An East Sussex tunnel which was last used by passenger trains 60 years ago will be reopened to pedestrians for one weekend.

Volunteers have spent thousands of hours restoring the 256 yard (242m) Heathfield Tunnel to open to the public on 13, 14 and 15 June from 10:00 to 17:00 BST.

The tunnel was once part of the now disused Cuckoo Line, running from Polegate to Eridge via Heathfield, which was fully opened in 1880 and closed to passengers in 1965.

The reopening is part of Spa Valley Railway's Cuckoo Line gala, marking 60 years since the rail line was shut to passenger trains following a recommendation by the British Railways Board.

The last passenger train to run through the Heathfield Tunnel on 12 June 1965 was a BR Standard 4MT 80144.

The tunnel remained open to freight trains until 1968 and was closed to pedestrians in 2015.

The train line's name came from a tradition at the Heathfield Fair where the "first cuckoo of Spring would be released", says Spa Valley Railway.

In the 1990s, the Polegate to Heathfield portion on the track was turned into the 10.4-mile Cuckoo Trail, jointly owned by Wealden District Council and East Sussex County Council.

Six steam and diesel locomotives once used on the Cuckoo Line will run from Tunbridge Wells West to Eridge via Groombridge as part of the celebrations.

A spokesperson for Spa Valley Railway said: "This is as close as we're probably going to get to recreating the Cuckoo Line."

Jeremy Clarkson names the 'coolest' thing in London - and it's inside a train station

The Clarkson's Farm star reckons this is better than Tower Bridge

Jeremy Clarkson has named the best thing in London - and it's great news for all the train buffs out there. The presenter-turned-farmer revealed he has a soft spot for the glazed roof of Paddington station due to the intricate work of engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

Speaking in a video posted to partner Lisa Hogan's Instagram, the 65-year-old believes the Victorian-era station should be considered amongst the capital's greatest attractions. He said: "While people come to see Natural History Museum, Tower of London or Tower Bridge, the roof of Paddington station is THE coolest thing in London, the most beautiful thing in London." The Clarkson's Farm host went on to explain the beams above the tracks were supposedly designed with holes so scaffolding could be passed through them, allowing workers to easily clean the glass. However, if you look closely you'll spot the gaps on the support girders also depict the sun, moon and stars.



Opened in 1854, Paddington Station as we know it now was the jewel in Brunel's construction of the Great Western Railway, acting as a grand terminus for his greatest feat. However, he was first forced to create a temporary station amid soaring costs building the mainline. This utilised the arches of Bishop's Bridge Road and was used by passengers for nearly two decades. Unable to let his vision go, Brunel convinced railway bosses to build a bigger station to keep up with increased demand. He was deeply inspired by the Crystal Palace, built in 1851 for the Great Exhibition. Similarities between the two buildings can be seen to the current day in his use of wrought iron and glass panes.

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Oxford businesses to receive goodwill payments for Botley Road disruption

Network Rail will write to the affected local businesses that qualify to receive a share of up to £850,000 this week.

- government confirms up to £850,000 in payments to Oxfordshire businesses impacted by Network Rail disruption
- some small, local businesses most impacted by delayed works may be eligible to receive one-off, goodwill payments to acknowledge disruption caused
- Rail Minister, Lord Hendy, visits site to see progress on the Botley Road works – on track to be fully completed next summer

Some small businesses in Oxford most affected by works at Botley Road station may be eligible to receive goodwill payments, following the government today (13 June 2025) confirming up to £850,000 of Network Rail funding to acknowledge the local disruption.   The funding was confirmed today as the Rail Minister, Lord Hendy, visited the site to see Network Rail’s progress on the major improvements to the city’s railway station and Botley Road as part of the Oxford Station Enhancements Project. 

The one-off goodwill payments are being offered in recognition of the disruption resulting from delays to the scheme, which businesses can apply to Network Rail for.

Network Rail will write to the affected businesses this week who qualify for this financial support and a process is being developed to take discussions further.

However, following a reset of the project in January, progress has been made and Network Rail are on track to deliver the new cycle and walkway in August 2025 and will fully reopen Botley Road in August 2026.

Rail Minister, Lord Hendy, said:

I’m pleased that Network Rail can now offer payments to those eligible small, local businesses affected and while it can’t undo all the hardship businesses have faced, it recognises the trouble the delays have caused.

I’m glad the project is now on track. I will continue to hold Network Rail to account and engage with the local community. 

I look forward to the scheme being completed, so Oxford can benefit from more frequent and accessible transport links to boost growth in this bustling city.

Following delays owing to the discovery of a large Victorian arch under Botley Road and difficulties moving water pipes, Network Rail launched a new plan to keep the project moving forward early this year. 

Since the reset, the project has hit key milestones, including the early completion of a new clean water pipe by Thames Water. The next big step is to divert the sewer system, which is on track to finish later this year.

Marcus Jones, Network Rail’s Western Route Director, said:

We know the delays to this project have been frustrating, and we’re sorry for the disruption they’ve caused. The good news is that the project is now firmly back on track, and we’re making strong progress. We’re committed to keeping the community informed as we deliver a safer, more accessible Oxford station for everyone.

Network Rail has been keeping the community informed through monthly public events and business workshops, offering updates and support. New banners, posters and digital screens have also been put up around the station and Botley Road to keep everyone updated and remind people that local businesses are open as usual. The free Botley Flyer bus service now runs 7 days a week, helping people get to the city centre and extra security measures have been put in place to keep pedestrians safe.

Additional support includes new disabled drop-off bays, an audio guide map for easier navigation and improved lighting and CCTV around the station.

Network Rail will set out the process for applying in the coming weeks.[/quoe]

£850,000 to be given out to Oxford businesses due to Botley Road disruption



Businesses in Oxford may be able to receive goodwill payments in recognition of the disruption caused by the Botley Road scheme.

Rail Minister, Lord Hendy, visited the site today to confirm the funding and to see progress on the improvements taking place.

Network Rail will write to affected businesses this week with more details.

A new cycle and walkway will open in August 2025 following progress being made and Botley Road will fully open in August 2026.

Rail Minister, Lord Hendy, said: “I’m pleased that Network Rail can now offer payments to those eligible small, local businesses affected, and while it can’t undo all the hardship businesses have faced, it recognises the trouble the delays have caused."

Depends on how much you want to flog a dead horse I suppose.

What seems extraordinary to me is that there was one survivor, whose injuries are not in any way life threatening.

Is this pure luck? Was his seating position, next to the emergency exit, likely to be the prime reason for his survival?

From Rail News

Our annual meeting will be held on line on July 16th.   Details will be circulated in due course.

A new type of open access operator has signed a Track Access Contract with Network Rail.

Go-op is a co-operative venture which is planning to run services through Somerset and Wiltshire between Taunton and Swindon, serving towns like Frome and Melksham en route.

All previous open access operators have been for-profit, but Go-op is owned by its members. It is now seeking investment partners who will provide the rest of the £2.5 million needed to launch the service.

It now has an opportunity of using tri-mode Class 769 units rather than Class 150s. The 769s are conversions of dual-voltage Class 319 units built for Thameslink in the late 1980s, which now have diesel engines as well to generate traction power.

Go-op is also campaigning for some stations in its area to be reopened. These include Wellington and Somerton – towns which have grown considerably over the past 60 years

I wouldn’t count any of the use after 1991 as actually ‘in service’ though.  In the 1970s there were a number of harbour training ships in the Portsmouth area, eg Diamond at Priddys Hard, (for Sultan and Collingwood engineering trainees), and IIRC Rame Head was used by the cadets at Excellent (followed by Kent, and I’m sure we didn’t considered any of them in service... 

Strewth - is there anything slower train than a 75mph 165 turbo?!!

17:04 Didcot Parkway to Evesham due 18:23 will be cancelled.
This is due to a shortage of train crew.

18:51 Evesham to Oxford due 19:50 will be cancelled.
This is due to a shortage of train crew.

Strewth - is there anything slower train than a 75mph 165 turbo?!!

A technological arms race has broken out to combat the fare-dodging crisis plaguing Britain’s railways.

Faced with the prospect of £500m in lost ticket sales, rail operators are embracing artificial intelligence (AI) and so-called machine learning to crack down on freeloaders.

Evasion tactics that once went little further than hiding in a train lavatory to avoid the guard have changed radically since ticket barriers – first trialled on the Tube in 1964 – were introduced at major stations and across commuter networks.

Miscreants are often seen forcing their way through the barriers to avoid paying, a trend recently highlighted by Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, as he issued a call to arms. However, evasion tactics span well beyond brute force.

The digitisation of ticketing in particular, with the bulk of payments made by bank card, travel card or mobile phone, has opened up whole new avenues for fare abuse and forced operators to respond with tougher safeguards.

Transport for London (TfL), which puts its annual losses from fare-dodging at £130m, says that 4.7pc of Tube passengers – almost one in every 20 – skipped paying or stumped up the incorrect fare in the last financial year alone. Yet, across its wider network of the Tube, Overground, buses, Docklands Light Railway and Elizabeth Line, the rate of offending fell from 3.8pc to 3.4pc after fines were raised to £100. TfL aims to bring it down to 1.5pc by 2030 through an intelligence-led approach combined with new technologies and more proactive enforcement.

While offending in London is well short of New York’s 13pc evasion rate, Siwan Hayward, TfL’s director of security, says that fare-dodging “is not a victimless crime”. She says: “It robs Londoners of vital investment in a safe and reliable transport network. The overwhelming majority of customers pay the correct fare, and it’s unfair to those who do that a minority avoid paying.”

The main weapon in TfL’s armoury is its Irregular Travel Analysis Platform (ITAP), which uses ticketing and journey data, passenger information and CCTV to identify repeat offenders. The tool is integral for a TfL investigations team that seeks to identify “high-impact offenders”, some of whom cost the network up to thousands of pounds a year in lost revenue.

After studying data, the team liaises with 500 uniformed enforcement officers and plain-clothes inspectors, who can demand proof of a ticket or travel card while staging sting operations in stations, sometimes supported by the British Transport Police.

This crackdown led to TfL securing fines of £400,000 last year after prosecuting 360 of the most prolific offenders. Among the offences deployed by fare evaders are techniques known as zonal avoidance and re-tokenisation. The former, colloquially dubbed “doughnutting”, involves travel through zones that have not been paid for.

In re-tokenisation, or “card tumbling,” the fraudster deletes a virtual card from a digital wallet on a mobile device after a journey to prevent authorisation of the transaction overnight. The card is then reloaded, at which point it is allocated a new tokenised number, preventing it from being blacklisted.

A similar con involves the use of a bank card with insufficient funds to pay for a ticket. Tube gates identify the card as genuine and will let the holder in and out, only for the payment to bounce when requested.

One offender last year used a contactless card to avoid paying the correct fare on 202 journeys, resulting in £1,427 in fines. Other scams include the abuse of Freedom Passes, which offer free travel in London for the disabled and those aged 66 and over.

Meanwhile, outside of the biggest cities, at least 2,000 of Britain’s 2,500 or so stations still lack barriers. Therefore, bosses are required to rely on traditional checks to ensure passengers are paying.

Graham Sutherland, chief executive of FirstGroup, which runs express trains on the West Coast and Great Western main lines, said on-train ticket checks remained vital to prevent “revenue leakage”. But there is no doubt that technology has been a game-changer.

LNER, which runs trains between London King’s Cross and Edinburgh, has led the way among long-distance operators in deploying AI to uncover unusual ticket-purchase patterns and identify fraudsters, setting up a “machine learning team” to work alongside its risk experts. A pilot project that began in 2023 immediately identified a customer who had failed to pay for £10,000 worth of travel. Using information uncovered by the new technology, the team then built a case, which resulted in the customer repaying the full loss to LNER.

Paul Larder, at LNER, said the application of machine learning had been revolutionary. He said: “Previously, we’ve relied on our revenue protection team to identify customers who deliberately purchase incorrect tickets for travelling on our services. By using AI, we can accurately analyse large amounts of information quickly and identify patterns that our team can investigate further.”

While companies are ramping up efforts to catch offenders, a report from the Office of Rail and Road this month identified “significant inconsistency” in how operators target fare-dodgers, which has led to unnecessary and unfair prosecutions.

Lord Hendy, the rail minister, who put the cost of fare evasion in England outside London at £400m a year, said a planned new ticketing system as part of the nationalisation programme should reduce instances of people mistakenly buying the wrong tickets. However, for the thugs who push through – known as bumpers, jumpers and tailgaters – sturdier barriers are being created.

Developed by Cubic Transportation Systems, the barriers stretch from the floor to shoulder height and use AI-aided scanning software to detect instances of fare-dodging. Cubic says the gates “can accurately detect, record and flag fare evasion as it’s happening, distinguishing between different types of fare evasion, such as pushing through and climbing under the paddles or tailgating”.

Sir Sadiq Khan’s TfL has not yet said if it will order the equipment. However, if they do, they may finally offer some solace to law-abiding passengers confronted by petty criminals cheating the system while regular staff, who are forbidden from staging physical interventions, look on.

She was used as the RN Cadet and Schools acquaint and accommodation as well as being used by the RN for training until recently, she sat on permanent mooring off of HMS Excellent (Whale Island)

As a Sea Cadet adult volunteer I have spent many weekends and week living onboard HMS Bristol, sad to see her go

Joy as grandad's painting tops railway art poll



The granddaughter of war artist Eric Ravilious said she was "delighted" one of his works had been named as the world's best-loved railway artwork from the UK.

Painted in 1940, Train Landscape shows the chalk white horse of Westbury, Wiltshire, through the window of a third-class train carriage.

Kate Ravilious, who is a Labour councillor in York, said it was "really lovely" to hear how many people loved the painting.

Art UK and Railway 200 organised the ballot, which drew votes from around the world, as part of events to mark the 200th anniversary of the modern railway.

She said the watercolour may never have seen the light of day however, were it not for her grandmother, Tirzah Garwood, who pieced it together from works her grandfather had discarded.

"I think my granddad and my grandmother would have been delighted because she had a lot to play in this painting too," Ms Ravilious said. "My granddad was a perfectionist in his work and about a third of the pieces he decided weren't worth keeping and in this case my grandmother could see the potential. He had a whole series of paintings that he'd done that he wasn't happy with."

Asked why the painting, which is on display at Aberdeen Art Gallery, had topped the poll, she said she believed that era of artwork was gaining popularity. "Perhaps it's a bit of a nostalgia for a past. His view of the landscape, other people have described it as evoking a kind of Englishness we all love."

Ravilious, who grew up in Sussex, was a painter, designer, book illustrator and wood-engraver who later became a war artist. He was the first war artist to die on active service in 1942, meaning Ms Ravilious would never meet him. "Sadly in 1942 he was sent to Iceland and he went off on an air-sea rescue mission and the plane never returned."

She said he had left a vast amount of work behind. "We still have his lovely paintings to remember him by and that's how I know him, through his paintings."

Nothing obvious on Real Time Trains ... the other possibility that I looked at was the possibility of something ahead of it that had to clear Bradford Junction before you could proceed, but that was NOT showing on RTT.

Signalling experts may be able to help me - but I think that the train is passed from Didcot to Westbury sit passes along the line and signallers at both ends have to co-operate to pass trains.  I get the impression that the paths / this is occasionally done very late.

From The BBC

From the Morning Star:


Of note is the apparently obligatory illustrative image, again from Bristol Temple Meads - which would surely be the last railway station to be subject to any proposed 'single staffing' on the ticket barriers?

CfN.

Rail union RMT announced today that it will be balloting over 300 gateline staff across Great Western Railway (GWR) for strike action. The ballot, opening on June 17, comes in response to company plans to impose single staffing and extend working hours.

The rail union argues that this will leave staff on ticket barriers isolated, more exposed to abuse and violence, and unable to provide proper ticket enforcement and adequate assistance to passengers. RMT reports that management has attempted to intimidate workers by insisting they will not win the ballot, and that the new working arrangements will go ahead regardless.
 
General secretary Eddie Dempsey said: “Our members are being threatened with unsafe working conditions and told there is nothing they can do about it. GWR is trying to impose single staffing, which will put our members at greater chance of being harmed at work and we cannot allow that. RMT will not accept lone working on stations and Gatelines, and we are prepared to take strike action to stop it.”

A Great Western Railway spokesman said: “These proposals mean more colleagues at seven GWR stations on our network to offer help and support to customers. We’ve got no plans to extend the working hours for gateline colleagues and there is no suggestion of single staffing being imposed. We’ve been speaking to trades unions colleagues about recruiting an additional 30 members of staff at seven locations on our network to help us provide more staff at gatelines for longer. Rather than being imposed, we’ve been clear that minimum staffing levels would be agreed by local station teams, based on risk assessments agreed with trades unions. We’re keen to talk to colleagues and their trades union representatives to find a mutually beneficial solution here that doesn’t involve colleagues losing money through unnecessary industrial action.”

Press release from Railfuture: