There was plenty of skullduggery going on at the tills too !  Just before D day I bought two items in a supermarket in Dumbarton, each doubly marked 2s 5d and 12½p. I was duly charged 5s - I then pointed out that 2 times 2s 5d was 4s 10d not 5s. The girl on the checkout then said that we were going decimal soon and the decimal price was 12½p - which was 2s 6d.......so that was the price of the item. I then asked to see the manager, he arrived and I explained what had happened...........he rang up "no sale", took 2d out of the till, slammed it down in front of me and walked off - never having said a word.  A double attempted con-trick as the official conversion of 2s 5d was actually 12p !!!

I never darkened that supermarket's door step again............

Later:  I travelled a lot to Germany during the introduction of the Euro - what went on there made the man in Dumbarton look a complete amateur !

But, I digress !

 
...and the earlier 15:30 to Weston is delayed at Reading, should have departed 15:55.

EDIT: 16:00 to Bristol is cancelled.

 

I use a combination of Booking.com to locate (but not book) potential places near a specific location by using their map facility. Having located suitable places scoring ideally above 8.0 (but higher the better) using their map, I will check reviews there & elsewhere before looking up their website & making contact direct - the vast majority of places these days have learned that they can offer cheaper rates direct than on Booking.com by not paying the latter's comission fee of around 9%. Hasn't let me down yet.

 
16:30 Paddington - Taunton "This service has been delayed because of an obstruction on the track"

 

Hear Hear.

Ever since Polanski took over they seem to have been taken over by former Corbynistas, the Environment seems to have faded away from their priorities to be replaced by obsessing over Gaza, "trans rights" and various fringe causes.

Like Corbyn's Labour, they have now been referred to the ECHR in respect of their antisemitism. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the outcome was the same.

I can understand why the estimable Caroline Lucas is so distressed by the direction they are taking/have taken, I may not have agreed with all she said, but at least it was coherent, well informed and inoffensive, however already the usual suspects are piling on to her, accusing her of being a shill for Israel etc with depressing predictability.

 
Talking with a B&B owner in Scotland, that class of accommodation's very much in decline for reasons you can imagine. Information being online is a mixed blessing too, as the number of deceased web sites, deceased email addresses, unresponsive email address owners, is legion.

Something that's gone and that I'm not sure was valued even when it was running was the Tourist Information 'Book a bed ahead' service, which for a 10% commission was pretty good at finding somewhere to stay and often provided a voyage of discovery too. It was UK-wide so I once visited the tourist information in Bath and within a few hours they booked a B&B for me in Stirling. Compare and contrast with the present day and Bath has no tourist information office.

One memorable time, before the service was centralised, and for Gairloch, the tourist information person completely ran out of options but had enough local contacts to go on the grapevine and find someone who was very content to put us up in a spare room. Evening sun, a small house with an extensive view a mile or so to Gairloch, and on arrival having taken a quick look at us, she handed us the house keys, apologised that she was out for the evening and with that we were beyond reach of the midges and had a roof over our heads.

 
So far, I've posted a reflection on the experience of my train journey. There are other points I'd like to cover and to see how other Coffeeshop members views compare.

Firstly, it was not easy to choose a destination. Some of this may be due to my advancing years and a sense of "been there done that". Some, however, may be due to a decline in the destinations themselves. This forum has already covered town centre decline and the particular problems of coastal destinations.

Some of that decline may have been unavoidable. Some, I feel, is down to poor design and planning. (Here, planning is in a wider sense than what Local Govt. does). So many places look dreary or "the same".

Then there is the aspect of car dominance. Not only does this detract from the beauty or tranquility of places, it has also led to particular difficulties for those of us trying to use public transport.

Turning to my decision to extend the trip to more than one day: it is not particularly easy to find somewhere to stay overnight (varies by location and budget). It is much harder when you are looking for somewhere that is easily accessible by train. Many websites are catching on to the idea of searching for "dog friendly" but I've yet to see "near the station" offered as a search option.

I have stayed in some fantastic B&Bs over the years, which I prefer to the more impersonal hotel experience. Not many could be described as "easily accessible by rail". In Dawlish, with a bit of effort, I found three (can you do better? without using AirBnB). I have also tagged B&Bs in Lymington, Yarmouth IoW and Sway for future reference.

 

Given its governance, as of today, Starlink should not be under consideration for this (or anything else).

Mark

 

I'm sorely tempted to associate those words with a certain train service...

 

I will never vote "green" again, unless they reverse the recently announced anti-Semitic policy is reversed.

 

The trench itself was shallow, though whatever was being excavated into was a bit concrete-chunky. It was difficult to make out exactly where the displaced roof blocks were in relation to the ground above. I had the impression that they weren't beneath the trench at all (which in any case hadn't reached the ground above the tunnel). They may have been below the road's west side pavement which has been resurfaced using tarmac, and probably using a plate compactor, the vibration from which may have exposed a couple of stone blocks where the mortar was failing.

It made me think of Devonshire Tunnel, which is lined with 'Shaped rubble' that may have gained a fair amount of additional cohesion courtesy of limescale among other things. Not, thankfully, that Devonshire is a streaming wet tunnel.

 

Is it really fair to blame GWR here?

The infrastructure itself currently can't really handle anything more than what is already running, so any frequency or journey time uplift is dependent on a significant amount of work by Network Rail (which is being seriously discussed - but its a fair amount of work).

And a lot of the recent issues I have seen are due to track issues (e.g. the other day when engineering work resulted in damage to the track). Which again are Network Rail.

Yes there is the rolling stock issue, but again that isn't really down to just GWR - they are doing what they can whilst limited by the DfT (and hopefully the 175s and extra 158s from TfW will help too).

I think the main criticism I would have is largely information / communication - it seems that unclear, incomplete or downright incorrect information is often communicated which then results in things like replacement / additional bus services not service stations when people expected them to, or downright refusal to organise replacement buses / taxis and instead force people onto the stagecoach bus which is a very long and winding route!

 
Rather surprised that someone with the pedigree of Richard Bowker should confuse the M5 Avon bridge with the Gordano viaduct 2 miles further south.....

 

Sure, but then that's the nature of the beast of any franchised train operating company.  Provide:
1. Enough to fulfil your contract with the DfT
2. Whatever else you can make a profit on by local authority, EU and other scheme grants.
3. Any extras where you have the resources and can make a significant extra profit (but far better if your resources are scarse to proved under option (2) - grants)
4. Where you have leeway, arrange items 1, 2 and 3 to maximise the farebox take.
5. There will be occasional circumstances for "PR Reasons" where extras are provided - I can think of the Barnstaple bus strengthening which may be an example.


Maybe after nationalisation something might happen but are there any Labour MPs in situ?
[/quote]

 

Scheduled time, yes ... actual running times, no.   Here is the bus I photographed at Melksham Station at 15:15 on Monday, and how it is shown on Real Time Trains:





And here are pictures from 14:58 and 15:13 showing the line very much in use.   Passenger train too - pity it didn't stop to serve passengers!

 
GWR have to be hauled screaming and kicking to any improvements in service unless someone else is paying. The Paignton half hour service only came about by being kick started by EU funding an extra shuttle train between Paignton  and Newton Abbot.

Before then, The Torre schools return traffic was served by a London HST stopping there.

Maybe after nationalisation something might happen but are there any Labour MPs in situ?

The Kingskerwell by-pass only got authorised, after 40 years lobbying, by the 2010 coalition government because Torbay had a liberal MP>

 

The half crown was demonetised before D-day - I know because it caused me to have a 20% pay cut, which as a 10 year old stung painfully. My grandma, bless her memory, used to give me a half crown when I visited her, and this reduced to a florin when the half-crown was withdrawn. Sixpence bought a 10 year old quite a bit in 1970.

 
Posting on behalf of  "Kai (posts as kai_oddcorners)" ... not verified by myself, so can't vouch for how tall the story is, but it looks feasible.

 

No, not in the slightest! Hopefully the new owner is able to do something with it.  It'll look great restored and in use again but it will take a huge amount of money to make progress and a lot of determination to navigate the way forward given access is only across the railway or through the storage facility behind the platform (and I have no idea how amenable they are to helping.)

 
Only the copper coins were changed at decimalisation - the silver 6d, 1/-, 2/- and 2/6 (half crown) coins stayed in circulation, along with the 50p coin that had replaced the 10/- note. So it eased the transition to keep a sixpence as 2^1/2p and the half crown as 12^1/2p.

Plus I remember plenty of people being very angry that prices had been rounded up to the nearest half pee. Bear in mind that a half pee was worth more than an old penny.

 

Norman Tebbit

 
Can't find it mentioned herein but RRB timings generally appear on RTT so if anybody is required to use an RRB recording of the booked & actual start and end journey times and locations might be a good idea.

If it all goes pear-shaped you should then have some data to use in a DR claim.

 

The railway is ... riddled ... with mis-leads and opportunities to do better.

Brickett Wood
Bridge of Allan
Bridge of Orchy
Bridgend
Bridgeton
Brighton

... what the ticket machine (that was upgraded last week!) ... offers when I start typing in B-R-I ... for where I want to buy a ticket to.  Most sold Melksham tickets BRI are Temple Meads (which IS on the quick front panel) followed by

Bristol Parkway
Brighton
Bridgend
Bridgwater
Brighouse
Brixton

And, surely, it would be best to offer the most popular six first, not the first six in the alphabet?


And don't we love the information system gems that have two trains leaving from the same platform at the same time:

 

Sure, that's what the public are hoping for.   But let's look

1. There are no offers of a general better level of service, though there may be some bright spots.  Indeed nothing much is said about level of service and could we be in for another Beeching, or Serpell? That could save money.  I won't give any pointers in the South West ... but I could look at East Anglia and and ask about lines such as those through Berney Arms, East Tilbury and Emerson Park, and to such places as Sheringham, Sudbury and Southminster and wonder about their economic case.

2. More reliability and fewer breakdowns could be achieved by reducing the number of services run and increasing running times, could it not?  Swiss timekeeping has an excellent reputation, but I've made a number of journeys where we have paused to make up time.  And modern technology (I've see demos) can hide that slowing down by programming the trains to run slower than they could - not awaiting time at stations but running a little slower between

3. "Fare Simplification" is what is suggested, and can be achieved, can't it, by simply scrapping some of the lower fares?  Let's get rid of super off peak - no, it's not in headlines terms putting "fares up" but it'll sure as heck make a substantial difference in our parts to weekend travellers!

 
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/articles/cx7vpe1p070mo


I find myself looking at this report and wondering if there are crossover lessons and alerts into public transport matters. 

 
This, in a nutshell.

The Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander says that she wants to see subsidy levels fall. Meanwhile, Network Rail has acknowledged a squeezed budget means difficult choices, and shoring up the network against the effects of more extreme weather requires investment.

Prof Glaister says: "When the public is hoping for a better level of service, more reliability, fewer breakdowns and lower fares, what they're really asking for is more money to be put into the railway.

"I don't think it's likely the government is going to be able to find more money, probably [it will have] less, actually. And so I think there's a real problem with ministers raising expectations from this policy."

 
Our "rules of engagement" - the forum agreement - is written for direct (human) posters and not for automated agents. In the current environment / with concerns about AI, it makes sense to me for Coffee Shop posting to remain in principle limited to real people who we may meet on the train, who have life experiences, and who can agree to / sign up to our forum agreement.   

Occasionally in our many years, a real person has "gone rogue" and our team has been able to take actions which bring our posted content back within our guidelines, often with the agreement of that person though very occasionally through enforcement mechanisms we have, underpinned by the background of that agreement which does include a couple of safety nets that lets it cope with the unexpected.  I am uncomfortable with the thought of moderating an agent which does not have the characteristics / bounds of a real person, and so sign up requests from automata will be / are declined at present. That does not stop automata reading the public areas of the Coffee Shop, nor does it stop them communicating with us through our official email address, nor does it stop them making use of public material "scraped". 

At present, we've had very few sign up requests indeed from automata, and such requests where they want to sign up to "comment on a particular story" will be answered by an invite to email to us what they would like to say, and the admin or moderator team will consider sharing what's suggested, and with reference to the source as appropriate.  This policy means that we welcome and share information from the widest range of sources, but at the same time provide members and (in public areas) guests with a re-assurance that what they read is submitted with true thought, intent, and over which our team has backup tools to look after.