Because of my Senior Railcard, I always used Oyster within London - the two are manually linked every year. My bank card can never know about my Railcard and I would always be charged the non-discounted fare.

This withdrawn train that GWR seem to want to pretend is still running for Dilton Marsh passengers, used to be fairly well used with people getting on and off the train. This included schoolchildren who attended schools in Salisbury and Warminster, on occasions who had after school activities, plus people who worked in Warminster and those joining at Dilton Marsh who worked night shifts in Bristol. Friday evenings were often busy: in fact on one Friday, the driver was warned by the signaller to approach Dilton Marsh at caution because of the number of passengers on the platform.

I have also noticed that when trains have been cancelled, admittedly sometimes because of things outside GWR's control, this has made "return" services more lightly loaded which I suspect isn't coincidence. For example, a couple of weeks ago, the morning / lunchtime trains were all cancelled from Dilton Marsh, trains that are normally busy at Dilton Marsh, because of a fallen tree in the Avon Valley. [redacted] .... I walked to Westbury for my outward journey but I think I was pretty unique in this.  The train I caught home, 1743 from Bristol, which normally has double figures of people getting off at Dilton Marsh, only had me getting off which I've never seen before on.

Famous Oxfordshire figures inspire names for county’s fleet of gritters

Radiospread, Alfred the Grit, Sir Winston Chur-chill, Agatha Gritstie, Inspector Norse, Prof Stephen Thawking and Sir Roger Ban-ice-ster among those chosen

Oxfordshire leaders, writers, scientists, musicians, locations and sports stars have helped inspire some pun-tastic names for the county’s fleet of gritters.

Earlier this year, Oxfordshire County Council and its highways maintenance contractor M Group announced a competition to name the 30 gritting lorries that ensure that the county’s roads keep moving and stay safe when the cold weather hits. Nearly 1,500 suggestions were received.

Wartime Prime Minister Sir Winston Chur-chill and his Woodstock birthplace of Blenheim Pal-ice made the cut, along with Wantage-born King Alfred the Grit.

People would be right to suspect that Wallingford’s queen of the whodunnits Agatha Gritstie was a popular choice, while Oxford’s most famous fictional detective Endeavour Morse has been immortalised as Inspector Norse. The late actor who played him, the appropriately named John Thaw, was also chosen.

There will be no surprises that local rock legends Radiohead – fresh from their sell-out comeback tour – had a vehicle, Radiospread, named after them.

Sir Roger Ban-ice-ster, who broke the four minute mile barrier at Oxford’s Iffley Road running track in 1954, was a worthy recipient, along with the late footballer Joey Beauchamp – regarded by many as the greatest player in Oxford United’s history. Snowy Beauchamp was chosen to honour him.

Groundbreaking Oxford-born cosmologist Professor Stephen Thawking and Snowdo Baggins – named after Frodo Baggins, a character in Oxford don JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit – made the grade.

Oxfordshire landmarks Shotover Hill and the Wittenham Clumps – aka Shotover Chill and Grittenham Clumps – were also among the successful public suggestions.

The process followed the appeal in October, which put an emphasis on names with local significance, inspired by Oxfordshire’s rich history and cultural importance.

A shortlist was compiled from the 1,480 suggestions received, with the gritter drivers themselves choosing the winners.

Listeners to the BBC Radio Oxford Breakfast Show took part as well, coming up with three of the names.

Pupils from the schools closest to the council’s depots where the gritters and salt barns are based – Woodcote Primary, Deddington CE Primary and Drayton Community Primary – also chose three names each. The children will get the chance to meet their gritters later this winter.

Two vehicles were named in tribute to gritter drivers and supervisors who died recently, while Blizzard of Ozz was a nod to Black Sabbath singer Ozzy Osbourne, who passed away earlier this year. While not local, the cover of their debut album was photographed on the Mapledurham estate in Oxfordshire.

The names in full

    Bossy
    Monster Rich
    Snow-bi Wan Kenobi
    Robin the Great
    Duck, Duck, Grit
    Draytonator!
    Did You Just In-Salt Me?
    Great Gritain
    Hansel and Gritel
    Gritasaurus
    Ready, Spready, Go
    Elvis Spreadley
    Inspector Norse
    Agatha Gritstie
    Snowy Beauchamp
    Gritty Gritty Bang Bang
    Sir Winston Chur-chill
    Shotover Chill
    Snowdo Baggins
    Radiospread
    Professor Stephen Thawking
    Claudia Sprinkleman
    Blenheim Pal-ice
    Sir Roger Ban-ice-ster
    Grittenham Clumps
    Grittmeister 5000
    Alfred the Grit
    Spready Mercury
    John Thaw
    Blizzard of Ozz.

Sir David Attenbrrr among ice cold BCP Council gritter names


Witty, wintry names have been picked for 13 gritters set for Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole roads

Sir David Attenbrrr, Ice Ice Maybe and Slip Not are among the names chosen for a council's fleet of road gritters.

Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) Council asked residents to suggest "witty, wintry and wonderful" names for its fleet of 13 gritters.

The council said it received more than 1,000 suggestions to its naming challenge - Sir David Attenbrrr is already on duty - with names currently being added to the remaining 12 vehicles.

BCP's gritter fleet looks after 780 miles (1,255 km) of roads across Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole spreading a stock of about 4,000 tonnes of dry rock salt over the winter months.



David Plowie, Chr-ice-church, Gritty Gritty Bang Bang and Auntie Freeze are among the other names chosen for the fleet this year.

The council said sign offcuts that would otherwise have been sent to the skip were used to create the names for the vehicles to minimise costs.

During snow and icy conditions, a series of weather stations are used to monitor road temperatures across the BCP road networks so the gritters can target the areas affected.

12:53 London Paddington to Worcester Foregate Street due 15:11 will be cancelled.
This is due to more trains than usual needing repairs at the same time.
Last Updated:20/12/2025 10:21

20:03 Worcester Foregate Street to London Paddington due 22:23 will be cancelled.
This is due to more trains than usual needing repairs at the same time.
Last Updated:20/12/2025 10:21

Latest News, December 2025
 
Locomotive Services Limited (LSL) continues to make good progress with the train. Currently they are repositioning all the footsteps on each vehicle to make the set as “gauge friendly” as possible. This work will be concluded by Friday 21 November. Following this, Hitachi Rail have been engaged to conduct a laser survey of the train. This will create a detailed and extremely accurate model of the train (with revised footstep locations) which will give the ability to “clear” the train to operate across as many routes as possible. This work will be ongoing in the background until after Christmas.

Then my second guess (in 24hrs) is in a PM 

4: I will take a punt on this one being between Lymington Pier and Ryde Pier Head

Odd one out - which and why? And, yes, there are probably multiple answers in each case. 

Work finishes on five new railway stations

Construction work has finished on five new railway stations in the West Midlands.

Kings Heath, Moseley and Pineapple Road stations on the Camp Hill line in Birmingham, along with stations at Willenhall and Darlaston in Walsall, are due to open in early 2026.

They were originally scheduled to have been finished and in operation in 2024, but were hit with delays and soaring costs.

Once opened, it will mean the return of passengers to the Camp Hill line for the first time since the early 1940s and the end of a 60-year wait for services at Willenhall and Darlaston.

Richard Parker, mayor of the West Midlands, recently handed control of the stations over to West Midlands Railway after the work was completed. He said the services would improve connectivity and take congestion off the roads. "They will help bring increased footfall to the places around it and they will help drive economic growth," he added.


The new Pineapple Road station, pictured during construction, will open next year

The Labour mayor said driver training, testing and signalling work would take place over the next few weeks to ensure the stations were ready for passengers in the new year.

The stations have been delivered in partnership with the Department for Transport, West Midlands Railway, Network Rail, Birmingham City Council and Walsall Council.

Denise Wetton, Network Rail's central route director, said: "These five new stations are great additions to the West Midlands rail network, better connecting people and communities to new journeys and opportunities."

What the RAIB say is that the system was fully operational and reporting sensor movement to the monitoring centre of the company that built and ran it. Network Rail had not signed it off as operational, meaning that alarm reports were not being sent on to their control centre. And no, I don't understand that either. Among the many things we don't know is whether the company would have picked up movement reports and forwarded them to NR - academic since there were no such reports.

The most likely system I can find mention of online (and which is used by NR in other places) has tilt sensors on poles, reporting to a local concentrator box, which sends reports on to the company HQ. If the poles are about 1m tall, that would fit with the highest movement threshold of 90 cm. However, reporting greater movements would depend on the ability to transmit while lying flat, at risk of being at least wet and muddy if not (as observed here) buried. I'd need more detail about the radios and antennas to say any more about why what looks like a serious omission took place.

A tilt sensor measures sideways offset from the base of the pole, which might itself move, so the relationship of that offset to the earth slippage is not at all straightforward. Initially, the sensor movement is a lot bigger than the movement of the ground at any depth. Note that the words do talk about monitoring the positions of the sensors, not of the ground, suggesting either tilt or distance from another transponder is being measured.

Battery lifetime requirements constrain how often reports can be sent, and I guess the concentrator/relay box has to be solar powered since any mobile phone (even GPRS, still used for this kind of thing) has to cover a longer distance and is much more power-hungry. The collective report sent on obviously could include an item for each sensor, and I'd expect that in every report - after all, it's only a bit or two each. But, again, how the operators would or should have reacted to two sensors going AWOL is unknown.

Could the AGM not be held during day light hours like GWR and Travel watch South West do?