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:

...and the 17:35 Swindon-Westbury left Chippenham on time, but then stopped for about 5 mins somewhere before Thingley, due to a red signal according to the train manager. Wasn't obvious why; I assumed something had got delayed coming from Melksham in the opposite direction on the single track we were waiting to turn into, but nothing came past us. Strange.

I rather think that the relevant military authorities actually 'arranged' this, rather than just 'allowing' it: it was a very big public relations event, after all. 

I was quite surprised it lasted in service as long as it did, I suspect it would have had a much earlier retirement without the Falklands losses.