RAIB^▸ (Rail Accident Investigation Branch) have published an interim report on this accident. It provides a lot more detail than the initial press statement, but is mostly about the same topics. As an interim report, there is no attempt to draw conclusions.

The Times this morning had a quote from "energy bosses" that a "very strong oscillation in the electrical network" led to disconnection from "the European system" - i.e. France. I have not heard that anywhere else, so either the Times is very good at digging out sources, or it's wrong. Since it's what such bosses would have said if asked in advance what was the most likely cause of a hypothetical transmission grid collapse, perhaps it was basically a guess - by someone.

At a more recent press conference, the start of the collapse was said to be the disconnection of five (I think) nuclear generators, supplying more than half of of the demand at the time. Now, something must have caused that, and oscillation (instability) fits that bill. After that, total collapse was almost inevitable - it could only be avoided if the links from France (and Morocco, much smaller) could supply most of that deficit (15 GW^» (Great Western - used as an abbreviation for the area / lines under the Great Western franchise, as opposed to FGW which includes "First", the company operating them too. For tickets - about)), which sounds pretty unlikely.

Those links from outside all overloaded and tripped, though for the south-west of France the split was within France. They had to break the connection at the Pyrenees before resupplying from the French aside. The powering up of Iberia was done starting from the areas that could be supplied from abroad, in he north and south.

That sounds like the process I would expect to see. Starting the generators in a grid involves them following a grid already supplying power, so that was done using the external links. As much of the grid as could be supplied by those infeeds, at the north and south, was turned on and the generators in that area started up. That gives enough surplus power to prime the next areas and get them going.

However, in this case possibly not. From Taplow the two fares (both priced by GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway)) are £51.40  via London and £57.80 via Reading. From Wokingham not via London (GWR) is £46.50 (and the any permitted/via London (SWR) is £59.40, not that it's relevant here). Standard SVR full fare in each case. So it is a bit cheaper, but not enough to make it worthwhile (unless you want to go multimodal for other reasons).

All of this is well explained in a House of Commons Library "Insight" paper. This points out that the government's declared policy is to take over one TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company) roughly every three months, determined by the capacity of the OLR organisation to cope with them. Termination dates will be as determined by the contracts, subject to the DfT^» (Department for Transport - about)'s powers to adjust them at no cost.

So far existing OLR contracts have been extended, but GA^▸ (Greater Anglia)'s built-in extension was cut back to this autumn. The next one should be at the end of this year, and four contracts could be terminated then with the required three periods of notice: WMR^» (West Midlands Railway - website), Chiltern, and GTR - which have all passed their core term expiry date already - and GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) which will reach that in June. I guess we'll find out this summer, assuming the actual notice period is six months. So any choice of which to cull first will be between those; the next core term expiry date is not until EMR^» (East Midlands Railway, also known as EMT^» (East Midlands Trains - about) (East Midlands Trains - about) in October 2026. The only final expiry date in 2026 is WMT in September, so they will need to go before then.

At least that's the plan now. It may change a bit once they get some experience, though the OLR takeover process itself isn't new. They will need to work out where all the extras management staff to give the OLR corporeal form will come from. And then, somehow, GBR^▸ (Great British Railways) has to precipitate out of this interim solution ...

But I don't think that's the problem. Your stereotype is quite likely to just fill in what's asked for: where to, when, coming back? - and press "go". The difficult bit, as everyone acknowledges, is making sense of the choice of ticket types and fares that comes up next. (Mark's problem was he was trying to be too clever, of course.)

I don't know where you were putatively travelling from, but from Bath Spa I can get both GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway).com and BRFares to work fine - but perhaps not by doing the obvious. It all depends on what you mean by "destination".

For BRFares, you enter an actual station as destination, but it lists tickets/fares under technical railway-internal destinations. To get offered travelcards, you need to enter a station you could get to using one. So that's a London terminus (Paddington), somewhere before that (e.g. Ealing Broadway), or somewhere beyond that (e.g. a tube station). You will then be offered a range of technical destinations, i.e. a station, London Terminals, or various of those weird zonal things; London Zones 1-6 should be offered if it's meaningful. In the list you get, for each of those there is a range of ticket types; for London Zones 1-6 you are only offered the various Travelcards.

For GWR, I picked Paddington as destination (though other valid travelcard destinations do work) and you then must choose a return and times both on the same day. In the list of trains you have to choose one to be offered a list of ticket types, and the day travelcards should be in that. (It does not seem to offer period travelcards if you specify a return on a later date.) Of course the actual train time chosen is now not important, though off-peak limits still apply.

I think it's more likely that Siemens ITS have been offering the councils that run traffic lights new options for fancy software. Like "optimised" and "adaptive" timing and linking over wider ares (and inevitably in the cloud too). I assume that this "quick" change isn't shorter in itself, it's the green before it that is shorter than expected. Or is it?

The full-year trading update, which was the main topic of those news reports, is short. It's only about the same length as each article, so they mostly just repeat its content.

There was also some mention of First Group's submission to the consultation on the Railways Bill here:

That submission is 22 pages, and hard to summarise as it answers the questions in order. Much of it does, as suggested, argue the case for open access to be maintained, with the ORR seen as a neutral referee to protect it. They also make a case for the passenger to have official allies:


Yesterday's Times had quite a long article - over half a page - specifically on the case made for open access, and how important that will be for First once its service contracts end.

1. As far as I am aware, all the current contracts - including the Great Western National Rail Contract - are available on line.

2. The relevant words do appear, on examination, to be identical to those in the old franchise agreement. This was paragraph 6.2 of schedule 1.2, and is now paragraph 6.2 of section 4.2:
(Obviously there are a lot more words with some relevance, but secondary to this bit.)

So all you need now is an officially approved endeavour reasonableness meter.

Sorry, I should have been clearer that there were trains running off route. RTT^» (Real Time Trains - website) never shows off-route trains, since it can only show reports against a timetable. Even LiveRail, which can show some off-route trains, does not list them under off-route stations. It can only show the diversion in place of the originally intended route.

So RTT continues to show an off-route train progressing along its timetabled route, with no report for the bit it has diverted round. If you look a station (or timing point) on the section that was diverted round, this train still appears listed but will show no report. Of course a "no report" is not evidence of anything, since reports go missing for all sorts of reasons.

You'd do better to look at JourneyCheck:

Or in RTT^» (Real Time Trains - website) at Bristol Parkway there's a mass of red "cancel" and delay, while at Reading several trains can be found that show "no report" from BPW^» (Bristol Parkway - next trains) to Wootton Bassett Junction. So the trains through CPM^» (Chippenham - next trains) may have been ECS^▸ (Empty Coaching Stock), or just virtually empty because so few passengers managed to make use of them.

One I've had a few times recently: "We recently got in touch to let you know ...". No you didn't, though you should have done; in fact this is the first message I've had from you on this topic.

28th August 1992. I'd say you've done pretty well at remembering that, though as usual some of the facts have evolved a bit in storage. (Obviously I'm not relying on my memory for this!) From reports in several papers, the bear was three feet high, was in a glass dome (or case) and had been there for 25 (or 12) years, five youths were seen outside Paddington with Paddington and arrested, and two Canadians were charged with criminal damage next day.

And if today's not a convenient day for you, don't worry - there's a backup day - World Backup Day is next Monday! Sez who, you may ask. A bunch of much the same companies as for International (you were a bit parochial there, Mark) Datacenter Day - operators and suppliers of the places, mostly.

PS: and as a backup for World Backup Day, the following day is ...

One company that is keeping its head well below desk level is UKPN. They manage the distribution network at Heathrow, as an independent DNO^▸ (Distribution Network Operator) (or the equivalent). But they have put out some quite hubristic stuff about this role in the past, e.g. this:

... and a world class excuse generator?