The entire built-up area of Wendover is separated from the HS2^▸ (The next High Speed line(s)) route, a chunk of which will be hidden in the Wendover Green Tunnel, by the A413. Planning application 25/00406/APP shows that the chamber was proposed to be located on farmland to the NW of Wendover and it appears that it was the Kings Farm track which could have been extended to provide access.

Personally, given the cost so far, I would have approved a new direct access from the A413 with a bridge over the railway.

https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/live-major-devon-train-disruption-10115423

Major problems on the Exmouth><Paignton route yesterday afternoon. Trespasser at Torre apparently. No trains between NTA^» (Newton Abbott - next trains) & PGN for several hours and a number of cancelled or late services to/from EXM.

You have to love the stock image use to illustrate the story though!

Has that first statement been confirmed as correct by an analysis of the relevant ticket data? Either way for our fairly frequent trips to visit family in Yorkshire - does that qualify as really long distance? -  the obvious rail solution would be the direct XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise)) services between Exeter and Wakefield/Leeds but we always travel via London because:
the c.25 year old Voyagers are awful
tickets via London can usually be cheaper than XC's offering (DIG>WKF Railcard Standard Class 2 weeks in advance XC Direct £88.80, GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway)/LNER^» (London North Eastern Railway - about) £72.75 using the National Rail planner)
LNER offer a very nice London><Yorkshire First Class trip at a reasonable price (don't mention GWR!)
the travel time via London is not that much more than the direct XC route but it provides a significantly more comfortable journey
XC service punctuality & reliability is seemingly not that great

'Only 4 left' on the LNER^» (London North Eastern Railway - about) booking engine against a number of ticket categories, which actually seems to mean that loadings on the service in question are pretty low - as confirmed by a quick perusal of the seat map - and they would like us to buy more; I booked 3 seats from a ticket category labelled in this way yesterday but miraculously there are still (only) 4 seats left today. 

Yes, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorail_(British_Rail) seems to confirm my recollection that there was a service to Stirling.

I suspect this would have been Air UK^▸ (United Kingdom), or its charter subsidiary Air UK Leisure.

In our case I think Exeter Airport would be the only viable departure point - a trip via Bristol might be doable - and vitually all the services, certainly at this time of year, are provided by aircraft based at what would be the destination thereby making an 'out & back in a day' impossible.

The only current exceptions would be some of the various TUI^» (Touristik Union International. Also known as TUI Group - "the largest travel, tourism and leisure company in the world". - website) Fly services which use an Exeter-based aircraft and, for example, tomorrow (24th March) one could potentially do a day return to Gran Canaria. Although, assuming on-time flights, you would only get 45 minutes in Spain! And I haven't checked whether that would meet the check-in/boarding rules for the return.

I am taken back to the late 1980's when I started my employment with a large telecommunications company that had just established a new data centre (DC^▸ (Direct Current)) in Exeter. The DC supported all the company's business application IT for Cornwall (inc. the IoS), Devon and a significant part of Somerset. Staff numbers were around 150 people and it was a 24/7 operation.

Pretty small beer compared to Heathrow Airport.

As part of the new employee 'tour' we discovered that the building had two separate mains power supplies, which could be switched over very rapidly, two fairly hefty UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) battery packs which automatically fired up in a matter of seconds in the event of a mains power failure, and a diesel generator which could be brought online in 10 minutes . These units were fully tested on a quarterly basis.

It seems to me that, given the importance of LHR in the national picture, Heathrow Airport management, possibly aided & abetted by the National Grid, have completely failed to render the site as operationally secure as should have been the case (e.g. automatic switching to one of the alternative mains power supplies should have been an absolute requirement).

The easterly wind was very strong in the Exeter area yesterday so the sea would have been surging directly towards the railway line. As a result of this I suspect NR^» (Network Rail - home page) would have implemented Single Line Working (SLW) between DWW and TGM^▸ (Teignmouth station) (West) and would have cancelled these station calls to avoid making the resulting capacity issue even worse.

Anybody wanting to try the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) > Singapore 'All The Way By Train' journey better get a move on because when the new Johor Bahru<>Singapore RTS link opens in the near future the current KTM heavy rail service across the Causeway will cease and, I suspect, shortly thereafter the tracks will be lifted to provide more space for motor vehicles.

Some DoubleEweD40 might help with this?

I thought it might be helpful to mention that Railcards can be 'purchased' - no real money changes hands - using Tesco Clubcard rewards.

Terrible idea which I hope will be consigned to the bin forthwith.

Where necessary liabilty for an RTC^» (Railway Technical Centre - about) involving cyclists should be apportioned to the actual guilty party rather than on the basis of a preset assumption.

And in my experience - I cycle around 5000 miles a year - it is quite commonly other cyclists or pedestrians at fault.

 

If this is true I would venture to suggest that the BritRail Pass marketing team are not doing a very good job. Or the product does not adequately meet the requirements of a significant number of visitors to the UK^▸ (United Kingdom).

On the basis that eight members of our Singapore family branch visited the UK in the late Spring of 2023 armed with BritRail passes, and Two Together Railcards, and travelled widely - to various places between Exeter, Manchester and Edinburgh - without any problems after we told them how to apply maybe the marketing is a bit off.

17 & 13