replace stories on 40 year old trains breaking down in Devon!

BTW^▸ ('by the way'), I agree with CfN on the repaint/vinyl issue. All they need is a GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) logo on the side for the time being, much in the way the C2C stock drafted in at the height of the cracking IET^▸ (Intercity Express Train - replacement for HSTs (manufactured by Hitachi in Kobe, Japan)) crisis did, or the Thames Trains liveried Turbos acquired FGW^▸ (First Great Western) Link logos for a couple of years after termination of the former's franchise. Spend the time and money saved on more maintenance of the rest of the current fleet.