There were: I've now merged them, here. 

 

Doesn't seem to be causing significant issues at the moment but the disruption until guestimate has been extended from 11:15 to 13:45 so far...

 
There are two threads running on this

https://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=30341.new#new

 
Press release at https://www.westofengland-ca.gov.uk/news/kids-go-free-on-the-wests-buses/

"The school holidays are due to start on 19 July. The proposed free travel offer would run from then until 5 September (to cover varying INSET days) across the West of England and North Somerset during the same period on all registered commercial and supported bus services starting in those areas, with limited exemptions to be set out in due course on the Travelwest website – e.g. for airport services."

"The proposed package is set to be funded using some of the £13.5 million of Bus Grant funding secured from the Department for Transport by the West of England Mayoral Combined Authority."

 

 
https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/live-liskeard-looe-train-passengers-10247705

I'm WEaling from the shock of how far from Looe this is!

 

Perhaps it's time for the Melksham militia?

 

I have ... wondered at times ... why a village like Coldstream needs its own special guards ... but I digress!

 
announced by WECA on the local news for the area controlled by WECA.

There are 150,000 children in the WECA area.

Not sure if their are time restrictions on the offer

 
Being reported LIVE on BBC breakfast news on 10 June,

just wondering if they MIGHT try to get some live coverage while the train is in motion!

 
From the BBC:

 
26th May, to West Wiltshire Rail User Group and worth a share in answer to a request to do somewhat better for cycles on Cross Country Trains


I am far from as certain as Richard in that colleagues on board are always as helpful as he suggests. The correspondence which generated this more general reply related to experiences with less than helpful staff and that's not a unique experience/perception. 

I am minded of how different it could be.  Waiting in Klaipeda (as one does) for th Vilnius train, the single carriage commuter train from Silute pulled in and there must have been a dozen bicycles coming off that in addition to a flow of passengers that seemed astonishingly endless.  Crew and others on the train cheerfully handing cycles down from the relatively high train to the low outer platform - with the cycles then wheeled across the barrow crossing to exit the station.

 

I am - err - quite familiar with Melksham but not so much with Nailsea. Can you always phone and get a cab?

Yes, we (in Melksham) do and occasionally can call a taxi, but there is no central booking point and we are sometimes left calling around a series of different small operators (of which there are at least half a dozen) looking for someone available when and where we want to go.  There's no Uber in Wiltshire and indeed I suspect the current operators would not welcome such a service, but all the cabs have their regular contracts to and from education in particular, and cabbies have their days off too and other bookings.    We - living in Melksham - always have a "plan B" - and the taxi becomes a convenience and never a necessity.

 

Indeed - and I was guessing yesterday as the results unfolded, with both JourneyCheck and RealTimeTrains guessing in their own ways too.   Best you can say sometimes is "at least they tried" and hindsight is always wonderful where it doesn't work out.


Totally agreed, and that is the bane of the public transport operator's dilemma.   Not just with issues of sacrifices / changes made - such as running short and skip-stopping when things go wrong, but also with regard to other longer term provisions.  I have often wondered why people who make the choices / decisions actually listen to me from time to time when others say that getting even a reply from some of those decision makers is hard, and one of the reasons I have come upon with is that I see and acknowledge a far bigger picture than most.  There's a whole topic there for "later".

The communication of what's happening can indeed eat into the gains that would be made with skip-stopping (and short running)  and only so much can be done with the tools at hand, some of which leave much to be desired.  It's been the same in Germany and in Poland - not unique to the UK.

But skip-stopping, running short, cancelling a round trip on shorter lines on the day are all just sticking plasters covering up when things aren't working as they should - and the real answer lies in having far fewer incidents which necessitate these last-minute changes to the discomfort of the customer.
* Having enough suitable staff available
* Having enough working trains available and not have them fail along the way
* Having infrastructure maintained so that it doesn't fail / lead to emergency restrictions
* Having people not chuck themselves in front of trains
The effects of these are cumulative and they sometimes interact.  I could add "and enough infrastructure to cope" - one of the reasons that we have so many incidents / issues is that we have a far more intense service than in the past so there are many more things to go wrong.  And here on the Coffee Shop and at other online locations, we know about them these days whereas in the past the news/data wasn't available to us ...

 
Over the last few months I've had a couple of non-stop CDF-SWA journeys....

One of them worked well. Other departures held back at CDF. Something looped along the way. Significant time recovered.

The other time there was this stopper in front. I wondered if it would be looped at Tremains, when it was still not causing any hold-up. It wasn't. By Pyle the signal checks were starting. I thought it would be reasonable to loop it at Stormy; it's not unusual, even when the IET isn't skip-stopping. It didn't happen. The last opportunity was to overtake at Port Talbot. It didn't happen. The non-stop run became a multi-stop run. I did wonder if the ARS routed things before the signaller could prevent it, but I have no idea which locations on that route are covered by ARS, and I would have thought in that case a signaller would have intervened before the third opportunity was lost!

Then there's the communication issue. Skip-stopping can be a good idea, although passengers aren't too keen on seeing the big picture. But if it has to be done, it needs to be communicated clearly. All it takes is dodgy PA here, or a passenger hard of hearing there, and someone isn't in the picture.

A poor example of skip-stopping was on the Valley Lines. Between the stop at Cardiff Central and departing Queen Street, three different patterns had been announced. It was a 150, and the PA wasn't great. Passengers were a bit confused. It really could have done with the guard walking through to check people had understood, or even the guard taking the rear car and platform staff taking the front car (which stopped right by their office) at CDQ.

Then, on a different but related tack, there's the PAD-CMN journey that terminated short at SWA during a very disrupted day not long ago. The first IET I joined at CDF wasn't going anywhere because it was awaiting (presumably displaced) crew. (There may be a lesson on lack of resources for proper resilience somewhere here.) So anyone who didn't want to wait was advised to join another one which came into Platform 1 or 2. From what I overheard a lot of passengers on there had already had a similar swap of trains at Didcot or Swindon, along with a wait and a diversion. So people felt somewhat messed around and weren't in the best mood! It seemed fairly likely to me, based on experience, that it would terminate at SWA. I imagine it had crossed the mind of crew and control as well, to the point that perhaps expectations could have been set (pros and cons there). But nothing was announced; indeed, it was announced that it was the Carmarthen train more than once.

At some point I checked Journeycheck and saw that it was to terminate short. But no change of plan was announced. Finally, on the approach to SWA, when it seemed like things were running more smoothly and there was no further disruption to the journey, the bombshell was dropped. The reaction of nearby passengers, some of whom had children with them who needed to be fed, was somewhat explosive (which I'm sure helped with keeping things calm for said children!). Oh, and a possible connection wasn't held, with the next one not due for some time. As I was leaving I think gateline staff were picking up on the mood.

 
I have lived in Nailsea for many years, and I recently had the opportunity to live in Melksham for three weeks.  That gave me the opportunity to make this comparison.

The railway stations serving each town are far from central, but not beyond a good walking distance. There is no taxi rank at either, but cabs can be booked by phone. At Nailsea, there is a connecting bus service at the station, in both directions, with a reasonable service.

Both towns are historic: Nailsea has a claim to fame for coal mining, glass blowing and farming, and Melksham has a claim to fame for Regency spa facilities and a (disused) canal through it - as well as a host of other attractions.

The population of both towns is about 20,000.

(By the way: both towns have a Wetherspoons, and my preference is The Bear in Melksham over The Glassmaker in Nailsea.)

Chris from Nailsea. 

 
I appreciate that this topic relates to visiting locomotives on heritage lines, but it is very disappointing to see mainline steam railtours using locomotives from other BR Regions. I know it is down to ownership and where the locos are based, but why use ex-LMS or ex-SR locos on the likes of the Royal Duchy or Torbay Express when there are ex-GWR locomotives available?

A couple of years ago, an 'Atlantic Coast Express' commemoration railtour from London Waterloo to Exeter St David's via Salisbury and Yeovil Junction was hauled by a Black 5, whilst a Merchant Navy was being used on a Settle and Carlisle railtour!

 
Watched this last night, most interesting. I’d heard about it but didn’t pay much attention to planes being replaced by buses.

It was mentioned during the video that doing short flights with buses instead of planes is going to increase with other airlines starting down this route as well as AA.

 

So did I, although I stopped after only a short time.

 
This bit made me chuckle:


Hopefully, not to be taken literally! Much prefer rail.

As with Red Squirrel, I hope tram-train is not ruled out. They're commonplace in a bit of Yorkshire, and will be in south Wales ere long. Once the wires are up along Filton Bank and to Thingley, they could work wonders for mass transit around Bristol. It needs a bit more imagination than has been obvious in past times, but now is the time to Do Something, lest the Chancellor changes her mind because of dithering. The problem is that Bristol will gain most whatever happens, or so it will seem, so the positives and potential for the other areas need to be detailed.

 
In 1974 we had a Vauxhall Viva as an office car: smelly plastic upholstery, three gears with the lever on the steering column.  It once had a punctured tyre when I was on my way to a meeting in a suit.  I managed to change the wheel and arrive in time, with only slightly grubby hands.

When my Ford Fiesta hit a huge pothole a few weeks ago and the tyre blew out, I didn't hesitate to call the AA. I couldn't face working out how the curious jack worked and where to place it under the low-slung chassis. Despite my being out in the sticks, the AA was with me within an hour and my spacesaver fitted within another ten minutes.

 
It's good for the railways to be able to have a fresh face in their line-up, and a visiting loco gets to be a star during an event or for a season. Smaller and fledgling railways who don't have a regular ex-big railway loco can finance a visitor to raise their profile, too.


That said, seeing a GWR loco in a GWR setting or a diesel hydraulic on its home turf is special...

 
Sadly, Frederick Forsyth has died, aged 86.

From the BBC:

 

That's the current (or recently closed) one. There was another Vauxhall plant, that was Vauxhall's main plant for many years that closed in 2002. It produced all those Vauxhall Victors, Crestas and their related models that older members may remember, and later some of the Cavaliers and Vectras, which were Opel designs, that were classic sales reps and popular family cars in the 1980s and 1990s. Luton was a real motor manufacturing centre, sadly no more. 

 

Report in a local news paper https://www.sloughexpress.co.uk/news/traffic-and-travel/201654/major-disruption-on-london-paddington-to-reading-train-line-after-casualty-on-tracks.html?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwY2xjawKz5whleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETBYRnJvRkR2RzlQTXE5SURwAR7k8vmJj-al5-L4zohMl9WOPau7kOswUS93SrOABFN-7PQzBg3_My5mDdXnDw_aem_J2_-9E6iEUR1Ri7n9xWwOw#Echobox=1749471219

Casualty on the tracks at Hanwell station

 

The bridge at Foxhangers was conventional - see here and open the "history" tab. The Fish Bridge on Caen Hill was the uncommon design - always known as that even after it was replaced in 1901. See here on Facebook.  None of these photos have original poster credits which I would happily add if I knew them.


This one was actually near Bradford-on-Avon; on the walk in with visiting cousins we missed the Bathampton to Bath section around the river valley and went Dundas - Midford - Tucking Mill - Combe Down - Devonshire - Bear Flat

 

You're right.  My memory isn't what it was.  Thank you